To view this site you need Adobe Flash Player and your browser must allow javaScripts. Go here to get the latest Flash Player. SOCIAL NETWORKS TO THE RESCUE Hurricane season With the start of the 2009 hurricane season, federal agencies have been making use of social media to warn Americans of any hurricane emergencies. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have taken the lead on emergency communications for hurricane preparedness, said Richard Stapleton, deputy director of the Web Communications and New Media Division at the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS),during the March social media forum. CDC has been taking emergency communications principles and combining them withWeb usability principles to facilitate delivering emergency messages to the public regarding hurricanes. It has applied the same model to its social media outreach. “We have done a lot of work on natural disasters in social media over the past few years,” Stapleton said. “A couple of years ago, we started a hurricane ‘Tip of the Week’ campaign, where we posted a tip of the week that was a risk communication message on our hurricane homepage. We sent that message out each week during hurricane season through e-mail and text message. It’s tough to think of a 140-character actionable message for the public.” Eventually,however,31,000 subscribers were receiving the notices via e-mail and text by CDC’s last count. A similar winter Tip of the Week goes out to 34,000 subscribers via e-mail and text to date, and to another 1,600 subscribers via Twitter. During National HurricaneWeek at the end of May,CDC and HHS planned to launch widgets that provided users with the hurricane tip A Homeland Security Today Investigative of the week.Web users can re-post the code of these widgets on any other website, and HHS will update the information regularly for the readers of those websites. “Social media is more than about how we reach out to the public and educate the public. It’s also about the public talking to us. That’s sometimes difficult for the federal government to execute. It’s also about the public talking to the public,” Stapleton observed. “One thing we have been working on a lot at CDC is disaster preparedness e-cards,” he said. “We have several available already on the website, so the public can encourage friends and family to take disaster preparedness steps. By June, we will have several available for every type of disaster. During National Hurricane Week, we will be launching a dozen specifically devoted to hurricanes.” While it is important to communicate to those affected by a disaster, CDC also should reach out to those who are unaffected—particularly those who stay in touch through social media networks, observed Stapleton. “These are people who are a little bit more engaged in emergency preparedness. They are somewhat more interested,” he remarked. “So for us to dismiss them as ‘the worried well’ or to not engage them, we are letting down on our end of the bargain. We are missing an opportunity to take advantage of that there. “I would say we should be helping the affected to stay and respond and recover during a crisis, but also to help the unaffected to prepare for future crises if they are trying to engage us,and to really use them as evangelists for the current response. Social media really offer a unique opportunity for us to spread the word virally using the unaffected as evangelists for our Series cause,” he concluded. SAVAGE STRUGGLE on the Analysis The use of social media in emergency communications is still very much in its early phases. Federal,state and local authorities are still figuring out how to best harness the power of social media for mass notification in a disaster,Tim Tinker,co-director of BoozAllen Hamilton’s Center of Excellence for Risk and Crisis Communications, told Homeland Security Today. “We are slowly getting a better idea through each of these experiences, whether it is a Mumbai or Hurricane Gustav, as to how we can harness it as part of the overall response,” Tinker stated. “The points of distribution are much larger than the official word that comes from government agencies.” As Tinker noted, people have begun to turn to trusted sources of information with social networking for both emergency and non-emergency situations. As that trend grows,Americans will receive their emergency information through a combination of social media, traditional news media and official government alerts. “We are witnessing a very powerful social trend where we are going to have to start seeing the public differently,” Tinker said. “They are not just a consumer of information. They are not a passive receptacle of information where we dump information into them and hope they do what we ask them to do,but instead they are active participants in the response. That’s a real paradigm shift.” HST This month’s issue is now available online at… “ Spectacular piece of work” —Robert Steele, former CIA officer and author Homeland Security Today and www.HSToday.us have given every policymaker and citizen concerned about US homeland security a wake-up call with its groundbreaking series of reports about the escalating drug-related violence along the US-Mexico border. Providing on-the-scene reporting along with insight and analysis by leading experts, Homeland Security Today has been at the forefront of informing the nation about the brutal war raging between Mexico’s‘narco-terrorists’and government authorities and its implications for US homeland security. Visit www.HSToday.us to stay informed on the evolving situation in Mexico. COMING IN AUGUST: Homeland Security Today continues its investigation south of the border,looking into gangs,gunrunning and ghazis (holy warriors). 46 June 2009 | Homeland Security Today Magazine