From Kim Stephens @ idisaster 2.0

The other day in a SMEMchat we debated (briefly) the pros and cons of cross-posting to Twitter and Facebook, particularly the practice of posting to Twitter from Facebook–not necessarily dual  posting from a third party application such as Hootesuite or Tweetdeck. I recalled reading that this was problematic in a scholarly article by  Axel Bruns, et al (see page 12). They were writing about QPS Media (yes, I know everyone is a little tired of me bringing them up) during the flood event of January, 2011.

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 Kim Stephens @ idisaster 2.0

I’ve been in two meetings this week where public officials have stated that their job was in some way  to “control social media”.  One person stated that in an upcoming exercise “We are going to ‘play’ some social media and learn how to control that…”. In the another conversation a public information officer indicated that their office didn’t mind interaction and public comments on their social media platforms “…as long as people write things that don’t reflect negatively on our organization.” Whoa! Both of those statement had me floored because they demonstrated how those folks misunderstood the power of the medium. Fire Chief Bill Boyd, a longtime social media evangelist and a person who “gets it” stated in a post today that it is about “community engagement, not public communication”.  Exactly.

The power of using social platforms for engagement is important during every phase of emergency management but particularly in the preparedness phase when your organization is trying to cultivate and build relationships with the entire stakeholder community: volunteer organizations, CERT members, advisory committees, other agencies, etc, the list is long. If you are simply pushing information to these groups via your social platforms without any hope, desire or expectation of input, then, believe it or not… you won’t get any input!

Read more @ idisaster 2.0

From the Disasters 2.0 Blog

I saw this morning (some three months after it was acquired by Facebook) that GoWalla was finally shut down.  According to most reports, the GoWalla developers are helping Facebook continue to udpate it’s Timeline feature for profiles and users.

Many of you are probably asking — what’s GoWalla and who cares?!

GoWalla, like FourSquare (it’s primary competitor), is a location-based social networking site.  This type of site allows user to “check-in” (via GPS and wifi signals) at various sites based on pre-determined and/or user generated geographic labeling.  This connectivity to geography was intended to allow other individuals in the area to be engaged or connected socially.  These types of systems have grown steadily, but still are not heavily used.  These types of systems are dependant on engaged users who leverage mobile devices and have limited concerns about security or social exposure.

So now — who cares?

Read more @ emergencymgmt.com