1. How did the public find that out?
Social Media Monitoring for Emergency
Management

2. Why Are You Here?
• Learn why social media is important
• Find out what could happen without social media
monitoring
• See latest trends and statistics
• Learn to use these tools in Emergency Management
• Get top tools and sites valuable to PIOs during
emergencies
• Your first session choice was taken

3. Why is Social Media Important?
• Social Media is thought to be the driving force in our transition
from Information Age to Attention Age
• We are looking for, distributing, and influencing information
with or without you!
The 3 components:
• Concept (art or information)
• Media (physical, electronic, or verbal)
• Social Interface (direct, community engagement, social viral,
electronic broadcast, or physical medias such as print)

4. What Could Happen?
• Joint Information Center
and Y-12 exercise in Powell,
TN (Wed - Mar 17, 2010)
– Siren sounded across Oak
Ridge, TN
– Public was not sure what to
do and turned to Twitter for
information
– JIC monitors TV and Radio
but missed the concerned
public online

5. Rumor or Truth?
Understand the following:
1. Rumors may happen about your agency and your event
2. They will be spread with lightning speed
3. Social media will be the primary way they go viral, but the
media may report them as facts
4. If you are not prepared NOW to deal with the rumors,
there is no way you can react fast enough to keep them
from getting firmly entrenched
5. A lie (or rumor) repeated often enough becomes the truth,
and that applies to all unchallenged rumors
© 2010 EmergencyMgmt.com

6. The Growth of Social Media

7. Top Tools in Social Media
• Twitter Search
• SocialMention
• AddictOMatic
• BackType
• Yahoo! Buzz
• Google Trends
• Facebook
• Flickr
• YouTube
• Google Maps
for Emergency Management

8. Get the Word Out!
• Traditional Media
– Appropriate (point is to sell news)
– Reliable
– Timely (verification process)
• Government Publishing
– Appropriate
– Reliable
– Timely (verification process)
• Citizen (Public) Publishing
– Appropriate (relevant to event)
– Reliable
– Timely (public on location)

9. What Now?
Go Green! The goal is to make PIO and
emergency management publishing:
– Appropriate (pertinent to the incident or exercise)
– Reliable (government agencies)
– Timely (quicker to the public)
This is where social media comes in!!

10. Organize your Story
• Prefixes and/or Hashtags – contextualize information and enable
searchability for anything related to an event or exercise
– Good  Blount County Earthquake
– Better  #BCQuake or #Flood
• If your information is Appropriate, Reliable, and Timely I will pay
attention to what you have to say.
– “46% of Americans say they get news from four to six media platforms on a
typical day.”
– “51% of social networking site users who are also online news consumers say
that on a typical day they get news items from people they follow online.
Another 23% of this cohort follow news organizations or individual journalists on
social networking sites.”
© 2010 Pew Internet

11. Organize your Story

12. Organize your Story

13. Top Tools and Sites

14. The Question Remains…
• The amount of information readily available will
continue to increase…
– How will we manage it?
– How will we continue to integrate it into our lives?
– How will it continue to complicate and ease our lives?