Presentation given at AEMI Connections! 2014

1. Setting the scene
Craig Thomler
Gov 2.0 Advocate &
Managing Director
Delib Australia
Social Media Masterclass
Connections
July 2014

2. Hi, I’m Craig

3. Australia is a
social nation

4. Online and mobile are important
Source: We are Social - http://wearesocial.net

5. Social is important
Source: We are Social - http://wearesocial.net

6. We’re not an exception, or the most social
Source: We are Social - http://wearesocial.net

7. Few emergencies won’t go social

8. Ignoring social isn’t an option anymore

9. Abstinence is not effective
• Refusing to engage in social usually
leads to poor outcomes
Perceived as old-fashioned,
out-of-touch and bureaucratic,
plus you can’t put your side forward
• It’s no longer about ‘denying a rumour oxygen’
Millions of people and organisations are able to provide
oxygen to an emergency rumour regardless of your decision
• Social media fires need social media water
Attempting to respond to a emergency that’s gone social via
a media release or briefing has a high probability of failing
as it doesn’t stop discussion at the source

10. The choice isn’t ‘do or not do’
Source: Erik Qualman

11. Social media increases access to trusted sources
Comparative trust in institutions is low
Source: Edelman Trust Barometer 2013

12. Message control is not possible

13. While you can’t control, you can influence
Influence
Control
• Increased noise
• Loss of authority
• Greater grassroots
coordination
• Can respond faster
• Removal of filter
organisations
• More channels
increases reach
• Greater two-way
capability
• More intelligence
• Marshall supporters

14. Same Different
• Clear roles and
responsibilities matter
• Traditional media still
reaches lots of people
• People still want clear and
straightforward information
• Confusion remains common
• Speed & depth increased
• Traditional media is only
one set of channels for your
messages
• Driven by trust in people,
not just in organisations
• The tools to investigate,
speculate and mobilise are
widespread and cheap or
free
Not everything has changed

16. RecoveryEvaluationResolutionEvent
Pre-
event
Fast facts,
contacts, issue
identification
Holding
statement
Full
statement
Press
conference,
status reports Lessons learned
Conventional emergency communications:
Monitoring,
channels,
approval
process
Acknowledge,
channel
co-ordination
and responses
Ongoing
monitoring,
responses &
clarification
Influencer
follow-up,
changes to
channels
Transparency of
data, proactive
Q&A opportunities
Social media emergency communications:
Adding a social dimension to emergencies
Co-ordinate,
rebuild
Engage,
involve,
co-ordinate,
report

17. Don’t start with the tools

18. Don’t build on feet of clay

19. Emergency
practice
Guidance and
training
Strategy and framework
Social media policy
Agency instructions and policies
Government policies and guidelines
Legislation and international agreements
Put a social media infrastructure in place

20. 1. Social media rewards fast, human responses
in line with your organisation’s brand
personality.
2. Become a credible, transparent source of
information.
3. Avert problems: set rules for your channels,
manage expectations, build relationships.
4. Train and prepare your staff to anticipate and
manage emergencies and issues effectively.
Key principles

21. http://bit.ly/1cfd8Wn & http://blog.standbytaskforce.com
Support can come from anywhere

22. Brisbane, Australia
Clapham, UK
So develop systems to manage it

23. We’ve considered every potential risk except the risks
of avoiding all risks.”
Adjust your risk management approach

24. What’s the risk to your
organisation of
NOT engaging
via social
media?
And consider the risk of not engaging

25. The biggest risk for agencies assessing social
media risks is when the people assessing the
risks don’t understand
and/or use the social
channels they’re
assessing.
Ensure people assessing risks are informed

26. Becoming aware of something doesn’t necessarily
mean the level of risk associated with it has increased.
Aware
Unaware
Avoid confusing awareness with risk

27. Such as:
 Twitter (for real-time news distribution)
 Blog hosted externally (for long-form updates)
 Facebook page (for community building)
 Flickr group (for photo capture)
 Ushahidi instance (for geomapped incident reports)
 Youtube (for video footage and reports)
 Provide context and user guidance for all, set right
settings per channel (ie: no commenting on YouTube)
Prepare channels ahead of need

28. Time
Size/engagement
Reputational
Technological
Conversational
Administrative
Technological
Conversational
Security
Privacy
Technological
Reputational
Understand the community you’ve engaged

30. Mumbai Terrorist attack (2008)
Mumbai, India
Moments after the attack, eye witnesses were posting
tweets and photos to Twitter – at rate of 14 per
second. Twitter was also used by community to
encourage blood donors to go to JJ Hospital where
supplies were low.
Mumbai bloggers repurposed the Metroblog as a real-
time news wire for residents and the world, and
created the Mumbai Help blog to help people get
information on missing and injured people to relatives
around the world.
Volunteers created a Wikipedia page which tracked
events minute by minute and a Google map of the
area and attacks was created by users within
minutes.
Indian authorities reportedly considered closing
Twitter to stop terrorists getting information, however
used social media themselves to direct emergency
services.Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/india/3530640/Mumbai-attacks-Twitter-and-Flickr-used-to-break-
news-Bombay-India.html

31. Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/picturegalleries/uknews/8693000/London-and-UK-riots-50-powerful-images.html
UK Riots (2011)
London, United Kingdom
Rioters used Blackberry messaging (a secure system)
to share details of riot gathering points and targets.
A man who put a riot message on Facebook turned
up at the location to find police waiting to arrest him.
Similarly people who advocated for the riots on Twitter
were arrested and tried.
UK government considered closing down Twitter and
Facebook during similar future episodes of violence,
but concluded it would too seriously hamper
information sharing for law abiding citizens and
emergency services.
Conclusion was that the real causes of the riots were
social inequities and long-term unemployment. Social
media was simply a way of sharing information, for
good or ill.

32. Source: https://sites.google.com/a/oregonk-12.net/cybersafety/home/social-networking/social-media-and-the-2008-sichuan-
earthquake
Sichuan earthquake (2008)
Sichuan Province, China
The 2008 Sichuan earthquake killed 68,000 people,
particularly many school children.
Earthquake messages were circulating on social
media as it was occurring.
The last earthquake of the same magnitude in China
took three months before China admitted it had even
happened.
Within minutes volunteers had donation sites in place
and over US$12 million was raised in the first 24 hrs,
before the government had made an appeal for aid.
The conversation turned sour after a few days when
Chinese parents realised many school deaths were
caused by corrupt officials approving substandard
work. This led to a clampdown on social media by the
government to stifle dissent.

33. Source: http://blog.hootsuite.com/government-emergency-response/
Hurricane Irene (2011)
Hurricane Sandy (2012)
Morris County, New Jersey, USA
County officials established Facebook page, Twitter
account and management tools for Irene as a cheap
2-way communication system that could remain
operational when electricity went out.
Started advising locals off what to do prior to impact.
Informed over 480,000 residents during Irene over six
day period.
For Sandy, added a road closure blog and a public
information blog.
Also monitored Twitter hashtag to collect vital
information for emergency services and utility
companies regarding trapped people and critical
outages.
Fielded hundreds of enquiries via Twitter and
Facebook.

34. Source: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2009-02-09/social-media-explodes-in-wake-of-deadly-bushfires/289028
Black Sunday bushfires (2009)
Victoria, Australia
Over 400 fires swept through country Victoria, killing
more than 170 people and destroying over 2,000
homes and 3,500 other structures.
The Country Fire Service’s website went down,
leaving residents reliant on a volunteer Google map
for information on fire locations.
Social media was used by authorities to communicate
information to remote towns and direct resources to
crisis locations.
Volunteers helped the town of Flowerdale create a fire
recovery wiki, which was used to explore and share
their recovery efforts.
Subsequently the CFA created the FireReady app,
and popular Facebook and Twitter accounts. The CFA
now has two social media officers in the state
emergency command centre.

35. Source: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/03/pictures/110315-nuclear-reactor-japan-tsunami-
earthquake-world-photos-meltdown/
Japanese Tsunami (2011)
Fukushima Province, Japan
The 2011 Japanese tsunami, caused by an undersea
earthquake, resulted in over 19,000 deaths in
Fukushima province.
Social media was used by citizens and media to
extensively share information about the impact and
the safety of areas around the damaged Fukushima
nuclear reactor.
Over 9,000 earthquake and 7,000 tsunami videos
were uploaded to YouTube within a day of the events.
However the government struggled to obtain or share
accurate information using their official channels and
avoided use of social media.
Google launched a crisis centre to allow public
information sharing and, with telephone networks
down for days, social media became the only source
of timely local information for many Japanese.

