#crowdsour

At some point in our social media lives, I am sure we’ve all come across a post that has someone asking for money. Sometimes it’s a friend trying to cover the cost of medical bills, and other times it could be an organization raiding money for a national crisis. It then usually tends to lead you to a GoFundMe page, with their hopes of individuals contributing to crowdfunding their cause, no matter what their reason is.

Crowd sourcing has become to be an important factor in times of crisis and has been made easier with social media and the tools that are available through an online presence. The standard community-level communication channels, that are around already have to purpose and ability to distribute information during a time of crisis, and with the use of social media the channels are able to be adapted to a new form and continue to distribute information in times of crisis.

The term crowdsourcing was coined by Jeff Howe, a politician from Minnesota. He defined it as “the act of taking a job traditionally performed by a designated agent and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people in the form of an open call” (Posetti 2012, p. 36).

The 2011 Queensland floods, was a key example of social platforms – Facebook and Twitter – playing an important role in this crisis and was also one of our main topics of this week’s lecture. The hashtag #qldfloods was used in over 35,000 tweets, that were sent during the disaster, and very quickly became an easy way for users to find information and used to “share breaking news of the latest event” (Liddy 2013, p. 1).

Twitter became a source for mainstream media both within Australia and overseas. Social media users around the world were sharing flood-related media resources. Whilst those close to the disaster were sharing their own experiences, as well as information and discussing the topic amongst other users (Liddy 2013, p. 1).

And now with how powerful social media has become – in particular Twitter – events can be organized more quickly, and with these events users are able to “find other who share their views and work together in disparate location to produce powerful sources of information” (Ford 2012, p. 33).

An example of this is the Manchester bombing, but more so the One Love Manchester, the benefit concert that saw Ariana Grande accompanied by Miley Cyrus, Katy Perry, Coldplay, Niall Horan and many more others come together to help raise money for the We Love Manchester Emergency Fund, which was established after the concert two weeks prior. The benefit concert raised more than 10 million pounds for the Emergency Fun, as throughout the performances, there were instructions on how to donate.

Both examples are important to show social media’s role in the crisis communication and emergency management. With these events still having similar ones happening to this day, it is important for regulatory bodies and emergency services teams have strategies that use both traditional and new communication technologies. With this it will help them to stay on top of what is happening during the times of crisis and pass on information that could save lives.

References:

Ford, H. (2012) ‘Crowd Wisdom’, Index on Censorship, pp 33-39

Posetti, J. & Lo, P. (2012) 'The Twitterisation of ABCs Emergency & Disaster Communication'

Gritt, E 2017, ‘Ariana Grande: ‘we had a totally different show planned’, News.com.au, 5th June 2017, pg1