Social Media's Impact: Informational Awareness and Civic Participation

This report delves into the significant role of social media in disaster management, encompassing pre, during, and post-disaster phases. It examines how social media platforms facilitate informational awareness, enabling rapid dissemination of critical updates, warnings, and real-time situational reports. The study highlights the use of social media for civic participation, including online and offline activities such as fundraising, resource coordination, and the sharing of first-hand accounts. The report explores various social media tools like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, illustrating their application in rescue operations, identifying survivors, and fostering community support. It also addresses the challenges, such as the spread of misinformation, and emphasizes the importance of verifying information. Furthermore, it discusses the impact of social capital in the context of social media usage during emergencies, promoting trust and reciprocity for efficient disaster response and recovery efforts. The report concludes by underscoring the need for strategic integration of social media in disaster preparedness and response strategies.

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

Pages, Live Videos of the Victims and Affected Location, etc., Twitter includes Live Tweets &
People's comments on it thereon, Whatsapp Groups, YouTube Videos/Online News, Blogs that
highlights all the Details with Facts, Figures and pictures for most accurate information as
possible and Instagram Live/Posts.
Social media uses- pre, post and during disaster:
According to Wukich (2015), social media is also used for pre & post-disaster management. In
the pre-disaster management, the SM use for providing information related to the disaster. It
helps to the general public for reaching to the safe palace without any problem. The social media
becomes an effective mean which provides accurate information. Anikeeva, Steenkamp & Arbon
(2015) stated that many nation’s governments use the social media for making observations and
took the decision based on the real-time information.
According to Simon, Goldberg, & Adini (2015) during the disaster the social media is used for
raising fund and helps the people for overcoming the ills of the disaster. The SM focuses on
various aspects through which the quick response. In addition, the role of the social media of
warning people in advance and contribute to disaster preparedness. Anikeeva, Steenkamp &
Arbon (2015) stated that It becomes an effective tool for the people for to sending the
information, emergency number and also locating the safe places the role of the social media in
the disaster management is quite unique and responsive. The mapping tool of the social media
helps to individuals and local people for connecting with each other.
According to Shepard, Hashimoto, Kuboyama, & Shin (2016) the social media use for the
identifying the survivors in case of the crisis management. Social media helps to identify the
victims who are stuck in the earthquake. Similarly in the case of the Japan people used the Picasa
to publish the photos of people. Through this approach, the people can get connected to each
other. In addition, this also helps people for mark themselves safe during the time of disasters.
The similar approach is also used by the Facebook during the time of the Nepal earthquake. The
After 7.8 magnitude earthquake hit in the Nepal 2015, Facebook launched the "I' m Safe feature
which aims to provide to helps people.
The literature of Simon, Goldberg, & Adini, (2015) make the focus on the use of the use of
social media. At the time of disaster, the social media is pivotal in tracking with accurate

hashtags and keywords. The social media helps to make the decision more accurate and also
provide the ground information. It eliminates the use of the third party for making an effective
communication. The social media is also used to share experiences of the disaster management.
Anikeeva, Steenkamp & Arbon (2015) stated that the social media helps to different
communities and people to manage the disaster. Advance features in SM help to institutions
mapping the position of the individuals and connects the people so they can help each other.
According to Simon, Goldberg, & Adini, (2015), these platforms will support in bridging the gap
in the information of Available Resources & Needs. For Eg: The information can be gathered in
the following Categories: Resource, Quantity, Location, Source & Contact Information. To go
ahead with these procedures, it is pertinent to Match the Needs & Availability. According to
Lachlan, Spence, Lin, & del Greco, (2015). Tweet Beam- Gives Live Visualizations of the
Tweets, #TagBoard- Cross Network Search Results, All Hazards- Circulates the Latest
Information on Breaking Events & TrendsMap- Real-Time local Twitter Trends that are
visualized on the Google Map. The information flows Real-Time with the Posts and People
commenting and is shared thereon to spread the word. People turn to Social Media for updated
information to reach out to the current updates for helping the victims in distress through
Donation, Food Supply, Clothes, etc.
As the literature of Soriano, Roldan, Cheng, & Oco (2016) highlighted that the social media is
not the limited use of the individuals. In many cases the SM use by the government and their
bodies to maintain the effective monitoring. In 2012, when the typhoon Pablo struck the
Philippines, the governments assigned the task of monitoring the Twitter activities and map the
relevant information. They have analyzed the 20,000 tweets in the 10 hours (Hiltz, Kushma &
Plotnick, 2014). Later this information become base for the UN official in crisis, the social media
has numerous benefits in the disaster management. Through the activity of the social media, it
helps to manage the disaster. After reading different types of Twitter, the governments also send
troops of the doctors and army so they can help to people.
Use of the social media in civic participation during an emergency
Disasters can seep in at any point in time which could be Natural Disasters viz. Floods,
Earthquakes, Hurricanes, etc. There are three kinds of issues faced generically by the

