Participatory Design for the Social Media Needs of Emergency Public Information Officers

ABSTRACT This paper describes the design, execution, and results of a participatory design workshop with emergency public information officers (PIOs). During the workshop, PIOs and researchers explored ideas and designs for supporting the social media needs of PIO work. Results indicate that PIO perceptions of social media have changed as they have learned to incorporate activities of the public into their work, yet they still struggle with issues of trust and liability. Based on workshop design activities, the paper offers a set of design recommendations for supporting the social media needs of PIO work practice such as the ability to monitor, document, and report social media activity

Beyond the myth of control: Toward network switching in disaster management

A novel, ‘net-centric’ approach to disaster management is challenging traditional forms of command and control, through technology-supported, self-directed networks of heterogeneous stakeholders including affected citizens. Citizen involvement in crisis response can strengthen the resilience of local communities, and improve the relevance and delivery of response, evidenced by increasingly important Web2.0-based platforms. While netcentric responses show promise as a principle, it remains unclear how networks can be integrated in shared response infrastructures. We draw on the concepts of ‘programming’ and ‘switching’ to suggest a different perspective by which to explore the potential and consequences of interconnected networks. Finally, we propose a research agenda that can help identify and understand switching points in disaster response, comparing a weakly formalized management structure, but strong in citizen involvement, with a strongly formalized management structure, but weak in citizen involvement. We thereby suggest how response organizations can relinquish their reliance on control and command approaches, increasing their adaptive capacity to capitalize on citizen-based information