#disastercommunication

This article introduces and investigates the existence of relational and institutional embeddedness in society.  The author had conducted a study that attempted to understand how embeddedness can affect the communication within a community. Their findings were that both the institutional and the relational embeddedness had a significant role in contributing to the disaster communication; however, relationship embeddedness tended to play a larger role overall.  The ability to communicate and coordinate in emergency situations is critical.  Without unity and trust, the communication is not effective and the community suffers.  The author claims that it is crucial to know something about the embeddedness of the responder so that when a disastrous or emergent situation unfolds, their behavior will not come as a surprise. This article will be an excellent contribution to my final paper. The article provides a new perspective and presents keywords I was previously unfamiliar with. This article is useful to me because I was introduced to the theory of embeddedness, which is a very important keyword relating to my topic. The author also provides research from a study he/she seemed to have conduct themselves. This shows how the theory can apply in real-life situations. For all these reasons, I believe this is a valuable source to add for my final paper.

Haddow, George and Kim S. Haddow.  “Social Media and Disasters.” Disaster Communications in a Changing Media World, 2nd Edition. Amsterdam: Butterworth-Heinemann, December 2014. Chapter 2. Print. This article focuses on how social media usage significantly increases during times of disaster and why this is so. The author points out three major reasons people tend to choose social media as their preferred source of news and disaster communication.  An obvious benefit is that the information is current and immediate.  Social media is constantly updating by the second. People are also more likely to use a network if all their friends and family do also. Social media is very popular in today’s society for people of all ages. Social media is also easily accessible. Smartphones have become increasingly popular which gives a great percentage of the population the ability to access information just by pressing a button on their phone. However, there are also several additional reasons social media is considered by many the easiest and most efficient means of communication. I will be able to use this source in my final paper because it provides information relating to what I plan to discuss regarding disaster communication. I want to discuss how disaster communication has evolved over time, specifically the last few decades. Twitter and Facebook were not always available as the go-to source of information. This source will contribute to a major part of my research, the current state of disaster communication. This source also provides research and statistics which will additionally strengthen my paper.