[LINK] Fwd: PoliticsOnline, Feb 13, 2009

[Richard Chirgwin]

stephen at melbpc.org.au wrote:
>> From:   PoliticsOnline <editor at politicsonline.com>
>> Date:   Fri, 13 Feb 2009 17:06:54 -0500 (EST) 
>> Subject: Weekly NetPulse - In Australia, Social Media Sweeps Past Gov't 
>>     
>  
>
> Weekly NetPulse - In Australia, Social Media Sweeps Past Gov't 
> Bureaucracy  February 13, 2009 
>  
> In Australia, Social Media Sweeps Past Gov't Bureaucracy 
>   
Agenda-driven headline from someone clearly not on the ground or taking
any notice of what happened on the day.
> In the aftermath of the worst wildfire in Australia's history, 
> authorities and survivors are questioning whether a formal alert system 
> of text messages or phone calls to warn residents of approaching 
> wildfires might have saved lives. The sweeping wildfires that blazed 
> across southeastern Australia last week killed 181 people. 
>   
- "Might have" might mean worth testing, but doesn't mean a certainty.
- SMS and phone calls are social media???
> The AP reports, "In Victoria, there is no formal alert system of text 
> messages or phone calls to warn residents of approaching wildfires." 
> Australian officials reported that the fierce intensity and fast-changing 
> direction of the fires make sirens, email and other warning systems 
> ineffective, but Victoria state Premier John Brumby said, "A national 
> emergency warning system for wildfires should be considered, and that he 
> wrote to Prime Minister Kevin Rudd about the idea months ago.
>   
- The best evacuations in front of fires have always been conducted by
people on the ground such as police.
- If you're busy with the fire, you might not even notice the SMS beep
from the mobile phone.
- If you're busy with the fire, you're probably not inside waiting for
the phone to ring.
> The Australian Newspaper reports, "Attorney General Robert McClelland, 
> working to expedite a nation-wide warning system utilizing cells and text 
> messaging claims that the system was ready for deployment months prior to 
> the fires but was delayed due to bureaucratic inefficiency and political 
> wrangling." 
>
> Social media tools such as Twitter, Facebook and Flickr, as was true in 
> the cases of the Mumbai Terrorist attacks and the California wildfires, 
> were the first, most credible and raw sources of information during the 
> disaster. 
As someone watching Twitter on the day, I call B.S. This is fan-driven
stupidity. Twitter was rarely "first". In general, people re-Tweeted
information from authoritative sources; ABC radio and the CFA Website.
If you're re-distributing you are, by definition, not "first".

It was also very common for someone to arrive at their computer, a
couple of hours out of date, and start re-Tweeting old news; which, if
you were watching Twitter for critical information, would mean having to
filter out all seriously asynchronous information. In other words:
Twitter would be, at best, useful if you were experienced and adept with
Twitter. To ordinary users, it would be useless.
> Mark Parker from SmartSellingBlog reflected on social media and 
> the wildfires saying, "It angers me that as I was getting official 
> reports from credible, reliable sources this same information was taking 
> hours to get distributed into the mainstream community. The TV either 
> wasn't up to date or the networks felt it wasn't important enough to run 
> anything more than hourly updates - it's not like they don't know how to 
> use ticker updates." 
>   
SmartSellingBlog is criticising commercial TV editorial policy on the
assumption (apparently) that commercial TV is all that exists. It should
also be noted that SmartSellingBlog was writing from Brisbane, which
presumably wasn't at any risk from fires in Victoria. IOW, the complaint
here is "I wanted to rubber-neck without changing TV channels or turning
on the radio, how dare they let me down!"

Now, let's deal with other downsides of (say) Twitter as an early
warning system.

1) The service has no obligation to deliver reliable function: "The fail
whale won't tell me where the fire is!"
2) Twitter isn't particular to the user; a thousand "pray for the
victims" messages is no use to someone in the face of the fire.
3) Twitter has a few thousand users (5k is a number I've seen) in
Australia, rendering it utterly inadequate as a general tool for "early
warning".
4) Twitter requires that the user is at the screen. It's passive, when
early warning demands something that's active and can't be ignored,
missed, or dismissed as irrelevant to the reader.

I wrote in a column last week, and repeat here: watching social media
advocates crawl over dead bodies and burned houses to plant their own
flags is a disgusting spectacle.

RC
>
> (The Australian) Plea on Automated Emergency Messaging 
> http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,,25052154-5013404,00.html
>
> (NY Times) Australia Wildfire Suspects Are Freed 
> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/13/world/asia/13australia.html?
> _r=1&ref=world
>
> (AP) Australian official: Wildfire deaths will pass 200 
> http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jlUCqDbfvOMgcnOmIjSnqFNn
> i6iQD968LCM00
>
> (ABC) Social Media Explodes in Wake of Deadly Bushfires 
> http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/02/09/2486463.htm
>
>
> "Quote Of The Week" 
>  
> Australian Politicians Enter The World of New Media, Follow in Footsteps 
> of Obama
>
> "The sooner our politicians see the internet as a vehicle for two-way 
> communication, not a new medium for old static press statements, the 
> sooner the inclusive, democratic and liberating power of online 
> engagement will be harnessed in the same way Obama did - to such a 
> transformative effect." - Ed Coper, campaigns director at online activist 
> group GetUp. (end quote)
> --
>
> Cheers,
> Stephen
>
> Message sent using MelbPC WebMail Server
>
>
>
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