The role of social media in the emergency management

Abstract

The information-technological revolution has brought new forms of connections and communication among people. The development of new technologies has led, among other things, to the development of applications, commonly known as social media, which allow people to interact and exchange information in a way impossible twenty or thirty years ago. Bearing in mind the key characteristic of social media - the possibility of two-way communication among a large number of people, the significant role of social media in emergencies is more than evident. In academic literature on social media and emergencies, there is a large number of case studies that examine this relation over the past few years. As the analysis of the existing literature has shown, Twitter is the most dominant social network analysed individually within the context of crisis communication in emergencies. The research has also shown that out of 46 European countries, it has been determined that in 30 countries the institutions in charge of emergencies have accounts on Twitter and Facebook, 18 are present on YouTube and 8 on Instagram. In addition, some research also pointed to the trends in the growing use of social media in emergency management, as well as increased perceptions of the population about such trends. Based on the literature review of the most relevant works, the aim of the paper is to summarize the main findings on the ways in which social media are used in the emergency management by the relevant organizations as well as to present the benefits of using social media within the context of emergencies.

Keywords

• social media
• emergency management
• disasters
• communication tool
• crisis communication