Using social media to communicate during crises: an analytic methodology

Abstract

The Emerging Media Integration Team at the Department of the Navy Office of Information (CHINFO) has recently put together a Navy Command Social Media Handbook designed to provide information needed to safely and effectively use social media. While not intended to be a comprehensive guide on command use of social media or to take the place of official policy, the Handbook provides a useful guide for navigating a dynamic communications environment. Social media are changing the way information is diffused and decisions are made, especially for Humanitarian Assistance missions when there is increased emphasis on Navy commands to share critical information with other Navy command sites, government, and official NGO (nongovernmental organization) sites like the American Red Cross. In order to effectively use social media to support such missions, the Handbook suggests creating a centralized location to funnel information. This suggests that as the community of interest (COI) grows during a crisis, it will be important to ensure that information is shared with appropriate organizations for different aspects of the mission such as evacuation procedures, hospital sites, location of seaports and airports, and other topics relevant to the mission. For example, in the first 14 days of the U.S. Southern Command's Haiti HA/DR (Humanitarian Assistance/Disaster Relief) mission, the COI grew to over 1,900 users. In addition, operational conditions vary considerably among incidents, and coordination between different groups is often set up in an ad hoc manner. What is needed is a methodology that will help to find appropriate people with whom to share information for particular aspects of a mission during a wide range of events related to the mission. CNA has developed such a methodology and we would like to test it in a small scale lab experiment. © 2011 Copyright Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE).