Twitter: Crisis Communication

 

Essentially twitter is a social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to post messages of up to 140 characters (Wilcox & Cameron 2012). Twitter is not only used by the public, organisations and professionals use Twitter to engage with the public, stand out among the crowd, and also to bring awareness to their products and services. Many celebrities including Katy Perry and Lady Gaga also use twitter to unite their followers and promote their music.

However twitter can be used under more serious circumstances, playing a vital role in crisis situations (Genes 2011). Wilcox and Cameron claim that twitter is an ideal form of communication when there is a crisis or fast breaking news (2012). Whether you like it or not, people are turning to twitter and other social media sites during times of crisis to gain guidance and information (McGarry, 2013). Social media is now just as important as traditional media in delivering news and releasing updates during crisis (Public Relations Sydney PRS 2011) and twitter is now one of the first steps that organisations take to provide up-to-the-minute details.

Social media has played a big communications role in the 2011 Queensland floods from January 10^th -16^th. Twitter’s short-messaging system disseminated and shared crisis information and updates from state and local authorities as well as everyday citizens. With the widespread use of the hash tag #qldfloods on Twitter, the Queensland police embraced the trend and used it as a primary source to deliver details of road closures, flood warnings and ways to donate. The police media also published ‘flood myth-buster’ tweets to ensure the public were receiving accurate information.

The use of Twitter during the Queensland floods demonstrates how social media has become increasingly integrated into our news consumption and our everyday communication and how valuable it is during a crisis (PRS 2011). In this situation social media proved to be just as essential for providing information as newspapers, radio and television and is a great example of how using social media in conjunction with traditional media means your messages will reach more people and have greater impact.

Twitter has recognised its own potential in this area and is now offering to send alerts about must-read tweets from law enforcement and public safety agencies (McGarry 2013). Twitter is now a dominating communication tool globally and as it continues to grow and develop new features organisations will need to develop their crisis communication plans to include urgent twitter responses and updates.

References

Bruns, A., Burgess, J., Crawford, K. & Shaw, F. 2012 ‘#qldfloods and @QPSMedia: Crisis Communication on Twitter in the 2011 South East Queensland Floods’ Brisbane: ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation, 2012.

Genes, N 2011, How Twitter has reshaped emergency responses, Medscape, Viewed 3 December, 2013 <http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/749183_2>

McGarry, C. 2013 ‘Twitter Alerts give new meaning to crisis communication’ Tech Hive, September 25, 2013. Viewed 4 December 2013 <http://www.techhive.com/article/2049395/twitter-alerts-give-new-meaning-to-crisis-communication.html>

Public Relations Sydney (PRS) 2011. ‘Social media and the Queensland floods’ CP Communications, January 31 2011

Wilcox, D & Cameron G 2012 Public Relations Strategies and Tactics International Edition (10th Ed.) Pearson

Mobile Devices

Our intimacy with ‘anywhere, anytime’ connectivity (Green, 2002), promised by mobile technologies forces us to acknowledge the ‘continual co-presence of both our physically real and digital self (Turkle 1995). ‘The self, attached to its devices, occupies a luminal space between the physical real and its digital lives on multiple screens’ (Turner 1969). The powerful lure of these devices is the opportunity that they offer for exploring identities (Turkle 1995). Websites such as Second Life provide what Bruckman (1992) describes as an ‘identity workshop,’ allowing you to reinvent yourself as you desire, recast your life and live out multiple aspects of self.

Hirst and Harrison (2007) claim that mobile devices are also contributing to changes in the process of social interaction. The blurred boundaries between double lives are evidence of a shifting motion of space. These devices are used as tools to engage simultaneously in work and leisure relationships despite distance or location (Green 2002). Individuals are becoming emotionally absent from those they are physically with, turning their focus online. It is becoming evident that more and more people are dong things like interrupting face-to-face conversations to send a text message or reply to a Facebook comment. In both our personal and professional lives, the connections that seem to matter the most are the ones to our devices. The importance and effectiveness of face-to-face conversation is being forgotten and we are developing increasingly intimate relationships with machines (Turkle 2008); personalised devices that know what we like, want and need (Hirst and Harrison 2007).

Ideas of what people now consider ‘public’ and ‘private’ are also changing with an increased desire for public spaces to provide an element of privacy where individuals are alone with their devices. Each person inhabits a private media bubble not wanting to be disturbed. When people have personal mobile phone conversations in public spaces what sustains their sense of intimacy is the presumption that those around them treat them not only as anonymous but close to disembodied (Turkle 2008). They are marked with a certain absence both emotionally and socially.

Mobile technology has become so embedded in our lives that we now live our lives through them. We form relationships, express feeling and continually develop our identity. They impact our daily lives so greatly that at times we have to question whether we’re too connected. Have we given up aspects of our physical lives in lure of another?

 

References

Bruckman, A. (1992). Identity workshop: Emergent social and psychological phenomena in text-based virtual reality. Unpublished article available at <http://mf.media.mit.edu/pubs/other/IdentityWorkshop.pdf>, MIT Media Laboratory, Cambridge, MA.

Green, N. 2002. ‘On the Move: Technology, Mobility, and the Mediation of Social Time and Space’ The Information Society, 18:28 1-292, 2002 United Kingdom: Taylor & Francis

Hirst, M. and Harrison, J. 2007. Communication and New Media: From Broadcast to Narrowcast, South Melbourne: Oxford

Turkle, S. 1995. Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet. New York: Simon and Schuster

Turkle, S. 2008. ‘Always-On/Always-On-You: The Tethered Self’ in Katz, J. E. (ed) Handbook of Mobile Communication Studies, viewed 2^nd December 2013 <http://wed.mit.edu/sturkle/www/always-on%20always-on-you_the%20tethered%20self_st.pdf>

Turner, V. 1969. The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure, Chicago: Aldine