Sunday, November 29, 2015

2015 attacks on Paris showcase social media’s impact on individuals experiencing crisis by increasing knowledge, response, and support

When experiencing a crisis, people utilize the immediacy of social media sites, such as Facebook and Twitter to post real-time updates about what’s going on, which has proven to greatly increase knowledge, preparedness, and response efforts.

Traditionally, social media was mainly used for leisure and casual social networking. More recently, social media platforms have evolved into extremely prevalent multi-dimensional outlets for obtaining, engaging in, and sharing information pertaining to things such as news and politics.

Facebook for example, was originally created as an easy way to keep college friends connected post graduation but has since become the main source of news for 30%of all Americans.

Large amount of people relying on social media platforms for news increases usefulness and dependency in times of crisis

Facebook is the most used social media site in the world, pulling in approximately 900,000,000 users globally. Pew Research Center (PRC)reports that 63% of Facebook users use the platform as a source of news. Twitter, the second most used social media site, has 310,000,000 users worldwide and 63% of Twitter users also acquire their news through the social media site.

Additionally, people use social media to participate in and contribute to news coverage. In 2014, PRC found 14% of social media users posted their own photos of news events to a social networking site, while 12% posted videos. This practice has played a role in various recent breaking news events, including the riots in Ferguson, and the 2015 terrorist attacks on Paris.

The PRC also reported that among all social media sites, Twitter has the greatest strength in providing breaking news and as-it-happens coverage. Many people around the world utilized Twitter for this feature alone during the Paris attacks.

The massive number of users on each site in combination with the high percentage of users sharing and obtaining news through them suggests the potential power they have during times of crisis.

People experiencing crisis use Social Networking Sites as source for SOS with real-time updates, increasing knowledge, preparedness, and response

A case study conducted by Dave Yates and Scott Paquette about emergency knowledge management and social media technologies during the 2010 earthquake in Haiti found using social media can help increase knowledge and response efficiency in times of disaster.

Firstly, social media gives people immediate access to critical, uncensored information about events as they unfold. Most importantly among these people are response teams and other individuals who can provide aid, as well as those who are at risk of being affected next.

“Social media channels can be employed to transmit critically valuable information to as many people as possible. Internet can nowadays speed up communication and awareness, beyond that of the traditional risk and crisis communication strategy because it allows real time communication,” reported Yates and Paquette.

Second, first hand accounts published on social media act as vital testimony. Videos, pictures, and even written content posted by those being affected contribute to a greater understanding of the event and help the development of future response plans. Such evidence also eliminates news coverage bias, allowing people to learn about the events without a politicized lens.

Program Manager for Risk Communication and Resilience at the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, Holly Roberts, believes social media is a very effective tool for coordinating response efforts in times of crisis.

START Program Manager Holly Roberts

Social media proved to play a crucial role in coordinating and relaying information during the 2015 attacks on Paris. People being affected used social media to post pictures, videos, and written commentary about the events as they were happening. Some individuals not immediately affected provided eyewitness accounts. 

Experts and people in positions of power, such as police and governments, can use social media to post updates, opinions, and suggestions for response strategies, and other useful information, knowing it will be quickly distributed to a large audience. 

Immediately following the Paris attacks, the French government used Facebook and Twitter to release and circulate a ‘wanted ad’ for one of the men responsible for the attacks who survived and successfully fled the country.

Other organizations such as Eurostar and Air France utilized Twitter to update travellers, while NYPD used the platform to keep New York citizens updated about the potential risk of being attacked next.

Social media acts as a joining force for humanity

The borderless and interactive nature of social media unites people directly and indirectly affected in a crisis. Those directly affected utilize social media as a trustworthy source to call for help, while simultaneously warning others of potential risk. Others who may indirectly suffer from the event(s) feel they can turn passive observation into active response by sharing the information and expressing support.

For example, Parisians used the Twitter hashtag #PorteOuverte (open door) to offer shelter in their homes to those stranded in the French capital.

Facebook’s passive position was successfully turned into active response when it deployed its Safety Check feature, which allowed users in Paris to ‘check in’ to their personal page and let their individual social networks know they were safe. Safety Check also provides a page for users to check which of their friends are in the area and which have checked in as safe.

