Role of Social Media in Disaster Response and Civic Participation During Emergencies

USE OF SOCIAL MEDIA FOR INFORMATIONAL
AWARENESS, ONLINE AND OFFLINE CIVIC
PARTICIPATION DURING DISASTERS

Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
Role of Social Media in disaster response.......................................................................................3
Social media uses- pre, post and during disaster:...........................................................................4
Use of the social media in civic participation during emergency....................................................7
Research Gap...................................................................................................................................9
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................9
References......................................................................................................................................11

Introduction
In the last few years, the world has faced many natural disasters are observed. Natural disasters
include earthquakes, floods, landslides, cyclones have damaged many properties including
economic, human, and environmental losses. Since technologies are updated and social media is
playing a vital role in Natural Disaster Management, human losses get reduced. With the use of
Social Media, the victims of natural disaster can share their information on the social media so
that rescue team can identify their location and hazard in the area (Kim & Hastak, 2018).
Communication and spreading awareness of the disaster (like location, the measuremet of
disaster and number of people stuck in a situation) among common people as well as with the
organization is essential to perform rescue operation as well as to inform people that they should
stay away from the place which is under the attacks of the disaster. Social media like Facebook
has the feature of "mark yourself save in the disaster" which play an important role to make
relatives aware of the safety of the person.
Role of Social Media in disaster response
In the recent time, the process of the communication has changed completely. According to De
Albuquerque, Herfort, Brenning, & Zipf (2015), the advanced technology and web 2.0
technology help people for exchanging the information in a more accurate manner. The
technology helps people changing their lives and it also helps them in helping each other.
According to Alexander (2014), the social media becomes an effective tool which helps to
spread the information. Due to covering the vast geographical area, it helps to spread the
information. At the time of disaster management, the social media help to spread the information
and collect the response from the general public. Different social media tools such as Facebook,
Twitter, Instagram use for the help, mapping and sending status. Through this method, the help
can reach to the millions of the people within a few seconds. Social media being the fifth pillar
of democracy is actively involved in disaster response.
According to Jin, Liu, & Austin (2014), this is requisite as the humans would be in a grave
condition suffering from pain, and cannot be at a definite location/place due to the rescue
operations taking place as per the situation. There could be social media platforms that could be
put into use for this purpose, these platforms include: Facebook includes Posts, Emergency