Role of Social Media in Emerency and Crisis Communication

ROLE OF SOCIAL MEDIA IN EMERENCY AND CRISIS COMMUNICATION

INTRODUCTION

Social media networking tools can be used in a variety of ways to support emergency management and public health and safety. Presently, the world is awash in media, with televisions, personal computers, tablet computer, smart phones and other kinds of internet enabled phones, etc. According to Internet world statistics, there are over 45 million internet users in Nigeria, representing 26.5% of the population. A lot of these internet users are in one way or the other involved in social media. The rapid growth of social networking sites (referred to as social media) such as Facebook, twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, and others have attracted considerable attention. It is a medium of communication that allows information to be transmitted on a global scale, reaching millions around the world within minutes (Gitanjal & Gerald 2012).

Social media truly breaks down walls. It allows us to communicate our thoughts, connect with people across the globe and often know them better than our next door neighbour. Social media has an ever increasing accessibility that has allowed it to gain a pivotal role in many people's lives and serves a number of functions.

The rise of social media seems to have democratised corporate communication. The power has been taken from those in marketing and public relations by individuals and communities that create, share and consume blogs, tweets, Facebook posts, YouTube videos and so forth (Gitanjal & Gerald 2012). The growing influence of social media and the consequent involvement of people and organisationsmake it a valuable tool in communicating. Social media plays significant role in determining how news about crises is communicated, reactions are shared and responses are coordinated across the globe. According to an American Red Cross Survey, "People are relying more and more on social media, mobile technology and other news outlets to learn about on-going disasters, seek help and share information about their wellbeing after emergencies". When people are under threat, perceived or actual, they go into intensified information seeking period. The intersection of these two fields is of great interest to communication researchers and communication strategists. The evolution of social media has led to faster spread of messages and the ability to minimize harm done to an organization in a crisis scenario (Semple, 2009). Social media also has the potential to ruin a company's reputation or expedite the spread of harmful corporate rumours (Semple, 2009).

Theoretical Framework

Crisis Communication

Crisis communication is an inevitable part of corporate communications (Coombs, 2010). Crises are something corporations and organizations must be prepared to respond to; their response is known as crisis management (Coombs, 2010). In the field of public relations and elsewhere, crisis has been given numerous definitions and criteria (Adkins, 2010). In the simplest terms, a crisis is something that can cause harm to any one thing, person or corporation (Heath, 2010). A crisis typically has high stakes and a tight deadline to act quickly. It is also important to note that a true crisis is an event that requires a great amount of attention and resources by those involved (Coombs, 2010). Crises can occur internally or externally to an organization and require action of the organization that is outside normal day-today activities (Adkins, 2010). These aspects of crises describe not only an organizational crisis, but also a natural disaster.

Crisis management is the larger umbrella that covers crisis communication (Coombs,

2010). Crisis management allows an organization to possibly prevent, prepare, respond to and analyse a crisis before, during and after the crisis has occurred (Coombs, 2010). Crisis communication is the collection of information, followed by processing that information into knowledge, and finally, the sharing of information with others throughout a crisis situation (Coombs, 2010). Crisis communication has been studied for over 30 years. The bulk of that study has emerged from the field of public relations and has received heightened attention in the past decade (An & Cheng, 2010). Crisis communication research is practical and meant to be put to use in order to improve crisis management practices and crisis Communication (Coombs, 2010).

Crisis communication research includes a substantial amount of theoretical research

(Coombs, 2010). Crisis communication theory includes: reputation management, attribution of responsibility, and communication response based on crisis type, among many other theories. These areas have been developed and theorized to apply to crisis communication and its best practices. Experiments as well as observational analyses have also become more prevalent in the study of crisis communication (Coombs, 2010).

Social Media

Social media is user-generated content distributed through the Internet with the intent to be shared and facilitate conversation between users (Wright & Hinson, 2009). Social media is one of the major methods of social interaction around the world today (Wright & Hinson, 2009).

In general, the following are considered social media tools and platforms: message boards, photo sharing, podcasts, Really Simple Syndication (RSS), video sharing, Wikis, blogs, social networks and micro-blogging sites (Wright & Hinson, 2009). Newer forms of social media include mapping and geotagging, sometimes known as location services. Although there are many prevalent social media tools, social networking sites and location services will be the tools focused on for this study.

There are many terms related to social media that are important to understand. Computer mediated communication (CMC) is the conversations facilitated through technology-based social media platforms (Palen, Vieweg, Liu, & Hughes, 2009). Information and communication technology (ICT) is a term that encompasses the Internet and social media (Palen et al., 2009).

ICT has simplified finding information in addition to expanding social interactions and Communication patterns (Palen et al., 2009).

Social Networking sites

Social networking sites are one type of social media (Gupta, Armstrong, & Clayton,

2010). They are characterized by a user's ability to create a public profile which contains demographic and personal information, and is made visible based upon personal privacy settings (Boyd & Ellison, 2008).