Social media aids diplomacy, disaster response

U.S. embassies used to pass important security alerts to Americans abroad through word of mouth, Janice Jacobs, assistant secretary of State for consular affairs, said Friday.

Embassy consular sections relayed those warnings, called “warden messages” through pre-organized phone trees or by actually knocking on doors, she said. Later, embassies began sending mass emails to Americans who had registered with them, but those emails usually reached only a handful of citizens living or traveling in those countries.

When criminal gangs attacked city buses in Matamoros, Mexico, and kidnapped several Americans in April 2011, Jacobs said, the embassy immediately Tweeted out a warning, which was re-Tweeted across thousands of followers within two hours and featured on CNN.

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