ipl-logo

Hurricane Sandy Marked A Shift For Social Media Use In Disasters

522 Words3 Pages

The way citizens are informed about potential emergencies, whether natural or created by individuals, has certainly changed over the years. We no longer live in a world where we depend on local stations representing three major television networks for information about impending threats or emergencies (Haddow & Haddow, 2014). We are now almost immediately informed by social media applications or alerts that are provided to smart phones by hundreds of news outlets. It’s been said that Hurricane Sandy was one of the first events where the government turned to social media applications before, during and after the emergency. It allowed them to reach the public and response partners allowing them to address the needs of the community while providing much needed information (Cohen, 2013). The news media is equally aware of the changing trends in communications and has embraced it in their daily news reporting for several reasons.
One reason that mainstream media has embraced social media is the fact that it allows smaller news …show more content…

(2014, September 24). How social media is reshaping news. Retrieved from http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/09/24/how-social-media-is-reshaping-news/
Cohen, S. E. (2013, March 7). Sandy Marked a Shift for Social Media Use in Disasters. Retrieved March 07, 2013, from http://www.govtech.com/em/disaster/Sandy-Social-Media-Use-in-Disasters.html
Greissner, C. (n.d.). News Agencies and Social Media: A Relationship with a Future? Retrieved from https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/our-research/news-agencies-and-social-media-relationship-future
Haddow, G. D., & Haddow, K. (2014). Disaster communications in a changing media world. Amsterdam: Elsevier
ING Corp. (2014, June 19). 2014 Study impact of Social Media on News: More crowd-checking, less fact-checking. Retrieved from

Show More
Related

Zizi Papacharissi Virginia Tech Speech Summary

526 Words | 3 Pages

Because news reporters are no longer the only ones to present information, citizens feel their way into the story, thus creating many layers of journalism. This use of affective publics does have both pros and cons, however. With many citizens presenting their beliefs, news on social media is powered by affective statements of opinion, fact, or a blend of both. In other words, many persuasive statements are opinion based rather fact based. On the other hand, with a large portion of society starting to dominate the media industry, citizens can emphasize and expose many underrepresented

Read More

Response To Curtis Wilkie's Words Triumph Over Images

313 Words | 2 Pages

I am writing in response to Curtis Wilkie’s article “Words Triumph Over Images”. My first reactions to his comments about the TV, radio, and print media accounts of Hurricane Katrina were of complete shock. He not only implies that those forms of news source are basically useless compared to written words on newspaper, but states that “TV news had morphed into a mutant reality show”. In his article, Wilkie states that he had “given up on radio as a news source”.

Read More

Comparative Histories In The Ghosts We Love By Brock Clarke

336 Words | 2 Pages

An Analysis of Comparative Histories Everyone, whether one realizes it or not, goes through different stages throughout his or her life. In other words, life does not stay the same; it is ever changing and typically cannot be reversed to a previous stage. Often a problem arises when one cannot let go of the past, and therefore is unable to move on. In “The Ghosts We Love” by Brock Clarke, the narrator is very much aware of the past and present stages of his life, however he has trouble overcoming the past and embracing the future. The narrator’s obsession with history, both well-known historical events and his own personal history, cause him to dwell on the past and possess an unhealthy attitude about the present and future.

Read More

Andrea Lunsford's Our Semi-Literate Youth? Not So Fast

872 Words | 4 Pages

One hundred years ago nobody heard about the news or current events from Facebook or the newest tweet. Until fairly recently the most up to date news had to be heard through the grapevine or read in a newspaper. Since the creation of the internet and the mass media that comes with it, information can now be spread all the way across the world in the time it takes to hit the enter button on a computer or phone and upload it to the internet. Some people think that this is a bad thing because so many things that are uploaded can be either false information or simply information that is misleading and could teach individuals the wrong thing. However, if mass media is used in the right way it can be beneficial to the accessibility of valuable information,

Read More

Crescent City Tsunami Analysis

440 Words | 2 Pages

When destruction strikes many newspapers and try their best to cover it. This paper looks at how local newspapers will cover a story that happening in it’s area compared to how a newspaper with more national coverage will cover the same story. Thus, newspapers with different target audiences will cover the same event in different ways. On March 11, 2011 there was an earthquake just off the coast of Japan that spawned a tsunami that hit many coastal communities in California and beyond.

Read More

Boston Bombing

1377 Words | 6 Pages

The bombing marked the first time an event of such large magnitude was covered by social media outlets, completely unparalleled in comparison to the coverage of 9/11. Never before in the history of media had a national security event been covered in real time, with information being fed into news outlets and Twitter at such rapid speed. People could tweet at one another providing live videos of the bombings, photos, and safety updates. During 9/11, however, many people waited anxiously by their TV and the radio for breaking news that took longer time to process and collect. The Boston Bombings, while extremely tragic, helped to strengthen Boston’s civil society.

