January 18, 2010
Welcome to disaster relief in the age of new media. Mere seconds after the disastrous 7.0 magnitude earthquake ravaged Haiti and its capital, Port-au-Prince — destroying phone and hydro infrastructure — social media networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter sprung alive with photos, videos, messages, and calls for help from the rubble. Calls for action and online messages shot out across the globe instantly. Aid money, too, started pouring in. By the end of last week, the phone company, Mobile’s Giving Foundation, which at times was receiving 10,000 donation text messages a second in the hours and days following Haiti’s earthquake, had already raised more than $10 million in Haitian relief funds. The American Red Cross, too, reported that of the $37 million that poured in over the first few days, $8 million was from text messages. Callers were able to text a specific number and have a $5 or $10 donation added to their phone bill. In the age of new media, action is just a click away. “It’s truly amazing how little friction there is between thought and action. That’s a huge breakthrough,” said James Norrie, a media professor at Ryerson’s Ted Rogers School of IT Management. “As soon as somebody hears about the disaster, they can pick up the phone in their pocket, in their purse, or on their belt and they can text in a donation.” But new media isn’t just the streaming of photos, videos, and donations around the world. It also connects the world together, plugging people to every corner of the world. “What we’re seeing is a global community which spans all nationalities, all geophysical borders,” Norrie said. “This is the first really big disaster of a global nature that has shown us the power of galvanizing that online community.” As soon as Tuesday’s earthquake struck, Facebook users were posting Haitian-related status updates at a rate of 1,500 per minute. Facebook sites and groups, like Earthquake Haiti, popped up immediately, not only providing space for users to share stories and sympathies , but also providing an electronic bulletin board for family members trying to find one another after becoming separated during the chaos that followed the quake. “We are looking for Marlene Chery and her children: Milourde, Julaine, Faimi, Givenson, Chneider, Onelove, Mislove, Rishenadine Chery. Also we are looking for Jean Louis Cajuste. His adress: #23 reu Faustin 1er Delmas 75 Port-au-Prince,” read one Friday night post on Earthquake Haiti. “Hi everyone, I spoke with my sister, Laurence, my mom, Leonie, and her son David. They are fine. Thank God,” read another. Twitter, too, has been providing updates on where clean drinking water is available in Port-au-Prince and where people are still trapped under rubble and debris. Carel Pedre, a Haitian television and radio star, began tweeting immediately after the quake and has used his Twitter site as a bulletin board to help find missing Haitians. “Stephanie Roux and Khara Are Fine and Safe!” read one of his Tweets. One of his earlier notes, just hours after the quake struck, reads “DIGICEL IS WORKING! CALL UR FAMILY NOW!!” Some earthquake victims, it has been reported, even used text messaging to alert rescue workers to their whereabouts in the hopes they might be found. “This is the first example we’ve seen where that sense of global community has been expressed in action, for example using social media technology to get the story out faster, to locate victims, and to give instantaneous donations,” Norrie said. “That’s an amazing use of a social media tool.” But perhaps the best use of new media in disaster relief efforts, according to Basil Guinane, a professor at Humber College’s School of Media Studies, is to “mobilize. “It’s the ability to reach large numbers of people instantly, and get them working in a concerted effort,” he said, adding new media immediately connected an entire world to the Haitian earthquake. “It’s not some disaster that happened way over there and doesn’t impact you. You’re suddenly exposed.” For Greg Goralski, also a professor at Humber’s School of Media, the greatest benefit of new media is in the immediate aftermath of a disaster. People on the ground, or “citizen” reporters, instantly uploaded cellphone pictures and videos of the destruction, meaning there’s no lengthy delays waiting for foreign news crews to arrive. “It allows us to get a very quick, but fragmented and unfiltered picture of what is going on,” Goralski said, adding new media’s role as story teller does eventually come to an end. “As more information comes in, and the scope of the disaster broadens, we need more traditional media to go in and do more in-depth reporting to analyze what is happening and provide context and give us a clearer picture,” he said. At that point, Guinane thinks, social media networks can fulfill another role — organizing fund-raising and relief efforts outside the disaster zone. But new media and all the benefits it can bring come with heightened risks, too. Nefarious online scammers have already started preying on sympathetic web surfers trying to solicit donations for bogus charities. New media, Guinane said, does make it “easy” to run scams, “which is appalling.” But Goralski thinks the benefits of new social media — like Facebook, Twitter, and mobile texting — do outweigh the drawbacks, so long as users view it as a “tool. “It’s how we wield that tool. We have to be very careful with how we use it,” he said. “In a lot of ways, it (new media) is out of control when compared to traditional media. It can be used for very negative and for very positive things.” Source: BRYN WEESE,TORONTO SUN - http://www.torontosun.com/news/haiti/2010/01/17/12504141.html