A blog on crisis communications best practices, emergency information and social media in emergency management ... an open forum for exchanging ideas and experience on emergency info and SMEM..
THE OPINIONS EXPRESSED WITHIN ARE MINE AND DO NOT REPRESENT OFFICIAL GOVERNMENT POLICY OR THE VIEWS OF MY EMPLOYER.
Social media Web sites — used this week in Japan by survivors of the earthquake and tsunami to communicate — are becoming key disaster response tools.
“Before social media, it was difficult for normal people to talk to more than a few people in real-time,” said Dan Zarrella, “social media scientist” at Cambridge marketing firm Hubspot.
As land lines and mobile phone networks became overwhelmed, Web sites such as Twitter, Facebook and Skype offered victims of the earthquake and tsunami ways to get relief information and contact friends and family.
Authorities and civilians alike can use microblogging — the publishing of brief “status updates” — to “broadcast” messages, making it a natural fit for emergencies.
Accurate information key to effective crisis management
A Tokyo Electric Power Co. employee talks to reporters about the condition of the Fukushima No. 1 power plant's reactor No. 2 during a press conference in Chiyoda Ward, Tokyo, on March. 15. (Mainichi)
The issuing of evacuation orders for areas near a nuclear power plant where explosions have occurred without clarifying what is the actual situation at the plant has only caused anxiety to the public.
In addition to explaining what is the actual situation at the plant, power suppliers as well as the government are urged to clearly explain what they assume will happen to nuclear power plants effected by the massive earthquake. If groundless presumptions escalate the public's anxiety, it could cause many people to panic, spreading unnecessary damage.
What is important in crisis management at the time of a serious disaster like the March 11 Great East Japan Earthquake is the prompt dispatch of information from reliable sources. The public learned such a lesson from the outbreak of swine flu.
As hopes dim for controlling the explosive self-destruction of six decomposing nuclear plants on Japan's northeast coast, safety experts around the world want to know what was missing in the tens of thousands of pages of repeatedly tested emergency drills crafted to cover every eventuality.
Japanese and U.S. safety officials say the emergency plans for almost every plant, everywhere, precisely detail every possible response after an earthquake, flood or tsunami and explosion. But as the past five days have shown, these disaster plans seemed fine until reality reared back and slapped them silly, and this is just what happened at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear complex.
OTTAWA - There's no need to fear that an earthquake in Canada could cause a nuclear accident like the one in Japan, experts say.
Government data analyzed by The Canadian Press show that hundreds of small earthquakes have rattled Canada's nuclear power plants over the years with no apparent harm.
Both the federal regulator and Canada's flagship nuclear company insist the country's fleet of reactors can hold up to quakes large and small.
"The CNSC would like to reassure Canadians that nuclear power plants located in Canada are among the most robust designs in the world and have redundant safety systems to prevent damage in the case of an earthquake," says a statement on the CNSC website.
Canada and Japan also use different kinds of reactors. Unenriched, natural uranium fuels the Candu heavy-water reactors, while the Japanese light-water reactors run on enriched uranium.
As one of those involved in coordinating the planning and delivery of information during a disaster in our province, I'm always interested in how crisis communications are handled elsewhere.
While it's still early in the game, Japanese officials, from the government and private utilities, are drawing some fire about how and how much information they have been releasing to their citizens.
We know there a a few obstacles in the age of social convergence to clear messaging resonating with audiences in the way wished for by authorities. They range from having to be heard among a multitude of conversations on social media, the conveyance of an unimaginable number of falsehoods and rumours, rampant media hype and in many cases, a very cynical view of government and authorities.
Although the latter may not be the case in Japan as the following tweet indicates:
ascottwhite Japanese people still believe in their social and civil institutions. They lack the pervasive cynicism that I have come to see as normal.
As I was trolling through coverage of the Japanese earthquake disaster,
I came across a revealing vox pop. A man
named Takayuki Sato was talking to Reuters in Fukushima, the town that's home
to the nuclear power plant damaged by the quake and the ensuing tsunami. "What
they're saying on the news is that even if you're exposed, it's only about
one-fourth of the level of getting a stomach X-ray," said Sato. "If
it was really bad, I don't think they would cover it, so I guess it will
probably be all right."
Let's parse that for a second. Sato was saying that he was reassured
that the problems at the stricken reactors aren't all that bad because the
government doled out a teaspoon of information--
whereas a total blackout would mean that something really scary is going on.
Doesn't exactly sound like a vote of confidence in the Japanese government or
media, does it?
I believe that cynicism is also making gains in Japan, especially when it comes to the nuclear industry.
A key factor here is risk perception. In most instances, public perception of risk from nuclear energy is much greater than what risk analysis reveals to emergency managers. As communicators though, we have to take this difference in risk assessment by the public vs officials, into account when preparing key messages. This discrepancy is amped up when events show that the risks might not be that "remote".
Adjusting the message, when TV and other media outlets show images of explosions at nuclear stations, while authorities are saying there's no danger, is very difficult because the mental pictures in our collective minds don't match the words we're hearing from official sources.
Do you minimize the impact? Do you adopt an overcautious approach? Or do you trust residents to do what's best for themselves and their families and be as open as operational and security considerations allow you to be?
