Social media steps up in quake recovery

UPDATE: 

Social media coverage surrounding the Christchurch earthquake has snowballed.  Twitter has become overloaded several times today and feeds involving the earthquake search term (#eqnz) have been throttled (or limited).

On top of this, Twitter and Facebook followers are often beating TV crews to the punch when it comes to on the scene updates. 

Members of a Facebook page dedicated to one central city building damaged by the quake knew before police did that the search was to be reduced and then called off, and why.  One member was talking to a searcher at the time, and informed others of the Search and Rescue plans via chat.  Minutes later, television news reported the same. 

However not all social media that glisters is gold.  Frustration has become evident when old news is re-tweeted, often containing good news that has since been retracted.  Misinformation has flown at the speed of light as desperate users find random re-tweets or pick up on the unfiltered speculations of those following coverage.  One episode that raised wild hopes only to turn them to despair and anger occurred yesterday, when ZMonline read out the name of one of the missing on what one user thought was a safe list.  Twitter users bombarded the station with calls, tweets, texts and emails only to be told the station had been trawling for information regarding the person.

Donald Christie of Catalyst IT Limited, and former president of the New Zealand Open Source Society, said social media has been very useful at updating immediate information in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake and also at putting structure around unstructured information. 

He said there was a problem with co-ordinating aid efforts in a way that did not hinder official operations, and that social media sites such as eq.org.nz, designed by a group of  "ad-hoc developers" helped maked sense of the information coming from the "flow of consciousness" that was social media. 

The website, part of which Mr Christie helped with, provides useful information about the earthquake recovery, such as where water can be found and what roads are blocked.  Texts are sent to the site and loaded onto a map.  Under each area, the information is sorted into useful categories, that appear on the map when you choose the category.  Reports are viewed by volunteers before being published and are tagged as either verified or unverified. 

Mr Christie is working on a sister-site which will go live tomorrow, that aims to help I.T. businesses in Christchurch get back on their feet by providing information on available office space and connectivity.  He stressed the need of Christchurch's I.T. community for paid work at this time.

Mr Christie said that as far as he was aware, information posted using the hash tags #eqnz and #eqnzcontact had been incorporated into Google's person finder.  Social media was a good thing, he said. "The more channels you can use when traditional channels have broken down, the more channels you can have the better."

Other media has found both praise and criticism on the social networking sites, ranging from blessing television presenters to strings of expletives for incorrect reporting.  Politicians, including the Prime Minister, have been lauded for their use of social media to update public.

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Social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook have stepped to the fore in the efforts to find out the status of people missing in the Christchurch earthquake. 

With congestion and damage knocking out many telco’s abilities to connect people via phones, the internet has stepped up not only to reassure concerned friends and family, but also to contact those trapped under the rubble.

One Japanese teacher trapped under the rubble of the CTV building managed to email family back home, giving details that seven students were around her and that her condition was stable, but she could not move.

Google launched its ‘people finder’ within hours of the quake, a tool which allows people to search for information and the status of Christchurch residents, or to post a profile of someone who is missing. 

And social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook have proven invaluable to those frantic to find missing friends and family.  Constant updates on Twitter, and profiles like @safeinchch, have kept up a stream of information about who is missing, who has been located, and other useful quake info such as where recovery centres are set up. 

Hashtags on Twitter (where a hash key is followed by the group or search term) have been used extensively to garner more information about missing persons, with #eqnz overloading the feed with its updates and #eqnzcontact attracting many concerned tweets.

Groups on Facebook have been used to tick off who has been found for people outside Christchurch who have heard no word.  The groups are a sad reminder of just how many are missing, and how much of New Zealand is involved.

On the CTV Crew Roll Call, lists of CTV crew still missing attract worried debate that cycle endlessly over the same questions, and retweets of pleas asking for any information about missing relatives and friends appear every few seconds.