[1st-mile-nm] Social Media: Thurs. Evening Presentation in Santa Fe

[Richard Lowenberg]

Social media experts to speak on technology’s benefits during disasters

http://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/local_news/article_770496f6-4a0e-539c-8d2d-200e87bcce80.html

Posted: Tuesday, March 12, 2013 7:00 am | Updated: 12:15 am, Wed Mar 
13, 2013.

By Staci Matlock
The New Mexican

Harrumph all you want, technophobes and social media scoffers. Those 
140 character tweets, YouTube videos and mobile map apps could help you 
survive the next disaster, says an expert who studies the way people 
utilize evolving social media technology during a crisis.

Leysia Palen, associate professor of computer science at the University 
of Colorado, is intrigued by the way crowds and emergency managers are 
using social media to organize, communicate and help each other during 
disasters. Palen will talk about her research at 7:30 p.m. Thursday at 
the Greer Garson Theatre Center in Santa Fe, the first lecture of the 
free 2013 Santa Fe Institute public lecture series.

Palen is the director of Project EPIC (Empowering the Public with 
Information in Crisis) and the Connectivity Lab, which tracks technology 
and communications in disasters.

Palen and colleagues have analyzed the use of online communications in 
more than a dozen disasters, including Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the 
2007 Virginia Tech shootings and the 2010 Gulf Coast oil spill.

Palen co-wrote, with her colleague Kate Starbird at the Alliance for 
Technology, Learning & Society, a paper on how people in Cairo used 
retweets through the popular Twitter program to spread information and 
build support during the 2011 Egyptian uprising.

The public began using social media a few years ago, more quickly than 
government agencies and most media outlets, to spread information during 
disasters. Citizens posted videos and used Twitter to communicate 
on-the-ground crisis events from fires to revolutions as they unfolded. 
In the last couple of years, governments and emergency managers have 
caught on to the advantages — and drawbacks — of using social media to 
get information out quickly.

Los Alamos National Laboratory jumped heavily into using social media 
during the 2011 Las Conchas Fire, as did national forest managers in New 
Mexico. In 2011, the magazine Emergency Management said incident 
commanders at wildfires, floods and other natural disaster events needed 
to pay attention to what was happening on the social media front.

Palen holds a doctorate in information and computer science from the 
University of California, Irvine.

You can follow Palen’s tweets on all things related to crisis social 
media @palen.

Contact reporter Staci Matlock at 505-986-3055 or 
smatlock at sfnewmexican.com or @StaciMatlock.


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Richard Lowenberg, Executive Dir.
1st-Mile Institute, 505-603-5200
P.O.Box 8001, Santa Fe, NM 87504
www.1st-mile.org  rl at 1st-mile.org
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