Reducing Human Losses through Social Media
In the last few years, the world has faced many natural disasters are observed. Natural disasters include earthquakes, floods, landslides, cyclones have damaged many properties including economic, human, and environmental losses. Since technologies are updated and social media is playing a vital role in Natural Disaster Management, human losses get reduced. With the use of Social Media, the victims of natural disaster can share their information on the social media so that rescue team can identify their location and hazard in the area (Kim & Hastak, 2018). Communication and spreading awareness of the disaster (like location, the measuremet of disaster and number of people stuck in a situation) among common people as well as with the organization is essential to perform rescue operation as well as to inform people that they should stay away from the place which is under the attacks of the disaster. Social media like Facebook has the feature of “mark yourself save in the disaster” which play an important role to make relatives aware of the safety of the person.
In the recent time, the process of the communication has changed completely. According to De Albuquerque, Herfort, Brenning, & Zipf (2015), the advanced technology and web 2.0 technology help people for exchanging the information in a more accurate manner. The technology helps people changing their lives and it also helps them in helping each other.
According to Alexander (2014), the social media becomes an effective tool which helps to spread the information. Due to covering the vast geographical area, it helps to spread the information. At the time of disaster management, the social media help to spread the information and collect the response from the general public. Different social media tools such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram use for the help, mapping and sending status. Through this method, the help can reach to the millions of the people within a few seconds. Social media being the fifth pillar of democracy is actively involved in disaster response.
According to Jin, Liu, & Austin (2014), this is requisite as the humans would be in a grave condition suffering from pain, and cannot be at a definite location/place due to the rescue operations taking place as per the situation. There could be social media platforms that could be put into use for this purpose, these platforms include: Facebook includes Posts, Emergency Pages, Live Videos of the Victims and Affected Location, etc., Twitter includes Live Tweets & People’s comments on it thereon, Whatsapp Groups, YouTube Videos/Online News, Blogs that highlights all the Details with Facts, Figures and pictures for most accurate information as possible and Instagram Live/Posts.
Communication and Awareness in Disaster Management
According to Wukich (2015), social media is also used for pre & post-disaster management. In the pre-disaster management, the SM use for providing information related to the disaster. It helps to the general public for reaching to the safe palace without any problem. The social media becomes an effective mean which provides accurate information. Anikeeva, Steenkamp & Arbon (2015) stated that many nation’s governments use the social media for making observations and took the decision based on the real-time information.
According to Simon, Goldberg, & Adini (2015) during the disaster the social media is used for raising fund and helps the people for overcoming the ills of the disaster. The SM focuses on various aspects through which the quick response. In addition, the role of the social media of warning people in advance and contribute to disaster preparedness. Anikeeva, Steenkamp & Arbon (2015) stated that It becomes an effective tool for the people for to sending the information, emergency number and also locating the safe places the role of the social media in the disaster management is quite unique and responsive. The mapping tool of the social media helps to individuals and local people for connecting with each other.
According to Shepard, Hashimoto, Kuboyama, & Shin (2016) the social media use for the identifying the survivors in case of the crisis management. Social media helps to identify the victims who are stuck in the earthquake. Similarly in the case of the Japan people used the Picasa to publish the photos of people. Through this approach, the people can get connected to each other. In addition, this also helps people for mark themselves safe during the time of disasters. The similar approach is also used by the Facebook during the time of the Nepal earthquake. The After 7.8 magnitude earthquake hit in the Nepal 2015, Facebook launched the “I’ m Safe feature which aims to provide to helps people.
The literature of Simon, Goldberg, & Adini, (2015) make the focus on the use of the use of social media. At the time of disaster, the social media is pivotal in tracking with accurate hashtags and keywords. The social media helps to make the decision more accurate and also provide the ground information. It eliminates the use of the third party for making an effective communication. The social media is also used to share experiences of the disaster management. Anikeeva, Steenkamp & Arbon (2015) stated that the social media helps to different communities and people to manage the disaster. Advance features in SM help to institutions mapping the position of the individuals and connects the people so they can help each other.
Pre and Post-Disaster Management through Social Media
According to Simon, Goldberg, & Adini, (2015), these platforms will support in bridging the gap in the information of Available Resources & Needs. For Eg: The information can be gathered in the following Categories: Resource, Quantity, Location, Source & Contact Information. To go ahead with these procedures, it is pertinent to Match the Needs & Availability. According to Lachlan, Spence, Lin, & del Greco, (2015). Tweet Beam- Gives Live Visualizations of the Tweets, #TagBoard- Cross Network Search Results, All Hazards- Circulates the Latest Information on Breaking Events & TrendsMap- Real-Time local Twitter Trends that are visualized on the Google Map. The information flows Real-Time with the Posts and People commenting and is shared thereon to spread the word. People turn to Social Media for updated information to reach out to the current updates for helping the victims in distress through Donation, Food Supply, Clothes, etc.
As the literature of Soriano, Roldan, Cheng, & Oco (2016) highlighted that the social media is not the limited use of the individuals. In many cases the SM use by the government and their bodies to maintain the effective monitoring. In 2012, when the typhoon Pablo struck the Philippines, the governments assigned the task of monitoring the Twitter activities and map the relevant information. They have analyzed the 20,000 tweets in the 10 hours (Hiltz, Kushma & Plotnick, 2014). Later this information become base for the UN official in crisis, the social media has numerous benefits in the disaster management. Through the activity of the social media, it helps to manage the disaster. After reading different types of Twitter, the governments also send troops of the doctors and army so they can help to people.
