IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - Spring 2014 - 62

aimed at satisfying the needs of
affected population or involved
agencies. Besides, they are not
protected from antisocial behavior aiming to disrupt communication flow, cause deliberate harm,
and so on.
Different groups have different
views regarding the main function
of social media in an emergency
situation. From the media perspective, social media functions as
a conduit that redirects the information consumer to other sources
[62]. However, a survey of Facebook users (predominantly from
Australia, as well as New Zealand
and Japan) indicated that social
media are not the first information source choice [12]. According
to the frequently cited ARC's survey [63], social media are also not
the first choice for getting help in
emergency situations - indeed, the
ARC's message is that they should
not be. From the emergency management perspective, social media
serve as a locus of interaction
with the public and as a way to
collect crowd-sourcing information [64]. However, social media
should be used very carefully as a
data collection instrument. In this
instance, verification and noise
are the major challenges. In order
to generate effective community
response, information needs to
be coded and presented according to certain rules. Even if this is
achieved, the problem of information overload and trust remains.

Organizational and
Sociocultural Implications
The QPSMedia report [65] presents
one case of successful social media
use by an official agency responsible for emergency management. It
indicates that social media can help
provide situation awareness when
other communication means are
unavailable, and that they can facilitate immediate feedback from the
public. However, the most important lesson derived from this case
is that social media use during a
62

disaster requires thorough preparation that aims to develop trust and
build a community. Therefore, this
technology calls for a re-organization of work processes and procedures, change of standard practices
and staff requirements, and meeting of technological demands
related to usability and correct
exploitation.
One of the main challenges that
social media use may impose on
official agencies is a need for staff
to have more freedom and independence. On the other hand, successful social media use in disaster
situations is highly dependent on
volunteers, as demonstrated by the
achievements of the Cyclone Yasi
Update, a community-run disaster
Facebook page combining official
information and two-way communication with people in affected
areas. In this way, the Cyclone Yasi
Update team succeeded in providing "a single initial trusted point of
contact for people who needed to
prioritise their activities to protect
themselves, rather than spend time
searching for information" [12,
p. 22]. Accepting community help
entails the need to use tools that
enable and support location tracking, geomapping, crowdsourcing,
volunteer coordination, and so on
[66], [67].
It may be said that social media
are undermining the fundamentals of disaster and emergency
communication.
Traditionally,
the cornerstone of emergency
communication was a thoroughly
designed and tested message - a
product of professional effort and
experience. Communicative strategy was based on the assumption
that, in an emergency, people's
ability to perceive information
and follow instructions may be
affected by such factors as lack of
time, cognitive constraints, emotional state, social disintegration,
and failed infrastructure. In the
mediated environment, emergency
communication is characterized
by noise. Human and non-human

agents may disseminate unreliable,
outdated or irrelevant information,
creating a dangerous distraction
during a critical moment. This
inconsistency of information flow
may be exacerbated by numerous
overlapping updates and accounts
that use different representation
systems [62].
Summary
Social media are introducing radical changes to disaster and emergency communication. These
changes include: an extended range
of participants; uncertainty of their
roles and power/hierarchy relationships; an increasing quantity
of information and uncontrolled
quality of messages; and prioritisation of information search and processing (Fig. 3). It is necessary to
contemplate social media's effect
as a potentially excluding factor
that may disadvantage a population sector unfamiliar with modern technologies. New regulations
and communication principles are
needed to ensure the accessibility
of emergency information.

Conclusion
Within the rapidly growing literature about social media use in disaster and emergency situations, it is
not uncommon to encounter studies that adopt a narrow information-centric perspective on social
media. As a result, most important
issues and factors are ignored or
neglected, such as unequal access
to technology or cultural capital,
the possibility of social disorganization, and cognitive constraints
on information processing in crisis
situations. The concept of human
communication enables us to realize, and hopefully overcome, the
limited heuristic potential of the
information-centric perspective on
social media.
Human communication cannot
be reduced to a transmission of signals and flow of information. As a
philosopher of language said, people do things with words [17]. They

IEEE TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY MAGAZINE

SPRING 2014

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - Spring 2014