INTRODUCTION
The intention of writing this essay is to analyse the use of ICTS in a humanitarian emergency. The specific case study we have discuss in this essay is Multi-level functionality of social media in the aftermath of the Great East Japan Earthquake written by Jung, J., and Moro, M. 2014. This report emphasis on the benefits of social media networks like twitter and face book can be used to spread and gather important information in emergency situations rather than solely utilised as a social network platform. ICTs has changed the way humans gather information during the disasters and social media specially twitter became important source of information in these disasters.
Literature Review
The case studies of using ICTs in a humanitarian emergency can have either technically rational perspective or socially embedded perspective. Technically rational perspective means what to do and how to achieve the given purpose, it is a prescription for design and action. Socially embedded means it focuses on the particular case and process of work is affected by the culture, area and human nature. In this article, we have examined different humanitarian disasters cases in which ICTS played a vital role to see if author consider technically rational perspective or socially embedded perspective.
In the article “Learning from crisis: Lessons in human and information infrastructure from the World Trade Centre response” by (Dawes, Cresswell et al. 2004) author adopts technical/rational perspective. 9/11 was very big incident and no one was ready to deal with this size of attack but as soon as it happened procedure start changing rapidly. Government, NGO and disaster response unit start learning and made new prescription, which can be used universally and in any size of disaster. For example, the main communication structure was damaged which was supplied by Verizon there were different communication suppliers suppling their services but they all were using the physical infrastructure supplied by Verizon. So VOIP was used for communication between government officials and in EOC building. There were three main areas where the problems were found and then new procedure adopt in the response of disaster. The three main areas were technology, information and inter layered relationships between the Ngo’s, Government and the private sector. (Dawes, Cresswell et al. 2004).
In the article “Challenges in humanitarian information management and exchange: Evidence from Haiti,” (Altay, Labonte 2014) author adopts socially embedded perspective. Haiti earthquake was one of the big disaster killing 500000 people and displacing at least 2 million. Around 2000 organisation went in for help but there was no coordination between NGO`s and government for the humanitarian response. Organisation didn’t consider local knowledge they assumed that there is no data available. All the organisations had different standards and ways to do work so no one followed any prescription. Technical aspect of HIME (humanitarian information management and exchange) wasn’t working because all the members of humanitarian relief work wasn’t sharing any humanitarian information. (Altay, Labonte 2014)
In the article, Information systems innovation in the humanitarian sector,” Information Technologies and International Development” (Tusiime, Byrne 2011) author adopts socially embedded perspective. Local staff was hired. They didn’t have any former experience or knowledge to work with such a technology, which slow down the process of implementing new technology. Staff wanted to learn and use new system but the changes were done on such a high pace that made staff overworked and stress, which made them loose the interest in the innovation. The management decided to use COMPAS as a new system without realizing that it’s not completing functional and it still have lots of issues but they still went ahead with it. When staff start using and found the problems and not enough technical support was supplied then they didn’t have any choice and they went back to old way of doing things (Tusiime, Byrne 2011). The whole process was effected by how the work is done in specific area and people behaviours.
In the article “Multi-level functionality of social media in the aftermath of the Great East Japan Earthquake,” (Jung, Moro 2014) author adopts technically rational perspective. In any future humanitarian disaster situation, social media can be used as an effective source of communication method conjunction with mass media. After the disaster twitter was used more as a spreading and gathering information source instead of using as social media platform.
In the article “Information flow impediments in disaster relief supply chains,” Journal of the Association for Information Systems,10(8), pp. 637-660.(Day, Junglas et al. 2009) author proposed development of IS for information sharing based on hurricane Katrina. Author adopted TR perspective because need of IS development for information flow within and outside of organisation is essential. This developed IS will help to manage complex supply chain management. Supply chain management in disaster situation is challenging as compare to traditional supply chain management. Supply chain management IS should be able to cater all types of dynamic information, suggested Day, Juglas and Silva (2009).
Case study Description:
On the 11 march 2011 at the scale of 9.00 magnitude hit north-eastern part of japan. This was followed by tsunami. Thousands of people lost their lives and infrastructure was completely damaged in that area (Jung, Moro 2014). Tsunami wiped off two towns of the maps and the costal maps had to be redrawn (Acar, Muraki 2011). On the same day of earth quake cooling system in nuclear reactor no 1 in Fukushima failed because of that nuclear accident Japanese government issued nuclear emergency. On the evening of the earthquake Japanese government issued evacuation order for 3 km area around reactor (Jung, Moro 2014). On March 12 hydrogen explosion occurred in the nuclear reactor because of failed cooling system which is followed by another explosion after 2 days on March 14. The area of evacuation was 3 km in the start but was increased to 20 km so avoid any nuclear radiation. This was one of the big nuclear disaster for the country so it was hard for the government to access the scale of the disaster. As the government officials, didn’t came across this kind situation before and couldn’t estimate the damage occurred because of incident. Government officials were adding more confusion in people with their unreliable information. They declare the accident level as 5 on the international nuclear scale but later they changed it to 7 which was highest on international nuclear scale. Media reporting was also confusing the public. The combination of contradicting information from government and media increase the level of confusion in the public. In the case of disaster Mass media is always the main source of information normally they discontinue their normal transmission and focus on the disaster. Their most of the airtime is devoted for the disaster so they can keep the people update about the situation. Normally mass media provides very reliable information in humanitarian disaster situation but in the case of japan disaster media was contradicting each other news e.g. international media was contradicting the news from local media as well as local government so people start losing faith in the mass media and start relying on different source to get information. Second reason was that the mass media was traditional way of gathering information and because of changes in technology people start using mobile phone and internet. Third main reason people start looking to get the information from different mean because the infrastructure for mass media was damage and lot of people cannot access the services of Television, so they start depending on video streaming sites e.g. ustream and YouTube. People start using twitter on big scale to spread and gather news. There was 30 percent of users increased on twitter within first week of disaster and 60 percent of twitter user thinks that it was useful for gather or spread information.