Disasters can seep in at any point in time which could be Natural Disasters viz. Floods, Earthquakes, Hurricanes, etc. There are three kinds of issues faced generically by the Organisations, Victims, NGO, Fire Fighters and Volunteers backing up the same which includes Lack of accurate Information Flow/Management, Lack of coordination in Relief Efforts and Lack of Communication in terms of Available Resources and their requirement at specific locations (What is required where). Here comes into the picture the power of Social Media, which proves to be the knight in the shining armour to circulate a huge chunk of information to the mass at a global level. It can majorly come as a Rescue in two ways viz. Developing Mechanism: Gathering Situational Information and Automated Systems: That will help in coordination of the Relief Efforts.
Identifying Survivors through Social Media
According to Peng (2017), the social media is involved a different type of benefit in the disaster management. In the disaster management, the social media is also helpful for the asking help the civic participation. Use of the different types of symbols, hash-tag and creative content help to collect information and awareness to people for making sure their participation. In the online and offline the Social media use for the promoting the help for the other people at the time of the crisis. In the online participation via social media, funds and other food items collected. The main advantage of SM is that it covers the vast area and global reach. There are different factors which associated SM. So the government and many other non-profit organizations work together.
Anikeeva, Steenkamp & Arbon (2015) depict about the role of social media and mobile tool for public communication in a natural disaster in Australia and New Zealand. During the heavy rainfalls in 2011, Australia and New Zealand faced heavy rainfall. At the time crisis, the Facebook and other social media tool used by the people to distribute first-hand footage of the local situations. The social media become helpful for exchange the information. On the twitter, the floods uses as spreading the mechanism for exchanging the information and discussion of the information related to the flood. The simple structure of the twitter account helps survivors.
In the research of Imran, Castillo, Diaz, & Vieweg (2015), it is found that with the help of social media the communities are helping each other. The structure and platform of the social media are relying open on upon and allow users the reports about the emergency services. The civic make active participation in helping the people. In addition, the social media is also helping to after the disaster. From the use of the social media the communities become active and they can share their experiences with each other. According to the Lachlan, Spence, Lin, Najarian & Del Greco (2016), in addition, sending the help and provide different other facilities helps to people. The people also show their active participation in the social media so they can alert each other provide help where it is required. Therefore the social media has become an effective tool in the modern days. However, it is not essential that social media is always useful in the managing disaster. During the disaster or emergency, there are much time people use the social media for spreading wrong information, therefore, it needs to make sure to authentic of information. According to Allcott & Gentzkow (2017), the social media do not always use of help to people. It can also use for creating the wrong content and spreading wrong information. Therefore, people need to be altering.
Raising Funds and Resources through Social Media
On the other hand, the concept of the social capital is important as it helps in focusing over the investigation of relationship between the internet use and the civil participation. The research claims about the Internet encouragement through social connections and involvement. The case of social media is same as the study indicates about the social capital which is greater amount those who are using social networking services (SNS). It has been observed that trust and reciprocity are the major social capital elements for ICT usage in the different contexts. The social capital is formed through the social contexts related to the trust, norms and the networks to make an efficient society by promoting the different resources among the positive human relationship. There are exchange of ideals at the time of difficulty which are building human relationships and are able to demonstrate the communication activities that help in building social capital. The term bridge and bonding are the two ways where the social capital has been able to view the ideas in the perspective of SNS based communication. The factors are related to maintain the communication that bonds the individuals which might occur in SNS but the bridging is among the diversified individuals which is possible with SNS. There is an enormous growth and population increase in different countries. The reserves of the economic and the population growth has led to make up the policies to revise the uniform and the standardized approaches with dealing from different social issues. The declined tax revenues have also led to major cuts in budgets. The management of the social issues is done by the public sector and the situations are found to be offering opportunities for the different citizen organizations to assume about the roles that have been thought to be the responsibility of the government.
In the above research, there are different gaps found in the existing literature. The limitation of the present literature is related to the sample size. There is a limited sample used in these researches. The literature explores area related to the use of the social media in the disaster management only. The focus is also on facing the possibility and problems of the complementary communication channels. There is a need to speculate about the merits and the demerits of the use of social networking services by the people. The social media is actively making a contribution to the disaster management, however, it can also include the ways in which it can make a contribution. All the resources used in the research are from the secondary sources and qualitative method is used rather than a quantitative method. The present literature provided only limited information on the given topic. The future researches can be conducted in the area of the misuse of SM in the disaster management.
Hashtags and Symbols in Promoting Civic Participation
Conclusion
As mentioned in the information provided by the above literature, it can be concluded new technologies are updated and social media is playing a vital role in Natural Disaster Management. With the help of the social media people and government all actively contribute to the management of the disaster. In the recent years, with the help of the Facebook, Twitter and other social media tools make a unique contribution to overcome with different issues. The social media is also helping to exchange the real-time information and taking the effective decision at the time of crisis. Due to the presence of social media, the people make a contribution to raising funds and provide other items for surviving of people.
References
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Allcott, H., & Gentzkow, M. (2017). Social media and fake news in the 2016 election. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 31(2), 211-36.
Anikeeva, O., Steenkamp, M., & Arbon, P. (2015). The future of social media use during emergencies in Australia: insights from 2014 Australian and New Zealand Disaster and Emergency Management conference social media workshop. Australian Journal of Emergency Management, The, 30(1), 22.
De Albuquerque, J. P., Herfort, B., Brenning, A., & Zipf, A. (2015). A geographic approach for combining social media and authoritative data towards identifying useful information for disaster management. International Journal of Geographical Information Science, 29(4), 667-689.
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Peng, L. (2017). Crisis crowdsourcing and China’s civic participation in disaster response: Evidence from earthquake relief. China Information, 31(3), 327-348
Shepard, D. L., Hashimoto, T., Kuboyama, T., & Shin, K. (2016). What Do Boy Bands Tell Us About Disasters? The Social Media Response to the Nepal Earthquake. In DH (pp. 361-364).
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