Hurricane season is here and researchers are on the ready to study the impact of Social Media during times of crises.
Lockheed Martin, along with the University of Maryland Baltimore County has assembled a team to evaluate Twitter, YouTube and Flickr to learn how beneficial the 3 social media sites are in passing along vital information.
The team will be paying close attention to these sites from July through November, AKA the majority of hurricane season in the US.
Eileen Stilwell of The Courier-Post reports that researchers are paying special attention to the period of July through November, the bulk of the hurricane season in the United States.
Lockheed manager Brian Dennis is quoted as saying...
"We are trying to figure out if the content on these sites is worth paying attention to... And if so, how to separate relevant, useful stuff from the blabbers and noisemakers."
To me this just adds more credence to the power of social media and the power of information and having the platform and ability to share it.
This past January, a magnitude 7.0 earthquake rocked Haiti yet valuable information was still flowing from their capital city of Port-au-Prince via social media and cell phones and satellite phones.
Til next time...