Mental barriers come in many forms: information overload, cognitive bias being just two. To overcome that you really have to do a sound environmental scan to craft the right message.
Are there easy solutions other then being as prepared as you can to reassure your audiences and calm their fears. Convince them that you have plans to deal with the incident and that competent people are in charge?
Here's where it often gets blurry. What should be the role of elected officials who are more often then not distrusted by the people? Not all of them are Rudy Giulani.
It's more than a little bit of a paradox that while people don't have much trust in politicians, they still want to hear from the top guy/gal when a crisis occurs ...
We will all learn much from the tragic events underway in Japan.
Even so, "it's clear that Internet connectivity has survived this event better than anyone would have expected," Cowie said. He noted that Japan's attempts to build a "dense web" of domestic and international Internet connectivity appears to have paid off. "At this point, it looks like their work may have allowed the Internet to do what it does best: route around catastrophic damage and keep the packets flowing, despite terrible chaos and uncertainty."
Are social media platforms force multipliers (to adopt military speak) when it comes to community resilience?
The impact of disasters is immense on a country's infrastructure, economy and even more so on its people. We are now witnessing the truth in that in the aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan.
The terrible videos we've seen tell tales of unimaginable destruction, yet ... people persevere.
Due in great part to the preparedness of the Japanese but also strong building codes and a cultural cohesion without equal, Nippon will endure.
Beyond the reasons above, I'd venture that another factor of community resilience is the growing importance of social media in disasters. By now, we all know the key role social media plays in channeling information to, and from, victims, families and authorities. Perhaps a less measurable contribution of social media, is the positive impact these effective communications tools have when many, if not all, other channels of info become unavailable.
You can still reach your family, friends, even call for help. Wouldn't that help ease the anxiety?
It brought to mind the adage ” an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure”. But, as Laurie points out in her article, initiatives to prevent a Cyber-attack are often times met with resistant for varying reasons. One is the perception of privacy violations. An example is the “Perfect Citizen” program by the National Security Agency (NSA). The intent was to trigger an alarm in the event of an impending intrusion by analyzing the vectors where cyber-attacks could occur, typically the points at which a private network connects to the Internet. Privacy advocates were not pleased with this method.
In addition to obstacles such as privacy issues, there is the cruel reality that the malicious code is more than likely already implanted in our infrastructure waiting to be triggered. Detection may be after the fact and mitigation difficult.
Considering these issues brings us to the conclusion that there may be no ‘prevention’, referring back to the adage mentioned earlier, and no “cure’. The plan then should be ‘preparedness’. Public sector and the private sector need to work together on preparing for a cyber attack and mitigating the impact.
Social Media would be one of the effective tool used in the preparedness process. Social Media is the collection of communication channels that has proven to be incredibly resilient. As mentioned in our earlier post, Social Media has Grown Up, we reference the PS-Prep voluntary Federal regulation as just one of the compliance regulations that Social Media can assist.
I often like to talk about the fact that we're now in a new age of social convergence as described in a previous post. To summarize: mobile devices and tech + social media platforms = empowered citizenry + volunteers (digital or on the ground).
As I've noted before, two key benefits for emergency managers in this age of social convergence are: increased situational awareness ... a much broader picture of what's going on. It's made possible by the millions of people walking about with mobile devices and how they share what they see on social media. Then digital volunteers (crisis mappers, crisiscommons, ushadidi) put that info on an interactive map.
This works ... and official agencies are making the best of this trend already with links and info sharing on volunteer-created crisis maps such as this one. Another examples is the USGS using date and pictures supplied by ordinary citizens to improve their disaster and damage analysis. This was followed this week by this interesting piece of news out of Europe.
The second important benefit is the use of social media, in particular Facebook, as a mobilization tool.
And we still haven't touched on the obvious benefit (well, to most of us anyway) of using SM platforms as emergency information tools ... which can prove very useful when all other means become unavailable.
So, how can we convince emergency managers of the benefits of engaging with digital volunteers, using social media to mobilize resources and inform citizens?
Fact is, we're still facing reactions like this from a tweet posted this week : "... ah! social media ... I don't need that crap." as succinctly put by an emergency manager.
Oh really? Some elements of this, my latest presentation which I gave to senior officials within the Canadian federal government this week, should help.
I'm convinced social media is now as invaluable for emergency managers as is the IMS doctrine itself. Long-gone are the days where only the initiated few were part of the equation.
If we're going to ask citizens to be prepared and informed ... in the age of social convergence, we should also be able to broaden public participation in emergencies.
So what are some of the obstacles to true social media integration into the emergency management process?
cultural background: a lot of emergency managers still have a background in policing, fire or the military where information control is paramount.
demographics: although it's changing, a lot of the "older generation" (people like me! near 50 !!!) are not very active on social media platforms and don't have that understanding of their power that only comes with familiarity.
Doctrine: the current way the IMS is written includes some limitations to the use of social media. Particularly when it comes to having the incident commander approve all communications to the public? How can you match the need for immediacy brought by SM with this requirement if approvals take hours?
Lack of proper engagement and education from PIOs and social media savvy emergency managers with senior EM or elected officials. We must do a better job at demonstrating the benefits of SM for PIOs, planning and ops.
Can anyone think of more obstacles? And ways to overcome them?
