Citizens are no longer in the dark about emergencies

Citizens are no longer in the dark during emergencies

My Great Aunt Jean asked me about Blackberry Messenger the other day. Three months ago even communication professionals never spoke of it. It was a niche interest amongst youth workers. Now everybody wants to know all about about the technology that appears to have fuelled the English riots.

Those that thought social media was a scary and ungoverned space before see in the riots absolute confirmation of their fears. Those who argued that social media was a way to build new communities and repair our broken society see in the #riotcleanup campaigns evidence that they were right too.

Without noticeable enthusiasm from professionals, politicians mused aloud about switching off networks and blocking access to online services. It was an idea warmly welcomed in China.

Social media appears at once to be immensely significant and depressingly trivial. It is a technology so amorphous that many people struggle to see its relevance at all. Professionals have been gazing at Facebook pages and asking themselves “how can we use this technology?”

Which, if you will forgive me, is the wrong question.

Social media has far greater utility for the individual citizen than it does for state organisations. It enables each individual to communicate instantly over a wide area, to share data and to gain an understanding of the whole situation. This new for the public. It is what responders have been able to do for a long time.

The sudden access that citizens have to their own monitoring and publishing channels reveals how many of our plans rely on our superior access to information and communication.

In principle responders should still have a better understanding of what is taking place in an emergency than the general public. We only have to look at the rumours that swept the country during the riots to see how much poor quality data is shared on public networks.

Even so it is clear that people are making decisions based on the information that they glean out of this mess. The choices of many about where and when to gather and cause disturbances were informed by data flowing around social networks. So were the decisions of those who wanted to do something positive. Those who marched onto the streets with brooms or added a message to the Peckham “Wall of Love” coordinated their actions with their peers. In most cases they did not seek consent from or even consult official channels.

This is a one-way street. Twenty-first century citizens will become more sophisticated about using and sharing data in a crisis. The differential between official understanding of the incident and the public understanding of the incident will shrink, and rapidly.

Responders have access to superior data because there has been no practical alternative. We haven’t sought to keep information away from the public. But they have been kept, to an extent, in ignorance. As that extent diminishes we need to change our plans and procedures in response.

We need to ask “how will other people use this technology?”

This article (but not the image) originally appeared in Resilience Magazine in December 2012 (page 2).

Image is Flame Defining the Darkness by Jeff Golden used under CC BY-SA 2.0

Case studies of social media use in emergencies

Being  a specialist in digital skills in emergencies has some strange consequences. Generous friends from across the world send me links to reports of obscure incidents in which facebook has been deployed. When I hear a news report of some sort of incident I rush to the internet and start monitoring it as a case study. These case studies inform my training and consultancy and I use various platforms to aggregate content. Storify is my platform of choice for incidents where twitter is a key tool. Here are a range of case studies aggregated in Storify which I share with you as a sort of early Christmas present.

1. In May in Hartlepool (North East England) fairly localised incident quickly gained traction on social networks. The agencies were not, at that point, heavily engaged in the platforms. http://storify.com/likeaword/hartlepool-incidents-18th-19th-may-2011
2. The English Riots in August marked a real shift in the approach of blue-light services to social networks. Greater Manchester Police were one of the forces that had heavily embraced social networking before the disorder and responded strongly across social networks during and after the riots. http://storify.com/likeaword/gmp-social-media-use-over-riots. I spoke to the force’s Head of Comms shortly after.
3. My local police force was faced with policing a march by the EDL and a counter march while the country was still on riot alert.  In the end the Home Secretary banned marches but the town of Wellington was still pretty tense about the static demonstrations that took place. West Mercia Police and Telford and Wrekin Borough Council took to social media before during and after the demonstrations. http://storify.com/likeaword/case-study-edl-and-other-protests-in-wellington-sh.  I spoke to Neil Tipton from West Mercia later on about digital communications around that time.
4. For various reasons responders in the UK seem to be focusing on the use of social media for warning and informing the public during an emergency. There has been less focus on the use of social media around the recovery phase though this is a real strength of the technology. London Borough of Southwark seemed to me to responding in a very human way to the disorder on twitter. http://storify.com/likeaword/london-borough-of
5. Recently the gangway linking HMS Belfast to the bank of the Thames in central London collapsed rather dramatically. In a demonstration of how things have changed I became aware of the incident because I “Like” the London Fire Brigade page on Facebook. What is particularly striking about this case study is the number of organisations responding on twitter, most of which are not Cat One Responders. http://storify.com/likeaword/gangway-collapse-at-hms-belfast

It seems to me that we urgently need minimum standards around the use of social media in emergencies. I have suggested some minimum practice for LRFs and SCGs here.

Please do add links to other case studies below.

