In the aftermath of the Japanese earthquake-tsunami combo hit, twitter emerged as a top source of communication between those affected who wanted to share information and those wanting to gain information about people and places. Over seventy percent of the earthquake's responders used Twitter, thirty-eight used Facebook, and sixteen used Youtube to communicate to the outside world about how they were, what they were experiencing, where they were, and what they needed according to the article The Effects of Social Media on The Disaster Relief Effort Following The March 11 Earthquake in Japan.
Dr. Tapia, the course instructor for SRA 397a: Crisis Informatics posted a video link in this week's list documents to read, and I have to say that I have never seen such widespread devastation occur so fast, with such force, and it made the landscape nearly unrecognizable after all of the destruction was over. The video link was unfortunately unable to be accessed at the time of this post, so similar videos can be seen from the link below.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiENf1f1tIA&feature=related
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12725646
While some people affected by Japan's disaster were Tweeting true emergencies, facts, needs, sights, and other things, there were those who were and were not affected by the disaster who were using the same hash-tags but were posting false needs, information, locations, and other tweets. Because of this, I feel that tweets aren't the best go-to-communication tool to use when trying to help populations in crises. The devastation that occurred in Japan is no doubt a tragedy, but we should be wary when offering help to those who need it... making sure those people are the people who actually need it and aren't leading humanitarian aid workers on a false trail of help.
I believe that the earthquake and tsunami combo hit to Japan was very extreme. The earthquake was massive and shoke the country like a rag doll and the tsunami wiped out the countries coast. They both caused massive damage to the country. The large amount of people that used social networking to help in the response to the disaster is just staggering, but you have to take a step back and notice that Japan is not a third world country.
ReplyDeleteThe sure force of the earthquake and tsunami that Dr Tapia posted on Angel is tremendous and shows the power of the sea. People think “oh it is just a wave”, no it is a wave that has massive amounts of power behind it. The energy and speed at which this wave is going is tremendous. It is like when you see a CATA bus about to run someone over everyone is like HOLY SHIT!
I wonder if the Japanese set off their tsunami warning sirens like Hawaii has on their coasts.
I agree with you when you made the comment that you don’t believe that Twitter is the best go-to-communication tool to use while trying to help people during or after a crises. If people who don’t need help use the same hashtags that people who do need help, then it just creates more volume that has to be sorted. THIS WILL TAKE MORE TIME TO RESPOND TO THOSE WHO NEED IT. I knew I didn’t like Twitter for more than one reason.