PRDV107: Crisis Communication

According to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), an emergency includes "any incident, whether natural, technological, or human-caused, that necessitates responsive action to protect life or property". The burgeoning discipline of EM focuses on "the coordination and integration of all activities" needed to prepare for, respond to, recovery from, and mitigate against various types of disasters and emergencies. Compared to EM at the state and federal levels, local EM often involves a closer relationship and exchange of information between the local office and the surrounding community. Local stakeholder organizations are typically social, economic, and political organizations within the community. These organizations often influence community members and can provide EM professionals with insight into the needs of a specific section of the community. The tight relationship between local EM offices, their stakeholder organizations, and the surrounding community influences the effectiveness of communication. Additional factors that affect a local EM agency's communication needs and abilities include the availability of communication resources, the size of the surrounding community, and the "organizational arrangement" of local EM agencies. Due to the variability in local EM agencies' size and available communication resources across the U.S., there is a need for a flexible and scalable framework for information dispersal.

Many events, such as 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina, have shaped the field of EM in the United States. In the years preceding the attacks on 11 September 2001, the National Response Framework (NRF) and the National Incident Management System (NIMS) were enacted. A concept essential to the NRF is disaster response both starts and ends locally. The document places an emphasis on the role local emergency managers and local emergency management departments have in the disaster management process. In addition to the NRF, the NIMS is a comprehensive approach to managing emergency which can be used for any size disaster at all levels of government. The NIMS stresses the importance of engaging with stakeholders from the "whole community" to support inclusive participation the disaster management process that represents the diversity of the community. One of the essential elements of NIMS is the Incident Command System (ICS). The ICS is a framework for communication and coordination during response to an ongoing disaster led by the Incident Commander. Within the ICS, there are five varying sections: "command, operations, planning, logistics, and administration/finance". A PIO is included as one of the command officers supporting the Incident Commander during disaster response and recovery. PIOs are responsible for communicating incident-related information to the media, the public, and coordinating agencies/organizations. The position's duties can be handled by one individual or supported by several assistants depending on the resources available and the size of the incident. At the local level, the PIO might be a volunteer, an emergency manager, or a communication specialist from an adjacent department such as a law enforcement agency or the local government office. The rise of social media in recent years has required the PIO's role across all levels of EM to adapt. Due to the rising popularity of social media platforms', crisis communications have shifted away from being a one-way dialogue between PIOs and the public to a bidirectional conversation between the two entities.

Throughout the EM cycle, local emergency managers alert and communicate with their communities in various ways, such as using electronic emergency alert systems, outdoor sirens, the media, and social media. According to the Pew Research Center, "seven-in-ten Americans use social media" as a form of contacting individuals, receiving news, and sharing information with others. Some of the most popular social media platforms in the United States (U.S.) include Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, WhatsApp, and YouTube. The widespread usage of social media among Americans has given rise to the increasingly popular utilization of social media in a disaster both as an information source and a channel for crisis communications.

During disasters, individuals tend to seek information from familiar sources such as family members, friends, and local level news outlets. When familiar channels do not provide sufficient information, individuals seek information from additional official sources to mitigate uncertainty about the ongoing crisis. Individuals seeking disaster-related information from social media are interested in receiving essential facts to support their informed decision-making. The introduction of social media as a crisis communication tool has led the public to expect immediate access to disaster-related information via social media, which comes with both benefits and challenges.

Uses and Benefits of Social Media in Emergency Management

In the field of EM, social media offers many uses and benefits such as quick information dispersal, a platform for gathering information from the public, and a method for fostering situational awareness. A study focusing on social media usage by county-level EM agencies found that county EM agencies' top uses of social media were the following: provide specific information to the public, risk communication (public alerting or reassurance), public relations, counter rumors/misinformation, increase situational awareness, and sharing information with other organizations. Traditionally, PIOs provide the media with disaster-related information, and the media relays the message to the public. Incorporating social media into a local EM department's communication plan allows emergency managers and PIOs to directly engage in quick information exchange with the public, thus bypassing the traditional unidirectional pathway of information from the media to the public. This adjustment improves the efficiency of information dispersal and prevents potential misrepresentation of information due to the information be posted directly from the source.

In 2013, the Boston Marathon incident forever changed social media's utilization in disaster response by signifying the transition to using the platforms as crisis communication tools. The introduction of using social media as a communication tool following the incident granted the public the ability to both receive and provide information through various social media platforms. Following the Boston attacks, almost half of Americans (49%) received incident-related information online or by using a mobile device, and over a quarter of Americans (26%) used social media to keep up with the news surrounding the incident. Social media accounts from credible organizations the public trusted (e.g., the city of Boston officials, Massachusetts' Governor, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and law enforcement agencies) provided the public with frequent, direct updates following the incident. The usage of social media as a method of community interaction and information dispersal aided in the overall EM response and recovery efforts to the hallmark incident.

Social media also provides community members the ability to supply information from the incident scene by posting photos, videos, and personal accounts of the incident on social media sites. During the response to the Boston Marathon bombing, social media served as a platform for survivors of the incident to post photos and videos, which were used to aid the FBI's and the Boston Police Department's investigation. Following the successful use of social media in various aspects of the response to the Boston Marathon Bombing, the increased use of social media in the field raised a need for methods to analyze social media and crowdsourced data. EM officials can use various social media analysis websites, such as Hootsuite, Trendsmap, Google Analytics, TweetArchivist, and Ushahidi Platform, to analyze social media trends. Crowdsourced information from social media can foster EM officials' situational awareness of an ongoing disaster.

