Social Media & Emergency Management

There has become a great deal of talk about Social Media since the beginning of 2009. Call it what you will, Web 2.0, Social Networking, Social Media, etc., one thing you shouldn't call it is fad. Based on recent events throughout the world, social media has proved it is more then college students communicating nonsense with one another. Some recent examples of social media:

-Mumbai Terrorist attacks were reported by users on Twitter.

-Hudson River plane landing: The first image seen of the plane in the Hudson was from twitpic, the program used to post pictures to Twitter.

-Iran Election: Because on the Iranian government's crackdown on the amount of bandwidth it was releasing, Iranians turned to mobile devices and posted rally updates, photos and even videos on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.

In my field, Emergency Management/Homeland Security, the use of Social Media has exploded. A number of highly respected Emergency Managers are using Facebook and Blogs to get their Preparedness messages out. They are also using Twitter for Response and Recovery, posting constant, real time information so that their citizens can be constantly updated on events. One of the most proactive Emergency Manager's is Eric Holdeman. His blog is an everyday read for me, despite Eric working in the Tacoma, Washington area, his insight and knowledge is useful to anyone, I highly recommend you check out Disaster Zone is you get a moment.