Using blogging, tweeting, GIS maps to monitor health emergency

May 1, 2009May 1, 2009 / Angelo Fernando / 1 Comment

What a week for social media!

I’ve been doing a lot of data-gathering on the swine flu since we were alerted to the outbreak last Friday. We are a visualization center and decision-lab that happened to hold pandemic flu exercises, so while we are not public health experts, we know a thing or two about emergency planning.

Apart from talking to the media, managing new media efforts and outreach, my work involves being the eyes and ears of the Decision Theater.

A few years ago this would have taken an enormous amount or work. Today, time-crunch notwithstanding, being plugged into social media has made it easier to stay on top of things. It’s all about being connected to the sources and monitoring the monitors.

Is it live, or is it ‘public?’ Sometimes when I brief the media on a story, what I assume to be public knowledge, is not. When the WHO raises a threat level, when a state epidemiologist confirms a new case, when the governor releases a new document or the state health officials hold a web conference … all these go public as they hit the wires. But unless we have an effective monitoring mechanism, or have hired a media monitoring agency, critical data can get buried in the clutter –and chatter. I subscribe to some news services via SMS, and of course follow a few organizations, on my phone via Twitter. I can now ping a reporter using the Twitter with direct message to confirm something.

Direct from the source. I know, all this tweeting, re-tweeting, Facebooking and blog angst (some of which I have referred to) is precisely what adds to that chatter. But rather than throw the baby out with the bathwater, I think that we are better off with more information, if we know how to use it well. Many who have good data are now not limited to squeezing it through the old pipes (cable) and intermediaries (wire services). They do issue press releases, but they also give us a direct feed. And we are better off for that.

Here are a handful that do a good job of it. An expanded list is on our Decision Theater Blog, Lightbulb Moments.

The Center for Disease Control (CDC) is using Twitter for emergency alerts, and has a YouTube Channel
The World Health Organization has an RSS feed for disease outbreak updates
Homeland Security has a blog
FEMA has Twitter Media advisory, and a FEMA feed
Of course there’s always Google Alerts. Cranky at times, but useful.
HealthMap, which is a great way to track global disease, also has a Twitter account

The latter is worth elaborating on. HealthMap is an interesting project. The two people behind it (John S. Brownstein, an instructor at Harvard Medical School and Clark Freifeld, a software engineer) grab several feeds and lay them out to help us make sense of all that data.

TMI? We can deselect categories in HealthMap if we so wish. In an emergency, few seem to complain about too much information. If at all, there would be an uproar had any organization inadvertently held back some information.

Too many swine flu experts hyping it up?

April 28, 2009April 28, 2009 / Angelo Fernando / 2 Comments

I have seen a flurry of responses to the outbreak of swine flu over the past few days, and have to wonder if our ability to monitor and repeat information often overstates the situation /crisis. Or exploit it.

I can say this with some confidence since:

(a) I work at a the Decision Theater, where we have conducted three pandemic flu exercises –the last of which was in February this year.

(b) We have to caution many people who ask, because everyone’s in reactive mode, not realizing that this is still an outbreak, not an epidemic, and still far from being declared a pandemic.

I suppose we could hype up the situation, and claim to be ‘experts’ in the field, just to get media attention. But we won’t go there. It is not in the public interest to add to the uncertainty.

Down-playing. Sort of. If at all, I have had to tell media who call that guess what, Arizona was recently ranked the most prepared state as far as pandemic plans. I also sat in a meeting where one researcher in this field noted that Mexico has some of the most advanced epidemiologists, and that their health care monitoring system was not to be doubted.

I have seen communicators jump into this space. Some in a good way. But as Evgeny Morozov of the Open Society Institute noted, “too many Twitter conversations about swine flu seem to be motivated by desires to fit in, do what one’s friends do (i.e. tweet about it) or simply gain more popularity.”

Here’s a short list of how some in the industry reacted:

On Sunday, while I was monitoring the information on the outbreak (at 10 pm Mountain Time), Gerard Baud pinged me about how his outfit is looking at the crisis, with a short podcast. Unfortunately it was an ad for a tele-seminar that you would have to pay for. I would have preferred if the response, in the public interest, was a free ‘seat’ at the teleconference for at least one person in the organization.

Melcrum today published a short but intelligent piece in the Melcrum Hub about an effective crisis communications plan. One of the points they raised seemed so pertinent to the present situation: Stick to the known facts. It’s so easy to go on anecdotal evidence –as in stuff you saw online, repeated by someone who thought she had heard it from a ‘source.’
Ragan Communications also published a good piece on it but unfortunately they too have connencted it to a webinar that will cost you $99.

Happy to note that IABC is making a teleseminar available free. Details here.

