Some first responder agencies are not fans of social media, and I can understand that. However, it is not something to be ignored.
I use TweetDeck at work and follow every mention of our town’s name and nickname. There is one other town in the United States with the same name, however, so little is tweeted about it that it doesn’t get in the way. Just by that simple practice, I read about two crimes – one that had not occurred yet and one that had. Our town is rather small, so the time between these two incidents was about a year and a half.
In the first case, some high school students had been displaced by a collapse of their gymnasium. They were out of school for a few days while the decision was made where to send them. One not-so-bright student discussed her plans to beat up another student when school opened again. I sent this to our school resource officer. From what I understand the fighter had been suspended.
The second case involved someone writing about how the local Jewish Community Center’s front doors had been defaced with racial symbols. I don’t know why this person tweeted it and didn’t call the police, but I contacted police. An officer went to the location and wrote up the incident, took pictures and since the drawings were in crayon, removed the graffiti.
When it comes to emergencies, following social media is VITAL. Recently, Louisa County, Virginia experienced an earthquake. It’s very rare for anyone in Virginia to feel an earthquake. We felt it here at work, about 200 miles west. It was also felt in New York and up to Canada! CNBC listed the earthquake as #9 on its list of the World’s 10 Most Tweeted Moments. That is one space ahead of Osama Bin Laden’s capture! Tweets Per Second: 5,449. It was a minor quake in terms of damage, but the information was flying!
On a more serious note, a study was done on the use of social media (Facebook) after the Virginia Tech shootings on April 16, 2007. The report can be found here (2mb pdf). The main conclusion was that those in VT Shooting related Facebook groups correctly identified all 32 victims BEFORE the official release from the university. Any rumor or misinformation was quickly dismissed. Also it was stated that even though Facebook had all the victims listed, it was NOT recommended that officials should have released the information earlier.
And during emergency communication, it is so important to have someone keeping track of what is being said and to DISPEL rumors. One great way to do it is to create a hashtag (#) on the subject so people know what to follow and let the hashtag be known via news releases, website and more. Once the rumor is out, it takes a lot to get it back under control. When VT had some teen campers claim they saw a man with a gun on campus, well after the claim was proved to be incorrect, people still tweeted about someone with a gun on campus – it even went international. There is not much you can do about automatic tweets and international, but you can get the message out to YOUR audience correctly.
Bottom line, don’t ignore social media. It’s here and you need to learn to work with it and let it work for you.