Social Media In Hurricane Katrina

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,

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has recognised that social media and collaborative technologies have become critical components of emergency preparedness, response, and recovery (SNWSEA, 2013). Through the use of social media, members of the public who witness incidents can provide public safety organizations with timely, geographic-based information. This information can be used by decision-makers in planning response strategies, deploying resources in the field, and, in turn, providing updated and accurate information to the

Chennai Floods (2015-2016) made a huge impact on the livelihood of several thousands of Indians due to improper planning and inability to take immediate action. Research by Anbarasi (2015) on disaster management in Chennai made an effort to fragment the social media users who have shared comments about the Chennai recent flood and its disaster and to recognize their demographics. The results were inconclusive as limited study was done on the usage of social media. It has been observed that many volunteers use social media to respond to the crisis. One of the most important requirement during the crisis is to identify and manage resources and seekers. Works of Purohit, H., Hampton, A., Bhatt, S., Shalin, V., Sheth, A., & Flach, J. (2014) demonstrate a supportive technology that recognizes the existing capabilities of the informal response community to identify needs (seeker behaviour) and provide resources (supplier behaviour). They propose models to identify providers and seekers based on the