Social Media and Disaster Management in India: Scope and Limitations

Abstract

Social media, as a boon to internet users has emerged as the first choice of communication among the youth world over. It is being used phenomenally by the youth these days for connecting with each other in terms of data sharing, collaborating, exchanging views, and so on. In fact, social media has time and again proved its utility during emergency situation. Be it Nepal earthquake 2015, Cyclone in Odisha 2013 or Floods in Queensland in 2011, social media has played a vital role in informing and bringing the world together on one platform in dealing with disasters. Though, social media fast is becoming one of the widely used mode of communication, it is important enough that the scope and limitations of social media are explored and understood. Social media provides platform for dissemination of disaster information such as observing situations in remote areas, public tracking from ground zero, for collaborative developments such as collecting donations, providing a platform for people with similar ideologies to unite, and so on. While there are positive sides of social media, there is no denying from the fact that it has its own drawbacks like spreading rumours, promoting ill-fated acts such as terrorism and cyber-crime like “ransomware”. Regardless of the fact that social media is indirectly a breach of privacy, it is gaining reputation world over for its usefulness. In short, this mode of communication is here to stay and grow with time and with paradigm shift of use of media from one way communication to two way message dissemination, it equally becomes important that disaster managers include social media in their scheme of things as well. This paper highlights the advantages and disadvantages of using social media in disaster situations and figures out the scope of this medium of mass communication and limitations that can be potential threat to social media’s extensive use with reference to disaster management in India. The literature review research is carried out by the researchers to develop the three case studies in order to detail possibilities of social media’s use in disaster preparedness particularly, warning system, education, awareness generation and data base management.