Bottom Line. I know times are tough. But people are also getting sick. There are lots of cities, school districts and healthcare systems who have plans but will like to see what else they could do. I don’t think at this time they should pay for learning about better communications to help their local community and their country.

Hey, that’s just me.

Quotes for the week ending

April 25, 2009April 24, 2009 / Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

“I hate Earth Day the same way I hate Christmas and Thanksgiving … Should we only seek peace on Earth and be thankful one day a year?”

Justine Burt, on the ReGeneration blog

“Enough already. The Oprah and Ashton-i-zation of Twitter is good, if you believe, as I know many of you do, that the more universal Twitter becomes…”

Catherine P. Taylor, on how we are all guilty of being on a constant hunt for cool, but it’s all good.

“This abuse of trust, rather than the activity on Facebook, led to the ending of the work contract.”

Nationale Swisse, an employer who fired a woman who was on Facebook, after calling in sick to say she could not be working in front of a computer. The woman was supposedly on Facebook in bed, using her iPhone.

“conversation shouldn’t be a blind ambition with social media, but rather an end that you seek strategically.”

Rohit Bhargava, on why there are many valid business situations where a conversation via social media are not needed.

“Online media’s ‘favorite child status’ … appears to have diminished over the last few months.”

Nielsen’s Global Online Media Landscape report, 2009

“The world has changed. It is no longer round, nor flat. It is Twitter-bird shaped and people are talking about you, your products and services.”

Wayne Kurtzman, in Media Bullseye

What if we had easy access and stinking content?

April 24, 2009April 22, 2009 / Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

What’s the use of seamless web access if all you get is stale, flawed, biased, puerile content?

Meaning, what would happen if all the investigative reporters turned away from the news business, and all the stories that ever got published by stripped-down newspapers were opinion pieces and press releases thinly disguised as news?

These are my nightmare scenarios when I pick up my Arizona Republic, and grab a copy of The Wall Street Journal. The impact of this hit me when I read that one of the Pulitzer prize winners was a local newspaper here, the East Valley Tribune –a paper that is on life support, having turned to being a free paper, and published just a few times a week.

How can newspapers survive? Could they follow the National Public Radio model (by the way, NPR has cancelled its newspaper subscriptions!) or turn to some other form of revenue to pay journalists? Mitch Joel has summarised some of the scary things happening in the news business.

On the same day he wrote about this, I listened to an NPR show (Talk of the Nation) talking about just this. I was somewhat optimistic to hear a few alternative business models. One of which was The Voice Of San Diego that operates as a non-profit. Think about that. A non-profit newspaper. It says it is “the only professionally staffed, nonprofit online news site in the state focused on local news and issues” that is funded through “the support of individuals, foundations and businesses which, like you, recognize the importance of local news from an independent perspective.”

Sometimes, when I login to Yahoo, I see its front page with news such as “Paula gets choked up. Kara screws up on ‘Idol” and one about two guys in Philly who got a text messaging bill for $26,000. I know they are merely aggregating content, often content that appeals to everyone in general, and no-one in particular. At such times I want to cancel my cable and use that money to subsidize a journalist or one of the new media startups like these that can deliver some real news.

Think before you share (or thank God for real journalists)

April 20, 2009April 20, 2009 / Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

This is a follow up to my oversharing post that got some interesting feedback.

I blog, I tweet, I sort of ‘report’ since I cover a variety of issues in a few venues. But the closet journalist in me always holds me back in the urge to just spew off stuff like “I am on a flight, the cabin doors are closing” (who cares?) and such.

Those who whip out their phones to generate content based on unverified facts, a.k.a. citizen journalists, sometimes get it wrong. Or often they only ‘report’ one fraction of the story. In some instances those fractions or slices are hugely valuable. Like the tweets and photos form the United Airlines splashdown last year.

But contrast that to this story, by Austin American Statesman journalist, Robert Quigley, who used Twittter to fact-check a story that the citizen journalists with itchy thumbs had got skewed. They had broken a story that a gunman in a local bar had taken people hostage. The gun and the hostage situation proved to be wrong.

once we confirmed what was actually happening, the rumors stopped flying …having a journalist who has access to the police and the habit of verifying information is valuable. It did turn out that the guy did not have a gun, and police now say he was never in danger of harming himself or others.

Wow!

Or from another point of view, thank God there still are some solid journalists –who happen to use social media– who know their job.

So the lesson to those wanna-be journalists, and information sharers: think before you type. You may be the only ‘reporter’ on the scene, but a string of words that help nobody, especially when unverified, amounts to dangerous oversharing.

Quotes for the week ending 18 April, 2009

April 18, 2009April 18, 2009 / Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

“If we’re still in the first inning of social media, we’re clearly at the bottom of the first, with two men out, runners on first and second, and a hitter who routinely hits into double plays at bat.”

