Social media: Two attitudes

"Social media is for parties. We ain't giving no parties." This quote is attributed to a Washington DC Fire Department spokesman in a response over the DC fire twitter feed. It seems that one spokesman (who was later transferred to another job) was tweeting real-time information that the public could actually use. His boss preferred the usual pablum that most public agencies put out.

The problem for me here is not the internal workings of the DC fire department. I have no knowledge of the issues involved or the appropriateness of the tweets, so I do not feel I can comment on a personnel action. What does concern me is that a spokesman for a major department is completely dismissing social media as means of communicating with the public.

There are certainly concerns about providing real time information. Part of it is culturally based: emergency responders don't like to share information with outsiders. Part of it is the technical difficulty - computer aided dispatch systems are usually required to be isolated from the Internet because of security concerns, making it impossible to add a "tweet this" option and requiring a separate step when a dispatcher is dealing with an incident.

However, ultimately we're going to have to deal with these issues. The public demand for information is already out there and a tweet that says, "fire at Broadway and Main. Avoid the area" seems a reasonable expectation.

Let me give you a different quote from Craig Fugate, Director of FEMA, from his testimony before the House Committee on Homeland Security, Subcommittee on Emergency Preparedness, Response and Communications:

"Social media is an important part of the Whole Community approach because it helps facilitate the vital two-way communication between emergency management agencies and the public, and it allows us to quickly and specifically share information with state, local, territorial, and tribal governments as well as the public."

So what's your attitude towards social media?

Comments

[Chris Church]

Thanks for the article! The sad thing is, as you describe it, the way the fire department was using twitter, they weren't even taking advantage of it as social media, but merely as a broadcast tool, and it seems wholly appropriate.

Is there more to the story? Following your link, I found the twitter account (@dcfireems), and it looks like it may have resumed sending out information.