Social media in crisis situations
We’ve all heard about the socially driven uses of social media but what about the socially conscious.
This past week Houston was hit by Tropical Storm Erin, and this week we might get hit by Hurricane Dean.
It is weird but here in Houston there are already alerts on the interstate reminding drivers here to keep our gas tanks full.
But the other interesting thing is where you can find information on Hurricane Dean. It is only Saturday, and if Hurricane Dean were to hit Houston, it would happen on about Thursday. But already you can find blogs, flickr images, and YouTube Videos documenting the storm and it’s approach. If you do a search on Google, you will also find that Wikipedia already has a Hurricane Dean entry that is in the second position.
You can also search for “Hurricane Dean” on the various tagging sites like:
(These sites allow users to define what a website is about by “tagging” or labeling it. After a site has been tagged, other people looking for that topic can easily find the “tagged” site.)
Yes, you can find news articles from newspapers, and charts from the national weather service, but users are helping drive what stories get seen, and what charts get looked at.
User generated content (like tags, articles, blogs, wikis, images, videos,etc.) is helping people find information they are looking for. If you are new to social media, use Hurricane Dean to help you understand social media better.