Twitter is Not the Holy Grail of Emergency Notification

Stuart Adams, at the SociaLies blog recently published a post titled, “Trick or Tweet? Is Twitter a Viable Emergency Notification System?” In the post, he discusses the recent widespread adoption of Twitter in law enforcement, emergency services, and city governments as an emergency notification tool. He ends the post with a question:

Are we setting ourselves up for the big bang by increasing our reliance upon social media for emergency news, rather than what this media was intended for originally?

My answer: Yes (and no).

Emergency Sirens

Although I agree that Twitter is a great citizen communication tool—and that every law enforcement department should use it—we cannot look to Twitter as the Holy Grail of emergency citizen notification, the end-all be-all of the 21st century data-publication system.

When I was younger, I remember my teacher going over the different sounds the public alert sirens would make according to what emergency was occurring. In fact, there was one mounted on top of our elementary school. (Since I lived in Ohio, we were pretty familiar with the sound for a tornado warning.) A system like that—although sooooooo 1950s—actually still has greater reach than Twitter, email, or text message. As long as you can hear, you can know what is going on, in the case of major emergencies.

Granted, a public siren system can’t let you know that there is a traffic accident on 45th and Oak, but it can be very effective in letting everyone know—regardless of their level of technical savvy—that a tornado has been sighted in the area, there are massive wildfires, rampant flooding, or a terrorist attack has taken place. Not to mention the fact that even if cell phone towers are disabled or internet service is disrupted, those sirens will still go off (or the fact that Twitter itself has been shut down in the past for maintenance or because of an attack on its system).

Relying on Twitter

Relying solely on Twitter to disseminate this information is not fool-proof and leaves a lot of people out of the loop. And being out of the loop, or missing a tweet or text, in an emergency could cost lives.

Due to Twitter’s (currently) limited reach, and the desire for law enforcement and emergency services to reach everybody they possibly can during an emergency, Twitter cannot be any department’s sole emergency communication tool.

Using Multiple Channels

Any dependable system will not use one platform, but multiple platforms to disseminate their message. Because of rapidly changing/innovating technology and the fragmentation of communication networks, law enforcement services should develop a multi-channel approach to citizen communication and notification.

However, maintaining multiple channels with separate logins, email address, lists, friends, tweeters, groups, etc., is not only confusing, but hard to manage as well as time consuming. It’s no wonder law enforcement agencies want to open a single Twitter account and stop there. Who has time for all that? And who wants to maintain it?

The Need for an Integrated Platform

That’s why the next generation of social media and communication apps will have to be platforms that interface with multiple channels and accounts. For example, TweetDeck, a great Twitter tool, not only allows you to manage Twitter accounts and searches, but it enables you to send out one tweet to Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace all at the same time.

The best integrated platform, however, will not only send alerts to the big names in social media, but also text messages, emails, Nixle alerts, and more (depending on what new platforms arise), functioning like a 21st century emergency siren. In essence, as more, better integrated platforms arise and mature, the easier it will be for law enforcement to communicate through a vast number of communication channels all at the same time. It would also continue to function on all channels despite the failure of one of those channels (if Twitter goes down, a message can still be sent through Facebook and text message, for example). Unfortunately, I have yet to see such an integrated platform that can do all of that at the same time.

In short, a law enforcement agency that is only using Twitter is setting itself up for failure and is not reaching the entire audience they could. On the other hand, a reliable, comprehensive, integrated platform does not yet exist. There are some limited tools, like TweetDeck and others that automate some integration and that I would encourage law enforcement to use in the meantime, in order to disseminate a single message to as wide a variety of citizens as efficiently as possible.

Yes (and No)

Are law enforcement agencies setting themselves up for a “big bang,” as Adams suggests? Yes, if Twitter is the only system they use. But law enforcement agencies can avoid that meltdown by efficiently tapping as many communication channels as possible. If the technology isn’t there now, it soon will be. And when it is, look for it, understand it, and adopt it as soon as possible.

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Tagged as: communication, community safety, Facebook, law enforcement, law enforcement tools, police, public safety, social media, social networking, technology, Twitter, web 2.0