Catherine P. Taylor, in MediaPost, on the Dominoes’ viral video fueled by social media

“this lately exploded pustule on the posterior of the British body politic.”

**Boris Johnson, Mayor of London, writing in The Telegraph about Damian McBride, the communications strategist** at the center of the email scandal in the British Prime Minister’s cabinet.

“The real impact of a blog story happens only when it moves into the traditional media”

Stephen Pollard, Editor of the Jewish Chronicle, on how the scandal surrounding Gordon Brown has shifted and exploded.

“The emails were sent from an official government computer email account, so let’s just assume he was at his desk when he wrote them, shall we?”

Editorial in the Daily Telegraph, saying the Prime Minister cannot excuse his political strategist lightly.

“The online social world is about as two-way, multi-way, any-way…”

Josh Bernoff, in Advertisng Age, on why the term ‘social media’ is fraught with too much baggage to inspire people to participate in it.

“It’s a hostage rescue operation, something like the Entebbe rescue mission …It has to be discreet and surgical.”

Gotabhaya Rajapakse, Defense Minister, on the Sri Lakan government’s decision to reject the UN appeal for hostages held by the terrorists to leave the so-called safe zone.

“We are linked by geography and history”

Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, on the digital town hall meeting from Santo Domingo, in the Dominican Republic, on the eve of the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago.

“@statesman: I see people on Twitter calling this a “hostage situation” at the Apple Bar. We have NOT been told that by police.”

Robert Quigley, a journalist, on how journalists can still play a role in verifying information. The Austin American Statesman was 35 minutes late to the story, but got it right, debunking the story. People had ‘reported’ via Twitter that a man with a gun was threatening guests.

Blogs suffer collateral damage in U.K. email scandal

April 16, 2009April 18, 2009 / Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

As I was passing through London on Monday I couldn’t help notice the communications storm ripping through Number 10 and the media.

The case of spin doctors being used by Prime Minister Gordon Brown, seems to have consumed everyone from political consultants to the media and communicators on both sides of the political aisle. It was initially a story about slanderous emails, intended to generate content for a web site –one of those attack sites some organizations use. But it soon generated a lot of collateral damage.

As Stephen Pollard, an associate editor of The Jewish Times, in a commentary in The Times observed:

I am no starry-eyed fan of blogging per se. But I am evangelical about the benefits that it can bring – and I accept that the price of being able to print genuine exposés may be the freedom to print rubbish.

As a newspaper man who has turned to blogging he believes crises like these don’t create quite the firestorm unless mainstream media pours on some gasoline. (Note the headline the Times gave his piece: “Don’t be fooled by the power of blogs.”)

Other in-depth analysis included The Independent‘s story on the “Axis of spin” and the raging battle of other newspapers editors’ blogs.

Yes, blogs have become the connective tissue between much of PR, journalism and political communication. We all rejoice in this, but that’s a two-edged sword. In the UK, several cabinet MPs have their own blogs, more or less bypassing the traditional communications teams. Which has another interesting side effect: Not updating one’s blog during a communications crisis, could hereafter be construed as a bad move, too! Almost like offering a “no comment” when a microphone is thrust in one’s face.

Take Tom Watson, the Labour MP who was one of the earliest to have his own blog. The Independent slammed him for being tardy on his posts saying “The digital expert staying strangely silent on the internet.” Apparently he’s stopped tweeting as well.

Oddly enough few are paying attention to the fact that this was basically an email scandal, since it’s now turned into a political PR issue, with blogs at the center of it.

For crisis communictions experts paying attention to blogs (or not) this will go down as a great case study. Stay tuned!

Quotes for the week ending 28 March, 2009

March 28, 2009March 25, 2009 / Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

“This is to voice exception to Leonard Pitts’ use of an entire column on Monday to dis Laura Ingraham’s critique of Meghan McCain’s diatribe about Ann Coulter.”

Rick Melton, of Fountain Hills, Arizona, a reader of The Arizona Republic

“Obama slams CNN dufus…“

Tweet after Barack Obama snubbed CNN’s Ed Henry, during a prime time news conference about the budget proposals.

“I got flamed for bitching about how facebook is like twitter, but thank god I have sympathizers.”

Jamie Ell, a student at ASU

“This isn’t something you can jump into without first reading the instructions. Your failure to first listen, empathize, and formulate a genuine strategy that inspires the community to grow the community will unfold publicly and damage the very attributes you wished to promote.”

Brian Solis, writing of the most thoughtful –and very long– posts on Twitter and how it is ushering a new era of relationship marketing that blogs gave birth to.

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Angelo Fernando's blog since 2004

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