Outside of a disaster, EM agencies, especially at the local level, can utilize social media as a form of community engagement to foster trust and credibility with the public. Establishing credibility with the EM agency's account before a disaster is essential to the public acknowledging and using the agency's social media accounts as an information source during a crisis. In response to the California droughts in 2014, the California Drought Task Force, formed from multiple participating agencies, utilized multiple social media platforms such as Facebook, Youtube, and Twitter to inform the public on drought management, amplify the reach of their messaging, and participate in two-way communications with the public. The Task Force utilized Facebook as a communication tool to deliver one-way communication messages and as a two-way form of communication by providing the public with the ability to interact with the Task Force via Facebook's comment capabilities. In addition to the utilization of Facebook and YouTube, the Task Force also used Twitter to quickly disperse information about current drought risks and how the Task Force was managing those risks. The retweeting feature of Twitter helped various agency members of the Task Forces encourage the reconnection of "other citizens with drought risk management information" through retweeting capabilities. The California Drought Task Force's diverse use of social media platforms demonstrates the advantages of using various social media platforms to connect and disseminate information with a large reaching audience. Additionally, the Task Force's successes provide an efficient example of stakeholders uniting and collaborating to share uniformed preparedness and disaster-related information to local community members via social media.

Challenges Associated with the Use of Social Media in Emergency Management

Although the use of social media as a communication tool for EM agencies is increasing, social media was not "specifically designed to support emergency response" and crisis communication; thus, there are several potential challenges to consider prior to using social media as a tool for information dispersal during a disaster. Challenges associated with the use of social media in EM include messages containing critical information getting lost in the influx of social media messages, the spread of false information, conflicting messaging from stakeholders, and the communication method's reliance on cell service and internet access.

With thousands of tweets occurring each second, vital disaster-related messages can get lost in the influx of social media usage. This issue can be mitigated by including hashtags containing keywords related to the incident in social media messages from EM agencies. During the response to Hurricane Isaac in 2012, "governmental agencies, non-governmental agencies, the public, and the news media" used the hashtag Isaac (#Isaac) when sharing incident related messages on social media. By adding hashtags to their messaging, responding agencies were able to help clarify the intent of the messaging and increase the message's visibility. Additionally, hashtags can serve as a way to unify the community after a disaster. Following the Boston Marathon incident, the hashtag BostonStrong (#BostonStrong) was utilized across social media platforms as a way to unify the community and raise awareness of recovery initiatives such as the One Boston Fund. Within the proposed Communication Hub framework, hashtags can be implemented into the key messages posted by the Hub Coordinator and reposted by participating stakeholder organizations to increase visibility of the message and reinforce the intent of the message.

An increase in social media usage during a disaster combined with the public's expectation to receive information quickly and the inherent nature of rumor spreading on social media can foster the spread of false disaster-related information. Misleading information on social media platforms requires EM agencies to address the false statements in a timely manner. To provide timely messaging and identify spreading rumors, PIOs and EM officials need to monitor the public's social media postings constantly. This requires both staff and resources to execute, but social media analysis websites can be utilized to help quicken the process. For federally declared disasters, EM agencies can utilize FEMA's rumor control webpage to identify disaster-related rumors that might be spreading in their community. The proposed Communication Hub framework aids local emergency management agencies with rumor control by involving community stakeholder organizations in the process of identifying the spread of disaster-related rumors on social media. By implementing the conceptual framework, participating stakeholders will have a single contact, the hub coordinator, to report any findings of disaster-related rumors. Providing a single contact to report findings of misinformation and rumors will help streamline the process and notify the hub coordinator that there is a need for messaging to address and correct the rumors misinformation.

Messaging from stakeholders that conflicts with the disaster-related messaging provided by EM agencies can further the spread of false information and confuse the public. Leading up to Hurricane Harvey's landfall in 2017, the officials representing the City of Houston and the Mayor of Houston were consistently stating there was no evacuation order for the city on both news media and social media platforms. The Governor of Texas initially supported local Houston officials' decision not to evacuate the city on both news media and social media platforms. During a press conference less than two days before the hurricane-impacted Houston, the Governor changed his public opinion and used Twitter as a platform to encourage Houston residents to consider evacuating the area. This directly contradicted the Twitter messages streaming from Houston officials and the Mayor's Twitter accounts advising their residents to continue to shelter in place. The conflicting evacuation messages on social media left Houston residents puzzled on whether to heed the guidance of local or state officials. These conflicting social media messages highlight the need for uniform social media crisis communications with consistent messaging from both local and state officials. To achieve this, local and state officials and stakeholders must establish communication frameworks prior to a disaster.

An additional issue is a reliance on either cellphone service or internet access to use social media as a communication tool. Vulnerable populations in affected communities, such as older adults and individuals with low socioeconomic status, might lack access to smartphones, portable digital devices, or internet connection needed to receive disaster-related social media messaging. Relying solely on social media as a communication tool could exclude certain populations from receiving critical disaster related-information during certain phases of a disaster. Additionally, a disaster could impact the critical infrastructure EM agencies rely on to disseminate information via social media. In the event of a disaster impacting cellphone towers and powerlines, social media may not be an available means of communication to disseminate information to the affected community. Due to the risk of a disaster impacting the critical infrastructure needed for social media messaging and the varying access to social media for certain populations, social media should be used in combination with other communication methods to ensure communication with the public can occur despite a lack in access to social media platforms. The proposed conceptual Communication Hub Framework can be implemented in local EM agencies to simultaneously involve stakeholders in the communication process, while increasing the reach of EM agencies' disaster-related messaging to community members. Because of the Framework's reliance on the powerlines and cellphone towers to relay disaster-related messages to the community, it is crucial that the framework is used in conjunction with primary communication methods such as radios and emergency alert systems.