36. Source: http://everything-pr.com/social-media-gets-first-haiti-earthquake-pictures/210442/
Haiti earthquake (2007)
Haiti
Images of the devastating 2007 Haiti earthquake,
which killed over 230,000 people, were appearing on
social media services before emergency services or
the media had reached the island.
There were no accurate street maps of Haiti, so locals
worked with foreign volunteers to map Port-au-Prince
using OpenStreetMap within a few days, aiding
emergency workers to identify the worse affected
areas and how to get in and out to rescue trapped
people.
Mobile phones were used to find trapped people, with
several saved when they called relatives in the US,
who sent their location to emergency services via
social media.
Ushahidi was used extensively to coordinate and map
emergency information, with a team sharing it with
response teams on the ground.

37. Preparing for an emergency
• Mitigate employee risks
• Put a social media policy in place
• Raise digital literacy across organisation (training)
• Mitigate organisational risks
• Develop a social media strategy, official use standards and guidelines
• Implement early detection processes
• Develop a social listening/monitoring framework & invest in a system
• Develop a social media triage approach (workflow for handling issues)
• Map potential scenarios & develop mitigation plans
• You already know the most likely emergencies your organisation will
face, map your social media approach, pre-approve templates and
processes & establish engagement protocols

38. Preparing for an emergency
• Integrate social media into emergency planning
• Include in emergency management plans
• Include in risk management plans
• Integrate into crisis command centre
• Include in simulations to test processes and staff
• Establish your social channels
• Ensure you have an active presence on key social platforms, gives
you a method of reply as well as experience using them
• Identify expert / influential allies & build relationships
• Bring and keep influencers and experts on side to the extent possible,
so they are more inclined to support/share your messages
• Identify partners you can work with to address issues (other agencies,
service providers, etc)

39. When it starts
• Triage the situation
• Extent of risk, source, channels, influencers/sharers, messages, propagation
speed
• Respond early
• Holding statement or facts of situation to localise and contain issues
• Flag to management & affected stakeholders
• What, where, why and what you’re doing/need from them
• Corral a team
• Bring onboard the help needed – internal AND external supporters
• Remain proactive and responsive, not defensive
• Repeat facts as available & needed, don’t be silent, evasive, combative, or
officious
• Keep engaging!
• Avoid adding fuel
• Joking or sarcastic responses, escalating (media release), taking blame quickly

40. Monitor
Potential
emergencyi
dentified
Assess
against
triage plan
Contain with
preplanned/
factual
quick
response
Escalate as
necessary
Active crisis
team if
necessary
Respond
proactively
and
authenticall
y
When it starts - crisis cycle

41. Triage workflow like this…

42. Or like this…

43. Develop an online crisis response framework

44. Prepare a ‘submarine’ site for crises

45. In the workflow & response consider
• Is it a new/recurring crisis? (existing procedures?)
• Is it real or a hoax? (and is that important?)
• What is the scale? (likely impact)
• What is the reach? (local/national/global)
• Who is involved? (participants/influencers)
• Who has something to gain?
• What do you know vs what is being discussed?
(information asymmetry)
• What do people want? (comfort, action, resolution)
• Who is in charge? (authority/authentic voice)

46. What would you do?
• Series of major terrorist strikes in city
• Citizens take to Twitter and Facebook to share
information and images, ask for help and to find their
loved ones
• Real-time map put together by community with
details of where terrorist attacks have occurred &
where police presence makes areas safe
• Rumours start spreading that government will shut
down social media to stop terrorists accessing
information
• Uproar at government for threat of shutdown

47. It really happened

48. Useful resources
Source: emergency20wiki.org

49. Useful tools
Source: thesocialsimulator.com

50. Useful tools
Source: recovers.org

51. There’s no such thing as
social media emergency
management
Final thoughts

52. There’s simply
emergency management,
which almost always involves
social media channels
Final thoughts

53. Thanks!
Craig Thomler
craig@delib.net
@CraigThomler
http://eGovAU.blogspot.com
www.delib.net/australia/
@Delibaunz