Case Study Analysis:
Twitter is one of the social media platform and micro blogging website, you can have 140 character in one tweet. It is different from other social media plate form because any one can follow you and they don’t need your authorization. Only register member can tweet but to read a message registration is not required. The author of “Multi-level functionality of social media in the aftermath of the Great East Japan Earthquake,” (Jung, Moro 2014) discuss about the five functionalities of twitter by the help of conceptual model of multi-level social media. The following figure describes the five primary function model in twitter very clearly.
Fig No 1 Source: (Jung, Moro 2014)
The five functionality was derived on survey and review of selected twitter timelines.
The first function was having tweets between individual it’s also known as interpersonal communication with others. It is micro level of conceptual model, in this level people from country and outside of a country were connecting other people who were is the affected area. The most of tweets were for checking safety of people that they are safe after the disaster, to inform your love ones if you were at affected area and needs any help or to inform people that you are safe. In the first three days high percentage of tweets were from micro level communication channel.
The second function was having communication channel for local organisation, local government and local media. It is meso level of conceptual model in this communication channel local governments open new accounts and re activate accounts which wasn’t used for a while to keep their local residents informed, the follower of twitter accounts increased very fast. People have understand the importance of social media and benefits of it after the disaster when the infrastructure was damaged and they were having electricity cut out but they were still able to get the information about the disasters and tsunami warnings. Local government and local media used twitter accounts to give different alerts and news e.g. the alert of tsunami was issued on twitter and after tsunami the reports of damage was released on twitter. Local media open new twitters channels and kept people informed about situation. Different organisation e.g. embassies of different countries used twitter to keep their nationals informed about situation about disaster and this was best way of communication between embassies and their nationals. Nationals can even let their embassy that they are struck in affected area and they need any help because they can be in very vulnerable situation as they are not in their country.
The third function was having communication of Mass media which is known as Macro level. Mass media used social platform to broadcast their news because the infrastructure was damage and people in effected area couldn’t access their broadcast. There were some people who were not in the country so they couldn’t access the local mass media news on television so they watching news on video streaming website as the demand increased most of mass media open the accounts on social media to fulfil the requirements. They start broadcasting their news on video streaming websites like YouTube, Ustream. Mass media was giving news updates several times a day on twitter as well and lot of people who were reading it also was retweeting them so information was spreading on very high speed.
The fourth function was information sharing and gathering which is known as cross level. Individual used social media to get the information about earthquake, tsunami and nuclear accident. When someone try to find information they come across the tweets which were for micro level, meso level and macro level. This level is great use when you are looking for help and you want to know different people opinions if they were in that situation what would they have done. The research done on the twitter time line proofs that on the day of earthquake people were tweeting regarding the shelters available and information about transport (Jung, Moro 2014).
The fifth function was direct channels between individuals and the mass media, government and the public. This is also consider as cross level. In this level individual could inform government and mass media about the situation of effected area because of disaster there were some places where government and mass media couldn’t reach, so they didn’t know the situation. Mayor of Minami-soma city which was 25 miles away from Fukushima used you tube to tell the government the threat of radiation to his city, the video went viral and Japanese government have international pressure to evacuate the city. (Jung, Moro 2014)
Reflection:
There was gradually change in use of social media to use a communication tool instead of social media platform in event of disaster. The multi-level functionality is one of the important characteristic which connects it very well with existing media. This is complete prescription which can be used in and after any kind of disaster. Social media can be used with other media as an effective communication methods to prepare for emergency in any future disaster situation.
Twitter played a big role in the communication in the disaster in japan. It was used to spread information, gather information about earthquake, tsunami and nuclear reactor accident. It was used to help request, issue warning about earthquake, tsunami and nuclear reactor accident. It was also used for condolences. Twitter has lot of benefits but it has some drawbacks which has to be rectify. The biggest issue in tweets are unreliability, anyone can tweet any information and there is no check and balance on it, only the person who do that tweet is responsible for the authentic information. There is no control on false information and it spreads so fast that it can create anxiety in people because of contradicted information e.g. if the false information about the range of radiation was released by individual and retweets by other individual who didn’t had any knowledge about the effect of radiation and nuclear accident it would had caused a panic in people. In the case of disaster, it is very important that reliable and right information is released.
Information system can play vital role in humanitarian disasters in all aspects. It can be used in the better communication, it can be used to improve the efficiency and accountability of the organisation. The data will be available widely in the organisation so it can have monitoring on the finances. It helps to coordinate different operation in organisations e.g. transport, supply chain management, logistics, finance and monitoring.
Social media has played a significant role in communicating, disseminating and storing data related to disasters. There is a need of control of that information being spread over the social media since not all type of information is authentic or verified.
IS based tools needs to be developed for disaster management in order to get best result from varied range of data extracted from social media and take necessary action for the wellbeing of people in disaster area.
The outcome of using purpose built IS, will be supportive in making decisions to develop strategy to deal with the situation. Disaster management team will be able to analyse the data in order to train the team for a disaster situation.
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