“News no longer breaks, it tweets”.

The fairly new social networking site Twitter has become a popular site during times of crisis such as natural disasters i.e. Black Saturday, Queensland floods etc. It’s a great way to communicate with others outside the disaster area, being able to get in touch with friends and family virtually instantly.

Twitter is so successful due to the low bandwidth it uses and also the strength of crowd sourcing. This social networking site allows a fast spread of ideas, which has grown at a phenomenal rate that is now being used to help in many different ways throughout natural disasters. With 190 million worldwide users twitter is now being flocked with tweets, in times when people and the environment are suffering twitter now acts almost as a security blanket for those in need of help.

On February 7^th 2009 Victoria suffered the worst bush fires in the nations history, which was known at Black Saturday. This natural disaster claimed 173 human lives, injured 5,000 people, destroyed 2,029 homes, killed hundreds of animals and burnt over 4,500 square-kilometers of land. Throughout this horrible and devastating time people from across the nation came together via Twitter, Tweeting their thoughts, sorrow, praying, and offering any assistance they could possible.

Sam the Koala

Twitter has brought everyone on this day and also the other natural disasters that have happened in the last few years and recently together. Twitter was used by people directly affected by the bushfire, and also those outside the affected areas. People tweeted to family and friends to let them know that they were safe; it was used to locate missing people, to offer accommodation to those in need, to offer food, clothing, support and many many other reasons.

Twitter became a huge success as everything tweeted was instant; people could instantly read other peoples tweets and follow what was happening during Black Saturday. It not only raises awareness effectively and efficiently, it mobilizes people to help.

I personally do not have a Twitter account, and it has never really appealed to me to make one, I also see this around my age bracket (generation Y) they are fairly similar in not having a Twitter account, although I do not have my own personal twitter account I can defiantly see the benefits and the usefulness of it in times of crisis like Black Saturday, Japan’s earth quake etc, but on the personal side of just tweeting everyday I find it quiet frankly boring.

For people that are directly involved in Black Saturday or any other natural disaster, twitter is a networking site that can only be used for a short period of time, as in most cases power outages happen in the affected areas, they don’t last hours but last up to days or weeks, eventually all batteries die and communication is reduced to those around you.

Twitter the social media platform brought people and their communities together, and educated people to learn about the situation of loved ones. I can defiantly see Twitter becoming more and more popular into the future in helping people during times on need not only in natural disasters but in peoples personal lives as well, but for now I chose to stay with the majority of generation Y and stay with Facebook. 

Paul Saffo (2009)

Smith, N. "Twitter loves natural disaster in a good way". (2011) viewed on 31st March 2011

http://www.signaturestaff.com.au/blog/10-tips-to-manage-criticism.html