Read More

Mass Hysteria In The Crucible By Arthur Miller

1128 Words | 5 Pages

During the 2014 Ebola panic, a research group consisting of scholars from Arizona State University, Purdue University, and Oregon State University found that, as each news report relating to the ebola virus was released, an increase in ebola related searches within social media bases, like Twitter, occured (Towers, Afzal, Bernal, Bliss, et al., 1). These searches consisted of the symptoms and spread of the virus. The increase shows that the news, a trusted entity in American society, constantly running articles gives rise to panic of disease in people’s daily life. Even though there were only a few people to contract the Ebola virus, the news played segments on the disease as if a pandemic was inevitable, thus increasing the fear in American citizens. In addition to the Ebola virus panic that swept the nation in 2014, a malfunction with an online epidemic tracker caused widespread hysteria over the influenza virus (Towers, Afzal, Bernal, Bliss, et al., 1).

Read More

Boston Marathon Bombing Analysis

202 Words | 1 Pages

You succinctly described how social media can spread misinformation and become detrimental during a disaster event. Certainly, social media has now been interwoven into American culture to the point that emergency managers must find protocols to utilize it without compromising accuracy. “A lack of trust in the information exchanged via social media may significantly hinder decision making by community members and emergency services during disasters” (Mehta, Bruns & Newton, 2016). The Boston Marathon Bombing is a great example of the Boston Police Department utilizing their twitter account to provide timely and accurate information that quickly made them the rightful source of all breaking news from the event. In doing so, the use of twitter

Read More

Dozens Are Dead Media Analysis

517 Words | 3 Pages

The way the media portrays an incident affects how those reviewing the media regard the incident at hand – whether it is viewed as a “disaster” or not. Hurricane Katrina Slams into Gulf Coast; Dozens Are Dead by Joseph B. Treaster and Kate Zernike highlights Hurricane Katrina as a disaster through victimization of those in New Orleans, naturalization of the hurricane, and by choosing to highlight government aid instead of the privatization of hurricane relief. Hurricane Katrina Slams into Gulf Coast; Dozens Are Dead chose to highlight incidents from the hurricane that in turn portrays the people of New Orleans as victims. This victimization lends to the creation of Hurricane Katrina as a disaster. In order for there to be a disaster, there

Read More

Boston Marathon Bombing

1833 Words | 8 Pages

It is also interesting that the response from the media during this period of the first hours and days after the event, appeared to focus more on how few people had been killed, rather than the actual lives of those lost. Maybe this focus shows just what an impact the 9/11 terrorist attack had on the media in the US, where 3000 lives were lost, therefore the magnitude of a tragedy in the US since the 9/11 event, could be now seen as being measured by the number of lives lost. The media response to the Boston bombings was also very different to what occurred in previous terrorist attacks such as 9/11, due to changes in the use of social media and the impact these advancements in technology and the internet in the past 15 years has had on the release of information. The executive producer of a documentary of the Boston Bombings highlights the part that social media had to play in involving the public right from the second the bombs went off when he stated: “In

Read More

Communication Mistakes During Hurricane Katrina

178 Words | 1 Pages

There were communication mistakes and other mistakes made during Hurricane Katrina. First of all, detailed and direct information was sent to people for evacuation too close to the time when Katrina was about to hit, not allowing people to prepare for the disaster. If things could be done differently, there should be communication and coordination centers housed in areas where information can be sent directly to the authorities. The lack of ability to communicate with each other and coordinate a response was another mistake. Federal officials struggle to perform responsibilities that are usually conducted by State or local authorities, such as to rescue citizens stranded by the floodwater and evacuate the remaining population of New Orleans

Read More

Social Media In Hurricane Katrina

809 Words | 4 Pages

News media experts have noted that Hurricane Katrina in 2005 was the first demonstration of how disaster response was changing and that individuals possessed “an unprecedented capacity to access, share, create and apply information” (Nachison, 2005). The use of social media facilitated collaborative online efforts to locate missing people and emergency housing, and coordinate volunteers (Nelson et al., 2010 as cited in Goldfine, 2011). Hurricane Katrina was one of the first natural disasters that “marked the coming of age of participatory media” (Haddow & Haddow, 2009). During Hurricane Katrina, social media was established as the ‘go-to’ platform for information (PR Newswire, 2011). As this disaster occurred when the internet was gaining popularity,

Read More

Social Media Is True In An Article By AJ Willingham

427 Words | 2 Pages

With recent tragedies, happening in this past month you will notice a lot of news reports and many things on social media. However, how much of this information is true? As social media is getting very popular and growing each day, people try to manipulate you into believing everything you seen on these sites. In an article by AJ Willingham, he states how fake news and post surface the internet after disaster and tragedy.

Read More

The Young And The Rest Rhetorical Analysis

913 Words | 4 Pages

Our society is changing every day. Think back fifty years ago. Our parents and grandparents had to communicate are such different ways than we do today. They also got their information in a more simple, direct manner. Our generation expects to get the news that is important to them through apps like Twitter and Facebook rather than the morning news.

Read More

Impact Of Social Media On Emergency Management

251 Words | 2 Pages

Social Media is a trend that is finding more relevance than the daily news. Social media has been able to disseminate information so swiftly across the world making it difficult to stay out the know. Social media offers a viable resource to the world of emergency management due to it`s accessibility, user –friendly mechanisms, and growing population. Social media allows for two-way communication between emergency managers and major stakeholder groups (FEMA, 2015). The current public seeks information out through these forums and emergency management should continue to utilize the notifications, Emergency text correspondents, videos and other items are growing resources to the field.

Read More

More about Hurricane Sandy Marked A Shift For Social Media Use In Disasters

Related Topics

Open Document