Topic

Role of social media in promoting community participation in

disaster management

The role of social media in promoting community participation in disaster management.

Preamble

• Definition of disaster• What is disaster management• Definition of social media and platforms of social media• Definition of community participation• The role of social media in promoting community participation

in disaster management.

A disaster is a sudden, calamitous event that seriously disrupts the functioning of a community or society and causes human, material, and economic or environmental losses that exceed the community’s or society’s ability to cope using its own resources. Though often caused by nature, disasters can have human origins (Red Cross and Red Crescent National Societies)

Disaster Management can be defined as the organization and management of resources and responsibilities for dealing with all humanitarian aspects of emergencies, in particular preparedness, response and recovery in order to lessen the impact of disasters.

Social media is the collective of online communications channels dedicated to community-based input, interaction, content-sharing and collaboration. Websites and applications dedicated to forums, microblogging, social networking , social bookmarking, social curation, and wikis are among the different types of social media.

community participation is a planned process whereby local groups (communities) are clarifying and expressing their own needs and objectives and taking collective action to meet them. (http://www.forcedmigration.org/rfgexp/rsp_tre/student/commpart/com_02.htm) .As the involvement of people in a community projects to solve their own problems.In recent years, social media has exploded as a category of online discourse where people create content, share it, bookmark it and network at a prodigious rate. The five key characteristics of social media: collectivity; connectedness; completeness; clarity and collaboration lend itself to be used increasingly playing a vital role to support disaster management functions via community participation. These roles includes

This is an info graphics data showing the result of a survey for the source of information to Nigerians over the pass five years.Most importantly the use of social media has gain a significant increased from 2% in 2007 to 20% in 2015

Information dissemination. Information dissemination through social media tools is an effective means to provide reliable information quickly to the public to enable them to better prepare for and respond to crisesIt was reported within an hour of the earthquake, more than 1,200 tweets per minute were being sent from Tokyo (Horwath, 2011). Twitter reported that the day of the earthquake 177 million tweets were recorded, setting a new record (Dunn, 2011). Even the office of the Prime Minister created a Facebook page with English translations of official press briefings and updates, in order to keep the international community informed (Appleby, 2013). Furthermore, following the nuclear plant blast in Fukushima, there was a considerable increase in the use of Ustream, a website that provides a platform for lifecasting and live video streaming of many diverse channels (Appleby, 2013)

Information dissemination Disaster planning and training

Disaster planning and trainingGamification4 leverages social media for disaster planning and training to promote personnel training, scenario planning and collaboration between various emergency management agencies from the public sector, private sector and civil society organizations. Gamification can enhance current disaster management practices through sustained stakeholder training and collaboration. In this respect, the Kenyan Red Cross and the World Bank bring together disaster relief experts and software engineers to work on identifying key challenges and to develop possible solutions through interactive discussions to overcome a range of possible scenarios related to natural disaster risk and response; 

Collaborative problem solving and decision making Crowd-sourcing using social media facilitates collaborative problem solving and decision making by integrating various streams of information from mobile and web-based technologies to fill the perceived sense-making and information gaps as well as to aggregate, analyze and plot data about urgent humanitarian needs. As the knowledge base grows, authorities become better positioned to manage and respond to a range of possible disaster-related scenarios. As an illustration, responders from the United States Institute of Peace collect information to improve their situational awareness so as to make more informed decisions on the allocation of resources based on emerging trends;

Information gathering. On-the-scene footage, citizen journalism and disaster assessment are central to information gathering for coordinating emergency response. Al Jazeera uses a community platform that leverages on email, mobile text messages and smart phone applications, to allow the public to voice their concerns, perceptions, and thoughts regarding on-going developments.

ConclusionWith increasingly more individuals using their mobile phones to go online worldwide, surpassing time spent on traditional media such as television, radio and print, it would be essential to carefully consider how social media applications can be incorporated into an integrated disaster management platform for effective disaster management. Leveraging social media technologies for disaster management provide citizens with a greater role in preparing for and managing crises which will help build resilient communities. Embracing resilience as a civic value and a social norm should ultimately be the way forward to encourage citizens to take the actions necessary to help themselves and others during times of disaster.

Reference: NOI-Polls.comhttp://whatis.techtarget.comRed Cross and Red Crescent National Societieshttp://www.forcedmigration.org/rfgexp/rsp tre/student/commpar/com_02.htmSarah, P., and Ethan, H. (2008). Social media’s new role in emergency management. Idaho National Laboratory.

Social Media in Emergency Management, Department of Homeland Security, Studies and Analysis Institute. USA.

Rive, G., Hare, J., Thomas, J. & Nankivell, K. (2012). Social Media in an Emergency: A Best Practice Guide. Wellington Region CDEM Group: Wellington.

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