Three Reasons Why Social Media Works: New Zealand Earthquake Is a Perfect Example

February 23, 2011 - By Eric Gakstatter

Location-based social media, whether it be Twitter or Ushahidi or Gowalla or Foursquare, works. The earthquake in New Zealand earlier this week is a perfect example of how it works and why location-based social media will become an integral part of our lives.

There are many variations of location-based services (LBS). The one most folks pay attention to are the social networking type of apps:

“Send me a text message when Bill is within a half mile of me.”

“Have Starbucks send me a text message, a coupon, and its location when I’m within 2 km of a store.”

Then there’s the family finder type of LBS apps:

“Send me a text message when my child arrives at school.”

“Send me a text message when my child ventures outside of my preset boundary.”

Location-based social media is a bit different than both of the above. You can think of the LBS social media as giving everyone with the proper equipment (a smartphone) the opportunity to be a news correspondent. The “correspondent” can be “reporting” hard news (timely events) or feature stories (human interest). Mostly, the reports are covered in 140 characters or so (thanks Twitter).

The power of location-based social media is that on-site news can be published in near real-time, much faster than a news bureau sending a news correspondent to the scene.

Consider the New Zealand earthquake earlier this week.

Esri has developed an incident response map tool for collecting and displaying social media content for events like the earthquake.

The New Zealand Incident Map shown below (click on it for an interactive map) was a joint effort of a local government entity (Environment Canterbury) and the local Esri distributor (Eagle Technology Group).

Earthquake in Canterbury/Christchurch, New Zealand

As you can see on the map, it includes content from Ushahidi, Youtube, Twitter, and Flickr.

If you haven’t heard about Ushahidi, you should know that it is a non-profit technology company voted by MIT’s Technology Review as one of the 50 Most Innovative Companies for 2011. According to its website, Ushahidi’s “roots are in the collaboration of Kenyan citizen journalists during a time of crisis. The original website was used to map incidents of violence and peace efforts throughout the country based on reports submitted via the web and mobile phones. This website had 45,000 users in Kenya, and was the catalyst for us realizing there was a need for a platform based on it, which could be used by others around the world.”

Youtube is an efficient way to share video footage over the web.

Twitter is, according to its website, “a real-time information network that connects you to the latest information about what you find interesting. Simply find the public streams you find most compelling and follow the conversations. At the heart of Twitter are small bursts of information called Tweets. Each Tweet is 140 characters in length.” I call Twitter “the text message to everyone,” at least everyone who has chosen to receive your Tweets.

Flickr is an efficient way to share photos over the web.

By compiling data in near real-time from these four technologies, as well as the basemap information (OpenStreetMap or some other source), an amazing amount of useful information can be shared. Think about it — even with a little known technology such as this, click on some of the several hundred content entries and one can instantly see the value. The content search name for each provider has a default name. For example, the search term used to pull content for the New Zealand earthquake from Youtube is “christchurch earthquake”.

Some example Ushahidi content obtained by clicking on Ushahidi symbols on the map:

———————-

Shops collapsed on corner of Lichfield and High Street, possibly trapped people.

On the corner of Lichfield & High streets, a block of shops collapsed — rescue svs believe 4-5 people are trapped in the rubble.

Date Published: 2011-02-21 21:53:00

Category: Building damage – red

———————

Fitzgerald Bridge by Kilmore Terrace impassable.

Route around is not usable.

Date Published: 2011-02-23 13:55:00

Category: Road damage

———————

BNZ ATM Riccarton Mall

Working ATM as at 10:49 p.m., 22 Feb – Division St, Riccarton

Date Published: 2011-02-22 22:47:00

Category: ATM/Money centre

——————–

Such citizen reporting is enabled by three technologies; smartphones, social media apps, and GIS (including app software and basemaps). The first two are relatively new technologies and are being adopted at a very fast pace, so I would expect that crises like the recent flooding, political unrest, earthquakes, and other large-scale crises will never be reported the same in the future. Smartphones have empowered people with the ability to share an unprecedented amount of information.

This Just In

Following is another current event where information is being shared via citizen reporting. Note the date on the posts. This is as near real-time as you’ll get: