74 Percent of Us Expect Help When We SMS our Distress: The Red Cross Hopes to Make This a Reality

Social media isn’t just about social ads, the social graph and social networks – the Red Cross has identified social emergencies as part of the changing face of media in the digital age. According to a recent survey, 74% of respondents believed that emergency aid responders heard their cries of help through social media, and expected a response within the hour. The American Red Cross will be hosting an Emergency Data Summit on Thursday August 12th to explore how Twitter, SMS and other social media can be harnessed to ensure that first responders hear the distress cries and get to the scene as quickly as possible. While the gap between expectations and the abilities of first responders appears to be quite wide, the Red Cross hopes to use this summit to improve their own and other emergency response organizations’ uses of social media to empower the public in times of disaster.

Beginning with an official Twitter response during the Californian wildfires of 2007, the Red Cross social emergency response efforts have expanded, culminating in this week’s summit. Wendy Harman, Social Media Director at the Red Cross discusses the impact that social media has had on the Red Cross:

“The social web has been a factor in a significant culture change here over the past 4 years, particularly in disaster response. We’ve now trained more than 200 volunteers who deploy to major disasters in how to tweet, take photos, videos, and provide real time content for the newsroom.”

Twitter in particular is a social media that the Red Cross is keeping its eye on. They have created lists of local Red Cross chapters and all of the Red Cross employees and volunteers, as well as the hashtag #crisisdata to keep track of the discussion surrounding the upcoming Emergency Data Summit. Harman explains the appeal of Twitter to an organization like the Red Cross:

“We began using Twitter during the California wildfires of 2007 because we thought it would be the most efficient way for people to get updated on where shelter locations are with their mobile phones. Twitter has obviously grown into a much more populated site. We’ve continued our strategy here of providing tactical resources and preparedness information. Nearly 300 chapters are now also on Twitter providing hyper-local resources to their communities.”"

The Red Cross commissioned the survey of adult social media use during a disaster in advance of the summit. The data shows that people increasingly expect a timely response from disaster relief organizations when they post their cries for help on Facebook, Twitter or other social media. If they couldn’t reach 911, one in five respondents would use social media to call for help, and 74 percent of these people expected help to arrive within one hour.

The fact that so many people are turning to social media in a disaster is part of the reason why the Red Cross is hosting this summit. They hope to empower people to use social media effectively – so that their cries for help will be heard and get responses. As Harman says:

“I think historically emergency managers have thought of the public as a deterrent to doing their jobs and now there’s very real opportunities to empower the public to provide value to us and to people who need help. Given the right tools, the public could become an integral part of disaster assessment and situational awareness in addition to the traditional means of helping via physical volunteerism and donating.”

Join Baratunde Thurston (left), The Onion’s Director of Digital and author of How to Be Black, for an entertaining look at creative social media campaigns in our Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting February 16. Other speakers include Morin Oluwole (Facebook), Tim Devane (bitly), and SocialTimes' writer Devon Glenn.   Register now.