According to Facebook, in the first 24 hours after the attacks on Paris, 4.1 million users checked in using the feature - that's approximately one-third of the 12.1 million people who live in the Paris metropolitan area. Those poses reached 360 million users worldwide, the Washington Post reports. As another effort to show support, Facebook also installed a feature in which any of its users could layer the French flag over their profile picture.

Subsidiary sufferers of the Paris attacks spanned across the globe. In the case of a terrorist attack,
people all over the world feel threatened by the terrorist organization and sympathize with those

targeted because a somewhat equal risk of being attacked exists across borders.

To show widespread support, an image promoting ‘peace for Paris’ quickly surfaced and took over social media, along with the hashtag #PrayForParis. This hashtag became a worldwide trending topic almost immediately after the attacks and in the first 24 hours alone it had been used over 5.7 million times on Twitter, and 4.8 million times on Instagram, according to MSNBC.

Famous “hacktivist” group Anonymous has also taken an initiative to engage in active response through social media. The group is comprised of a compilation of average citizens with exceptional computer skills from all over the world.

The group declared a ‘cyber war’ against ISIS, the terrorist group responsible, pledging to remove ISIS’s digital footprint. They named the operation #OpParis.

Since the initial Paris attacks, Anonymous claims it has removed more than 12,000 social media accounts and numerous websites linked to the terrorist organization. As a group that was created on the Internet and relies on the Internet to function, Anonymous uses Twitter and YouTube as its primary sources to provide #OpParis updates.

START Program Manager Holly Roberts


Large number of users and channels create multiple perspectives and complicate informational accuracy and validity

The hundreds of millions of people using social media platforms for instantaneous and simultaneous information sharing during times of crises can cause confusion and even misinformation.

Multiplicity of players and channels raise questions pertaining to the inclusion and exclusion of players, channels and events, the validity of certain details, and which directions should be given as a response. During a crisis, who is an ‘expert’? Is it the person experiencing the crisis or someone ‘qualified’ to objectively evaluate the situation?

Public perspectives eliminate some of the concerns about lack of transparency from governments and the news industry, but some information might be false and can cause mass hysteria where it shouldn’t exist. Similarly, sometimes information shouldn’t be exposed because it could interfere with investigations.

In the case of the Paris attacks, misinformation surfaced on social media and the attempted 'active response' by users was tragic. Someone edited a picture Twitter user Veerender Jubbal posted of himself to make it look like he was involved in the execution of the Paris attacks. The edited picture went viral, and many people retweeted it along with threats on his life, and put an innocent person at risk.

START Program Manager Holly Roberts


The overwhelming use of social media throughout the Paris attacks prove beneficial and pave way for crisis management in the future

Social media has become an important source for the distribution of news, as platforms such as Twitter provide real-time updates about events as they happen.

Reviewing and analyzing social media usage throughout the Paris attacks will help people understand what to expect in future events. We can learn from and build off of the limitations to continue to improve knowledge, preparedness, and response during a crisis.

START Program Manager Holly Roberts

In the case of the Paris attacks, Miss Roberts believes the most effective way to go about fighting against radical Islam groups, such as ISIS, is to utilize social media in the same ways the terrorist groups do.

ISIS is using social media platforms - mainly YouTube and Twitter - as a recruitment method, instantly sending out persuasive messages to massive audiences around the globe to join their cause. Often times they use false information in these recruitment attempts, claiming the Quran preaches much more radical beliefs than it actually does.

The most effective way to combat ISIS and these radical, false messages is by teaching the social media-based global audience targeted through social media itself.

Social media is proving to be a critical technique in fighting 'the war on terrorism'. 

1 comment:

  1. I think that you have a lot of really good bullet points that will be really useful in supporting your main points. Because this is a recent world event, there are so many real world examples which will really support your findings as well. You could try to find data about which social media platform was the most visited during and following the attacks in Paris. Additionally, you could pull from the multiple first hand accounts that are all around the internet right now to build on the general idea of how social media platforms are used during a terrorist attack or even just a time of chaos in general.

    Grammatically, I would change your first head line to say "2015 attacks in Paris" instead of "2015 attacks on Paris" and maybe relate back to the idea of the attacks being "on Paris" as a whole later on in one of your subheads.

    You could add in some information about ISIS and how they are using social media to threaten others, instead of how the Parisians used social media in a beneficial way to contact their family and friends. Including ISIS and even the "Anonymous" user who has outwardly used social media to stand up to ISIS would be a good way of showing the opposing sides of social media platforms (the positives and negatives.)

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