Social Media in Emergencies

Living in the middle of San Diego and trying to find out the latest news on the fires and evacuations has lead to some interesting discoveries into the power of the Social Web.

Blog Streams and RSS for Emergency Situations

Hats off to the San Diego Union Tribune. They have outdone themselves in the way they have presented the news using social media.

The San Diego Union Tribune created a blog called Wildfires 2007 that is updated almost every 10 minutes or so giving the latest information and resources for the San Diego fires.

The Power of the Blog

Running History
What makes this incredibly helpful is that by using the blog format, San Diego Union Tribute has created a running history, with date and timestamps of all the events and information that are happening with this emergency.

Social Contributions
Because it’s a blog, people can make comments on all the updates. Many of the comments are congratulating the paper for being the best resource out there for up-to-date information. However, some of them are sharing details that only the citizens involved could do.

Here is a sample comment stream from one of the San Diego Union Tribune blog posts:

RSS for Updates
Again, because the Union Tribune is keeping this blog updated many times an hour, people can subscribe to the feed and get the latest information on their cell phones, PDA’s, laptops, or any other device that would have access to the internet and a feed reader or web browser.

Photo Sharing Sites Provide the Best Photos

Outside of the satellite imagery, some of the best photos of this fire have been taken by people who have been there and have shared their digital photos with the world through Flickr and other photo sharing sites. In addition, because of the social nature of the photo sharing sites, many visitors are leaving comments — giving you a human side that is often left out in mainstream news media.

Some Examples…

The Big Guys Are Trying Out Social Media Too

MSNBC.com provides a service called First Person. It is a collection of images and videos sent in by the users of the web site.

I like that they are including a social element into their site. All the images look fantastic, so it also looks like there is a human editing element in place to really showcase the videos and the images that will provide the greatest impact. Although this filters out the lot of bad images that people take, I can also see how this type of “selection” could lead to media-glorification-for-ratings through the guise of Social Media.

Final Thoughts

I’m especially impressed with the San Diego Union Tribune and the authors who are constantly updating their blog through this time of crisis.

In addition, I would like to mention the 1,000’s of bloggers that share their side of the story during events like the San Diego wild fires. These contributions have changed the way we read our news and learn about our current events. It’s easy to take this for granted and amazing to think that not long ago this wasn’t even available.

I believe that the web will be changed for the better as more and more organizations and businesses alike begin to use the power of Social Media and user contributions.