Photo credit: Clipboard by Quinn Dombrowski used under CC BY-SA 2.0

Suggestions for minimum practice for social media in emergencies

This post emerges from a confluence of inputs. Patrice Cloutier’s post “Best practices in the use of social media in emergency management: too soon?” got me thinking. At the Emergency Services Show I spoke to a whole host of people who feel that some responders are on top of social media but others are nowhere with the technology. Given the way emergencies are managed in this country this is an area of risk. At that same show I understood Gordon Scobbie to say that he is working in Scotland to make sure SCG*s (called LRF*s in England and Wales) have a shared approach to social media.

It seems to me that the time has come to define minimum practice for digital technology use by responders. Here are some initial suggestions.

1. Every Category One Responder* should maintain key social media channels.
Right now this would mean that every council, fire service and health trust would have, at minimum, a facebook page and twitter account.

2. Every Cat One Responder should be able to update its social media channels with a maximum of one hour notice 24/7/365.
For larger responders this means having staff in its control centre trained and empowered to provide updates. For smaller responders this would mean having on-call staff trained and empowered to do the same.

3. Every LRF should have clear protocols for how responders will co-operate with each other on social media channels during an emergency
In an emergency all responders involved should use their own channels to talk from their own competence. They should also ensure that they link, re-tweet and point to the channels of the other responders involved. Where there is a lead responder, other responders should regularly indicate this eg

“Follow @marchfordpolice for the latest updates on #theincidentinthetown”

4. Every Cat One Responder should be able to mobilise variable levels of communications resource to their social media presence in a timely fashion.
As an incident escalates, there will be an increased need to updates and to respond to issues raised on social media. This will quickly require a dedicated resource (ie someone who isn’t trying to actually manage the incident).

5. Every LRF should have arrangements to provide for the monitoring and analysis of the online environment in an emergency.
The general public uses the online environment to share data about emerging situations. In some cases the information being shared may be of direct benefit in improving the information picture. In every case it is important to understand how the public perceive the situation and where they are self-organising. This is a resource-hungry task both in terms of the cost of technology and the people needed. Accordingly it is probably most appropriate to resource on a partnership basis.

6. Every LRF should have considered the risk associated with the loss of Internet connectivity and have appropriate contingency plans in place.
Social media is already, for many people, a vital tool in communicating in emergencies. It is becoming a vital tool for responders. This increases the impact of the loss of connectivity. Connectivity might be lost through power failure, telephone system failure or demand significantly exceeding network capacity. If people can’t get online they may self-evacuate, they may panic and they probably won’t turn on the radio (even if it is battery powered, which it probably isn’t).

7. Social media should be explicitly referenced in every plan, exercise and after-incident review.
I don’t think that needs any exposition.

Those are just my suggestions. I’d love to hear other thoughts.

*Some quick definitions

Emergencies in the UK (or at least in Great Britain) are dealt with by local public bodies: police, local authorities, health trusts, fire, ambulance etc. Those with the duty to deal with emergencies are called “Category One Responders” or “Cat One Responders” if you feel jargony, which clearly I do. They have to co-operate in planning for and dealing with emergencies. They all cover different geographical areas. For clarity they are required to join a partnership based around the police force footprint. In Scotland these partnerships are called Strategic Co-ordinating Groups (SCG). In England and Wales they are called Local resilience Forums (Fora?).

Slides from the Emergency Services Show 2011

I took part in an afternoon session looking at social media in the emergency services yesterday (23rd November 2011) at the Emergency Services Show in Stoneleigh, Warks.

My task was to speak about how to improve your personal digital skills. Thanks to everyone who stayed and asked questions. Also thanks to Dave Thackery for chairing the whole thing. I promised to put the slides up here. Unusually for my slides I think they stand up without having my commentary.

One theme that ran through the day was the question of trust. The trust organisations must vest in their staff to enable them to use social networking effectively, the trust the public must have in the online expressions of public services (and servants), the trust agencies must vest in  each other, the trust staff must have in their managers and comms teams, and the trust between agencies, the media and the general public.

This is an evolving area. I tend to support view of DCC Gordon Scobbie that managers should start from the point of view of trusting their staff. They trust them to do complex, challenging and difficult jobs. Indeed if managers can’t trust their staff this is surely something for the organisation to reflect upon.

I spoke to someone employed by a large Cat One responder who is banned from mentioning his connection to his employer on social networks. This seems to me to be exactly the opposite of best practice. Anonymity and secrecy destroys rather than building trust. It’s time we moved past this.

Slides from Edinburgh and London

I agreed to post a copy of my slides from the workshop I ran in Edinburgh yesterday with Public Networks. They won’t mean much if you weren’t at the event. If you’d like to go to a future event or have something delivered in house contact the lovely folk at Public Networks or get in touch with me direct
.

For completeness I’ve also put a copy of my slides from the talk I did on Social Media in Community Resilience last week down in London. Those REALLY won’t mean much if you weren’t at the event. (They may not mean that much if you were).

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