From Kim Stephens @ idisaster 2.0

Although my blog specifically addresses emergency management, I wanted to bring your attention to a fabulous resource for healthcare and social media. The blog “Found in Cache” is fantastic: it is one to both bookmark and emulate. The author is Ed Bennett  who also manages web operations at the University of Maryland Medical Center (UMMC). Read more about him here: http://ebennett.org/about/#ixzz1sUMelXbu.

What impressed me the most is the data available. He has amassed an amazing list of healthcare social media policies, as well as a database of hospitals on fourquare (there are 787–who knew!), Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn and Blogs. The best part… all of this data is available on a google map!

Read more @ idisaster 2.0

From Kim Stephens @ idisaster 2.0

Brian Crumpler, a public employee and author of the “Disastermapping” blog, posted yesterday about social media as the “new professional development.”  He  tries to demystify the tools by stating “Social Media is simply the use of media (written and/or visual) to communicate thoughts and ideas through social interaction.” A friend of mine asked me last week if I wasted my time during the work day “playing around on social media.” The fact that that sentiment is still somewhat widely held makes posts like Brian’s all the more important. Below he states his case:

Within the Geographic Information Systems (GIS) community, there are a number of people all around the country that I now interact with on a regular basis.  The same is true about the Social Media for Emergency Management (#SMEM) community.  I’ve also had the incredible privilege to explore and learn more about the next frontier of connected data “BIG DATA” (#BigData), interact with incredible minds in the Data Visualization #DataViz community, and even build good working relationships with some of the best minds in many of these fields.

Read more @ idisaster 2.0

In addition to being director of the Natural Hazards Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder, Kathleen Tierney is a professor of sociology and has more than 25 years of experience in the disaster field. The center serves as a clearinghouse for information on the social dimensions of hazards, disasters and risk. It researches disaster events and hazard- and disaster-related topics, and holds an annual workshop to bring people together to discuss the issues.

Tierney’s research includes the community and organizational response in New York City to the 9/11 attacks; public perceptions of the earthquake threat in California’s Bay Area; and risk communication.

Read more @ emergencymgmt.org

Excerpt from study-

This study examined features on local government websites that could contribute to civic engagement, through 1) information about government and community, and 2) through interactive or participatory opportunities online. The research is based on content analysis of government websites in the 75 largest U.S. cities and 20 largest Illinois cities between March and the beginning of May 2011.

Cities were ranked using a composite score with 94 criteria for council manager governments, and 90 for governments without city mangers. In an earlier 2009 study, cities were scored on 78 items if they had a city manager and on 74 otherwise. We discuss the main results for the 2011 study (with cities ranked on 90-94 measures), and then assess changes between 2009 and 2011.

Download the study @ agincourt.us

From Gerald Baron @ the Crisis Comm Blog

I’m kind of locking myself away these days to get some serious work done on a new book and manual I’ve been working on for some time. It’s essentially designed to be a template to enable crisis and emergency communicators to develop comms plans that will work.

Today is the day of crowd sourcing, including “technical editing” and content reviews. So I will be publishing a few excerpts on this blog to try to enlist some of the many experts coming here to give me some sage advice (and free editing).

Currently I’m working on the section on Information Production. I love writing because its the only way I have of thinking through thorny issues that bug or intrigue me. One of those is the question about the role of information versus messaging in a response. The dictionary didn’t help much but I think the two are quite different. I have a strong bias toward information, even while recognizing the critical role that creating and consistently communicating key messages is essential. Here’s my take on it.

Read more @ emergencymgmt.com