Organisations, Victims, NGO, Fire Fighters and Volunteers backing up the same which includes
Lack of accurate Information Flow/Management, Lack of coordination in Relief Efforts and
Lack of Communication in terms of Available Resources and their requirement at specific
locations (What is required where). Here comes into the picture the power of Social Media,
which proves to be the knight in the shining armour to circulate a huge chunk of information to
the mass at a global level. It can majorly come as a Rescue in two ways viz. Developing
Mechanism: Gathering Situational Information and Automated Systems: That will help in
coordination of the Relief Efforts.
According to Peng (2017), the social media is involved a different type of benefit in the disaster
management. In the disaster management, the social media is also helpful for the asking help the
civic participation. Use of the different types of symbols, hash-tag and creative content help to
collect information and awareness to people for making sure their participation. In the online and
offline the Social media use for the promoting the help for the other people at the time of the
crisis. In the online participation via social media, funds and other food items collected. The
main advantage of SM is that it covers the vast area and global reach. There are different factors
which associated SM. So the government and many other non-profit organizations work
together.
Anikeeva, Steenkamp & Arbon (2015) depict about the role of social media and mobile tool for
public communication in a natural disaster in Australia and New Zealand. During the heavy
rainfalls in 2011, Australia and New Zealand faced heavy rainfall. At the time crisis, the
Facebook and other social media tool used by the people to distribute first-hand footage of the
local situations. The social media become helpful for exchange the information. On the twitter,
the floods uses as spreading the mechanism for exchanging the information and discussion of the
information related to the flood. The simple structure of the twitter account helps survivors.
In the research of Imran, Castillo, Diaz, & Vieweg (2015), it is found that with the help of social
media the communities are helping each other. The structure and platform of the social media
are relying open on upon and allow users the reports about the emergency services. The civic
make active participation in helping the people. In addition, the social media is also helping to
after the disaster. From the use of the social media the communities become active and they can
share their experiences with each other. According to the Lachlan, Spence, Lin, Najarian & Del

Greco (2016), in addition, sending the help and provide different other facilities helps to people.
The people also show their active participation in the social media so they can alert each other
provide help where it is required. Therefore the social media has become an effective tool in the
modern days. However, it is not essential that social media is always useful in the managing
disaster. During the disaster or emergency, there are much time people use the social media for
spreading wrong information, therefore, it needs to make sure to authentic of information.
According to Allcott & Gentzkow (2017), the social media do not always use of help to people.
It can also use for creating the wrong content and spreading wrong information. Therefore,
people need to be altering.
On the other hand, the concept of the social capital is important as it helps in focusing over the
investigation of relationship between the internet use and the civil participation. The research
claims about the Internet encouragement through social connections and involvement. The case
of social media is same as the study indicates about the social capital which is greater amount
those who are using social networking services (SNS). It has been observed that trust and
reciprocity are the major social capital elements for ICT usage in the different contexts. The
social capital is formed through the social contexts related to the trust, norms and the networks to
make an efficient society by promoting the different resources among the positive human
relationship. There are exchange of ideals at the time of difficulty which are building human
relationships and are able to demonstrate the communication activities that help in building
social capital. The term bridge and bonding are the two ways where the social capital has been
able to view the ideas in the perspective of SNS based communication. The factors are related to
maintain the communication that bonds the individuals which might occur in SNS but the
bridging is among the diversified individuals which is possible with SNS. There is an enormous
growth and population increase in different countries. The reserves of the economic and the
population growth has led to make up the policies to revise the uniform and the standardized
approaches with dealing from different social issues. The declined tax revenues have also led to
major cuts in budgets. The management of the social issues is done by the public sector and the
situations are found to be offering opportunities for the different citizen organizations to assume
about the roles that have been thought to be the responsibility of the government.

Research Gap
In the above research, there are different gaps found in the existing literature. The limitation of
the present literature is related to the sample size. There is a limited sample used in these
researches. The literature explores area related to the use of the social media in the disaster
management only. The focus is also on facing the possibility and problems of the complementary
communication channels. There is a need to speculate about the merits and the demerits of the
use of social networking services by the people. The social media is actively making a
contribution to the disaster management, however, it can also include the ways in which it can
make a contribution. All the resources used in the research are from the secondary sources and
qualitative method is used rather than a quantitative method. The present literature provided only
limited information on the given topic. The future researches can be conducted in the area of the
misuse of SM in the disaster management.
Conclusion
As mentioned in the information provided by the above literature, it can be concluded new
technologies are updated and social media is playing a vital role in Natural Disaster
Management. With the help of the social media people and government all actively contribute to
the management of the disaster. In the recent years, with the help of the Facebook, Twitter and
other social media tools make a unique contribution to overcome with different issues. The social
media is also helping to exchange the real-time information and taking the effective decision at
the time of crisis. Due to the presence of social media, the people make a contribution to raising
funds and provide other items for surviving of people.

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