ACTION ITEM: Take a Survey on Your Use of Social Media During Disasters
That’s me on the left, during a tornado warning in early September. As soon as we saw the warning, my husband and I grabbed our puppy, a flashlight, and our phones and climbed into the bathtub to wait it out.
Having our phones as our ONLY link to the outside world caused a little bit of stress, but soon enough we found ourselves refreshing Twitter and Facebook to find out how the storm was progressing and how our friends were doing.
Here at the Red Cross, our goal is to use this blog, our Disaster Online Newsroom, Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms to help inform and give you information that keeps you safe and allows you connect with or help others during disasters. We know firsthand about how important these tools can be when you are taking shelter, or when phone lines are down and your only source of information is a cell phone.
We also know that there is always room for improvement.
Here’s where you come in: if you have ever used one of our social media accounts to get information or to communicate with us or others during a disaster, you can let us know how useful the experience was and give us feedback with this survey. We’ve partnered with a researcher from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to carry out this study, and will use the results to inform future content and activity on our social platforms. It should only take about 10 minutes of your time. Thank you!
Filed under: Disaster Response
This is a great innovative step with using your social media outlets to make sure people get the help they need. How much has been done from using the Disaster Online Newsroom?
Hi Nzinga, we’ve been posting content on our Disaster Online Newsroom for several years now, and view it as a data stream during times of disaster, that can give people the most recent info on what the Red Cross is doing. It complements our Twitter account and other social accounts by serving as a repository for the most useful information. Thanks for your comment!
Nzinga – I actually just read your tumblr and wanted comment on your posts- thanks so much for your interest in our social engagement program! Regarding the engagement on our Twitter account – the reason you may not seee personal interactions on it is because our policy states that we would rather have all of our workers and volunteers engage with people on accounts under their own name. Every day, we listen for conversations online about topics we care about and respond to people using our own accounts. We have our social engagement handbook and communications guidelines all available online here: http://www.scribd.com/AmericanRedCross