This document discusses how social media has changed crisis communication by increasing the speed at which information spreads. It provides examples where social media provided insights into crises, such as crowd movements, within minutes of incidents occurring. It argues crisis management must now incorporate social media for both information gathering and communication to address this new information velocity and ensure accurate information is shared. Officials should claim information by communicating on social media from the start of incidents. While information on social media may not be reliable, it can provide new perspectives to aid crisis response.

1. The use of social media in
crisis communication and
information management
case study
Bert Brugghemans
ISCRAM Summerschool 2012

2. Bert Brugghemans
Antwerp Fire Service
Area manager
Emergency manager
CCO
@bertbrugghemans

3. Loveparade case

4. Case 1: Love Parade Duisburg incident
- Juli 24, 2010
- 1,5 milj visitors
- 21 died
- >500 injured
- Mass compression, mass turbulence

6. Social media changes the velocity of the communication about the
incident. This also changes our need for information (management)!
First youtube video was viewable a couple of minutes after the
incident
Social media may give us insights: what is happening (crowd
compression, crowd turbulence) or what do people think is happening
(bomb attack, falling people, …) (Palen et al, 2007)
Proper monitoring of social media would have given the crisisteam
very valuable information about the incident, a couple of minutes
after the incident.

9. Train accident (BE)
- 8u28
- 18 died
- 130 injured
- Twitter: 8u30
- First picture via
twitter: 8u33
- First pictures in the
newspapers all came
from Twitter

10. Why is social media changing the velocity of
emergency communication/management?
- Information gap
- Network effect
- Evolution and penetration of social media

11. Effect of social media Information availability
Information
Information gap
Information demand
Time

12. Offline
Online

13. Use of
digital
media

14. Social media and “age”

15. Penetration of
smartphones and
tablets

16. How do we deal with this new velocity of information?
- Make social media part of your crisismanagement strategy
- Information management
- Communication
- Use social media in daily life (it also helps you in your
regular work …) – make it a way of life!
- Monitor social media from the first minute of the incident
(Case 3) – it’s easy
- Communicate trough social media from the first minute of
the incident (Claim the information)

17. Pukkelpop case

18. Case 2: Pukkelpop incident
- August 18, 2011
- Very heavy storm over festival area
- 5 died
- >140 injured
- 65.000 involved

19. There was a very strong activity on social media …
But there was no official communication on social media …
Which resulted in wrong casualty numbers, wrong phone numbers, wrong advice, … on
social media.

20. Gebruik?

21. Use the position as an official gouvernement agency to
“claim” the information
You are the only source of viable and correct information
(and advice)
But do what you promise!

22. How to claim the information?
- Be present (and be “official!”)
- Use influencers
- Make good messages

23. Be present
Be official!

24. Use influencers

26. Make good messages!
Clear # (retweetable)
What’s happening
What do I have to do? (advice)
Hyperlink (more information)

27. Chemiepack case

28. Fire in a chemical storage
facility
(Chemiepack)
- Very heavy smoke
- Very large social media
activity
- Political consequences
to bad communication

30. Geolocation
• 1% in 2011
• 2012?

32. Visualisation

33. Trending

34. Free information

35. Monitoring = gathering information from social media
= This is why we want to use social media in the first place
(communication is a nice by-product)
Information can give us a new insight or a secundary
opinion next to the professional opinions
(eg position of smoke cloud, …)

36. What information can social media offer?
- Geolocated information
- Visual information
- Movies, pictures
- Maps
- Trending
- Big data
- Opinions, wrong information, …
- Misconceptions
- Wisdom of the crowd
- …
But what about reliability?
& what about complexity?

37. And we can even use social media to share our information …

40. Conclusions
Social media is present, big and growing

41. Conclusions
Social media is changing the velocity of
crisiscommunication

42. Conclusions
Crisis management has to deal with social media:
1e: monitoring (gathering information)
2e: communication (new way of participation)

43. Questions?
Bert Brugghemans
Antwerp Fire Service
about.me/bertbrugghemans
@bertbrugghemans