Broadcasters, Citizen Self-Help and Social Media

Broadcasters, Citizen Self-Help and Social Media

Ira Dreyfuss

703-994-3355

Members of the public are increasingly using social media to organize, coordinate and deliver help to each other in times of crisis such as natural disaster. If broadcasters build on this interactive capacity of social media, their nationwide presence, organizational stability and culture of community service could vastly increase the ability of communities to recover, and could build leadership in community recovery through social media. This memo proposes a way in which to do it.

First, some situational background: In my master’s degree thesis, I documented the effectiveness of one Facebook group in providing shelter to stranded travelers and transportation to people who needed medical help during the Atlanta snow disaster of January 2014. Soon after this, I examined an organization, recovers.org, which I found to have a robust social media platform for coordinating community recovery efforts. I have no financial or other similar interest in recovers.org, and I do not represent it, nor do I have any such interest in the Facebook group I studied, and I do not represent it. My only purpose is to interest broadcasters in the idea that they are uniquely positioned to lead through social media in coordinating and providing assistance after disasters, potentially with recovers.org’s toolkit or with a toolkit that they could develop independently.

As I mentioned, social networking through Facebook and similar platforms is widespread and is a main avenue through which members of the public communicate about, during, and after disasters. These communications can be measured as to effectiveness in providing help in emergencies. In my thesis, I examined communications by volunteers using the Facebook group SnowedOutAtlanta. I found strong evidence that the group, set up by a suburban Facebook user, Michelle Johnston Sollicito, fostered provision of aid such as offering and providing shelter and transportation to people stranded by the storm. In the first 500 Facebook communications, I documented almost 100 messages in which people volunteered help or asked for help; many other messages provided information that people needed to take actions. SnowedOutAtlanta was so well-used that it became the fastest-trending site in Facebook history, but it is far from the only instance of social media facilitating community self-help. The Facebook group Baltimore clean-up effort organized debris removal after the Baltimore riots in April 2015. Rrecovers.org began with a Facebook-supported response to a tornado in Monson, Massachusetts, in 2011.

I want to spend some time on recovers.org because – unlike the Atlanta Facebook group – it is active today. Recovers.org is a clearinghouse for community response. Its landing page describes it as “a free, easy-to-use website for organizing disaster relief.” Recovers.org is organized as a business, not a nonprofit—the creators of the startup felt they were more likely to keep the organization going if they organized as a business – but it is funded largely by grants. The site can be used for free (as any organization can) or use could be purchased and branded.

The operational plan is simple. Before, during or after a disaster, someone or some group creates an online community hub through the recovers.org platform, giving the community hub a name such as topeka.recovers.org. The community hub has two main areas: a public-facing area and a secure, organization-only toolkit. On the public-facing side, residents who need help can request it, organizations can post their services or the resources they need, and volunteers can post help they can provide (including supplies, skills and donations). Recovers.org is a pass-through for donations and only shows where people can donate; it does not handle money. On the organization-only side, vetted organizations using the community hub match demand with supply, track task progress, close out tasks completed, and review data in post-disaster evaluation. Centralizing through a common site makes recovery more efficient by eliminating duplication, providing real-time tracking of current needs and responses, and facilitating communication among the parties involved. Recovers.org protects the privacy of those with needs; only the vetted organizations may see such personally identifiable information.

The main problem with recovers.org, as I see it, is that it is primarily a toolkit. Its strength is in the functionality of its software, but software is useless without users. People need to be ready, preferably in advance of a disaster, to stand up the system, make it work and – crucially – to build interest by online and broadcast media so members of the public know they can get or give help through the hub.

Recovers.org is, as I noted, far from the only way to handle recovery needs through social media. The Atlanta experience indicates that broadcasters could do the same job by creating Facebook groups, and very likely achieve great results. A certain amount of wheel re-creation would be needed, but broadcasters could use Sollicito’s experience as a guide. Her self-published book, Snowed Out Atlanta, is available online, and I expect she would be willing to advise. Of course, I also would be willing, and people at most radio and TV stations have the IT skills. Assuming broadcasters want to manage community response through social media, the only question would be how to take action.

The crucial things are preparation before a disaster and fast action in response to a disaster. In my thesis research, I saw there is no substitute for acting – and building community involvement by getting the word out through online and broadcast media – in the early hours of a disaster, when need and interest is highest. This is why I thought of broadcasters. They are the logical choice to sustain a social media infrastructure. They are community service-focused and experienced in disaster response. In terms of sustainable organization (a continuing cadre of people who could see disaster response through social media as a mission), there are broadcasters in cities and towns all over the country. Importantly, a social media expansion would be a natural outgrowth of current operations. Without infrastructure such as broadcasters have, someone would have to recruit (and vet) a community volunteer to run a community hub after a disaster, and this person would have to do all the outreach necessary to build the hub. This would eat up valuable time. At the worst, no one would think about the possibility of using social media, and nothing would happen.

Lastly, a bit about me: I received my master’s degree in May from George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. In terms of career, I worked for The Associated Press (almost entirely in broadcast) for 26 years in New York City and Washington, retired, and then worked for 10 years in public affairs with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services at its headquarters in Washington, retiring from HHS in December 2014. At the AP, I wrote about crises and disasters; at HHS, I created systems to inform people about how to protect their lives and health after disasters. Both jobs and my research at Mason involved the creation of connections among people and groups, with the hope that understanding leads to progress. That’s what I want to do here.

I look forward to your response.