This is an interesting graphic prepared by the American Red Cross that apparently contains the results of a survey. It is surprising that so many expect that social media is a method for communicating with emergency service agencies. What are the implications of this? Should the public be educated that Facebook and Twitter are not the best ways for contacting emergency services? Or, has that ship sailed already and there is no turning back? Should the emergency service agencies establish more of a presence on social media?
The Los Angeles CITY Fire Department has been a pioneer in the use of social media. There are several good articles on the internet about their use of social media. PIO Brian Humphrey is the guru of using free social media.
I think that ignoring social media is a good way to isolate emergency services and alienate a significant population. Today we don’t communicate in the same fashion that we did 50 years ago, or even 5 years ago. Our agency routinely uses Twitter for public information. I agree that it currently isn’t adequate for evacuation notification or time sensitive information, but the technology exists and the population is expecting this in the near future.
Or, we can just wait and see if this blows over and we return to using heliographs for commo. 😉