Sutton, N. J. (2010). Twittering Tennessee: Distributed Networks and Collaboration Following a Technological Disaster. Proceedings of the 7th International ISCRAM Conference. Retrieved from http://www.jeannettesutton.com/uploads/Twittering_Tennessee_FINAL.pdf (Accessed 16/03/2012)
This article not only spoke about the positives but mentioned a negative which was refreshing. It was quite similar to the article by Collin (2011) because it mentioned how connections come together to raise awareness, they have to document the disaster and then organize a quick response for the locals. Offline communities have the capacity to make change and are mostly centralized but can sometimes be limited geographically. The article discusses how online communities are decentralized and they bring about connectivity both physically and socially and this ties in with the idea of micro-volunteering and how people can come together through social media's such as Twitter.
It is a way to spread the word by the use of hash tags and it branches to a worldwide audience which also offers support through the mobilization of information. The article mentions how social media can take the turn for the worst because people can put the wrong information and spread rumours through social networks because of the informal organization. However, the article stated that "wisdom of the crowds" has the capacity to be powerful in that there is a lot of self correction, an example of this would be Wikipedia.
Individuals invested to the information, professionals or citizen editors might monitor online behaviours to make sure the truth is being told. Online communities use social media like Twitter in different ways and the first is becoming disaster prepared, having people ready to respond and finding activities in motion for recovery. (248 words)
Sutton's article discusses the use of Twitter following a technological disaster on 22 December 2008 at the Tennessee Valley Authority's (TVA) Kingston Fossil Plant where a coal waste containment pond spilled coal fly ash into the valley and tributaries of the Tennessee River, causing more damage than the highly publicised Exxon Valdez disaster of 1989, but the incident was not broadcasted in major news media until 3 days after the event on 25 December. The lack of response from the media became a rallying point for activists and individuals to use Twitter, following the disaster, to broadcast awareness of the hazardous consequences of the situation. The authors noted the lack of posts from the local community and the public, with non local becoming the ones who challenged and corrected misinformation, becoming the public editors. Due to the lack of participation on Twitter by those most affected, "the virtual community converged to offer support through their mobilization of information (Sutton, 2010, p. 8).
In contrast, the article by Vieweg, Hughes, Starbird and Palen (2010), shows how Twitter was used by people on the ground during two concurrent emergency events, in a collaborative and cooperative way, broadcasting similar types of information to inform and warn of current danger, their posts creating an accurate big picture, and awareness of the crisis. In this case the people most affected by the crisis controlled the situational updates and were their posts were trusted and confirmed.
The detailed and academic discussion of the research methodology, results and discussion, contribute to the reliability and usefulness of Sutton's article, as this Twitter study is the first for a technological disaster.
References
Sutton, N. J. (2010). Twittering Tennessee: Distributed Networks and Collaboration Following a Technological Disaster. Proceedings of the 7th International ISCRAM Conference, Seattle, USA, May 2010 (pp. 1-10). Retrieved from http://www.jeannettesutton.com/uploads/Twittering_Tennessee_FINAL.pdf
Vieweg, S., Hughes, A., Starbird, K & Palen, L. (2010). Microblogging During Two Natural Hazards Events: What Twitter May Contribute to Situational Awareness. In Proceedings of ACM Conference on Computer Human Interaction (CHI), (pp. 1079-1088). Atlanta, GA: ACM. Retrieved from http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~palen/vieweg_1700_chi2010.pdf
This article not only spoke about the positives but mentioned a negative which was refreshing. It was quite similar to the article by Collin (2011) because it mentioned how connections come together to raise awareness, they have to document the disaster and then organize a quick response for the locals. Offline communities have the capacity to make change and are mostly centralized but can sometimes be limited geographically. The article discusses how online communities are decentralized and they bring about connectivity both physically and socially and this ties in with the idea of micro-volunteering and how people can come together through social media's such as Twitter.
It is a way to spread the word by the use of hash tags and it branches to a worldwide audience which also offers support through the mobilization of information. The article mentions how social media can take the turn for the worst because people can put the wrong information and spread rumours through social networks because of the informal organization. However, the article stated that "wisdom of the crowds" has the capacity to be powerful in that there is a lot of self correction, an example of this would be Wikipedia.
Individuals invested to the information, professionals or citizen editors might monitor online behaviours to make sure the truth is being told. Online communities use social media like Twitter in different ways and the first is becoming disaster prepared, having people ready to respond and finding activities in motion for recovery. (248 words)
In contrast, the article by Vieweg, Hughes, Starbird and Palen (2010), shows how Twitter was used by people on the ground during two concurrent emergency events, in a collaborative and cooperative way, broadcasting similar types of information to inform and warn of current danger, their posts creating an accurate big picture, and awareness of the crisis. In this case the people most affected by the crisis controlled the situational updates and were their posts were trusted and confirmed.
The detailed and academic discussion of the research methodology, results and discussion, contribute to the reliability and usefulness of Sutton's article, as this Twitter study is the first for a technological disaster.
References
Sutton, N. J. (2010). Twittering Tennessee: Distributed Networks and Collaboration Following a Technological Disaster. Proceedings of the 7th International ISCRAM Conference, Seattle, USA, May 2010 (pp. 1-10). Retrieved from http://www.jeannettesutton.com/uploads/Twittering_Tennessee_FINAL.pdf
Vieweg, S., Hughes, A., Starbird, K & Palen, L. (2010). Microblogging During Two Natural Hazards Events: What Twitter May Contribute to Situational Awareness. In Proceedings of ACM Conference on Computer Human Interaction (CHI), (pp. 1079-1088). Atlanta, GA: ACM. Retrieved from http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~palen/vieweg_1700_chi2010.pdf