The work of the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) in Australia's latest round of natural disaster emergencies has highlighted that the new approach isn't so different from the old approach.
The ABC counts emergency coverage as one of its most vital broadcasting responsibilities, and now, in a time when news spreads via social media, it needs to learn new tools in order to keep up.
Luckily, the skills needed to curate emergency information via social media are the same skills that ABC journalists across the country use every day - collecting, assessing and verifying information. The ABC's focus now needs to be on how it collaborates with like-minded organisations to provide the most comprehensive coverage, while at the same time not damaging its reputation as a trustworthy source of information.
Social media activity presents fascinating opportunities and challenges to those media organisations that are responsible for providing emergency coverage. Focusing as I now do on the world of social media, gauging activity and assessing both its potential and its pitfalls, I have observed the changing way in which members of the public are turning to social media to glean and share information around critical, time-sensitive events. While platforms such as Twitter and Facebook have lent themselves to the quick and easy sharing of key information (and potentially misinformation), tools such as the map-based crowdsourcing tool Ushahidi are changing the way people learn about and contribute to coverage of unanticipated, fast-moving events of a critical nature.
The ABC is working hard every day to cultivate a meaningful presence on various social media platforms. These platforms and others are increasingly becoming legitimate primary channels of connection with the ABC's audience, and with each emergency that it covers there is naturally a growing expectation that it will offer a similar curatorial 'guiding light' for audiences choosing to connect in that way when the going gets critical.
Having set a precedent in emergencies past, the ABC now needs to honour that commitment across future emergencies. How to best achieve that is a question the ABC is still answering. In an organisation with 300-plus Twitter accounts and 100-plus Facebook pages (not to mention the four television stations and 60 local radio stations across the country), a consolidated approach can be complex. To that end, the ABC is currently working on an important piece of work which tackles, cross-divisionally, how its many official social media accounts (beyond local radio) should proactively cover emergencies. These accounts should intersect in such a way as to present a clear offering to the audience so that they can connect with the accounts presenting most value to them.
In terms of platforms such as Ushahidi, in many respects there are some natural synergies with how the ABC has used traditional means to cover emergencies, and how these crowdsourcing platforms work. In local radio, inviting contributions and curating an interesting mix of feedback is a daily broadcasting feature. In times of emergency, the local radio audience, tuned into one of the network's 60 stations dotted across Australia's vastness, knows it can similarly reach out to the station to provide information or perspective, whether it ends up on air or not.
Having observed this trend, and gauged the rapidly growing prominence of Ushahidi in incidences ranging from the Kenya riots to the Haiti earthquake aftermath, the ABC felt it was important to test this open source tool in relation to our own emergencies; or at the very least consider its pros and cons.
The ABC could see that Ushahidi offered so much possibility; key being a means of presenting vital information from a broad selection of sources in a digestible way. But, for a public broadcaster which has always demanded of itself very strict standards on the reliability of information, there are some natural challenges the ABC has to address; weighing up value and risk carefully.
The ABC's experience piloting Ushahidi during the Queensland floods sharpened some questions for the Corporation; in particular, around verification and moderation load, defining its key purpose in using the platform, training (of both staff and the public) and managing expectations. At the heart of these considerations are some broader, fundamental questions to think about, and perhaps for the group to tackle as part of the Summit.
For broadcasters to consider:
- How is the use of social media by the general public changing during times of crisis? How are audience expectations of broadcasters' roles on social media channels changing?
- What role should mainstream media take on via social media channels during emergencies? A one-way broadcasting out of key information, reflecting on-air coverage? Connecting the audience with emergency services that are active on these platforms? Extending coverage by attempting to curate the most comprehensive crowdsourced picture possible through the use and management of such tools as Ushahidi?
- When it comes to open-source, community-driven tools such as Ushahidi, to what extent should broadcasters such as the ABC be involved in the running of implementations that make use of the platform? Are broadcasters the natural partner for these kinds of platforms, or are they better suited to being community-driven initiatives, such as Bushfire Connect (below). If a combination is ideal, how do broadcasters tackle challenges such as the trustworthiness of information, which the ABC has worked so hard to ensure a reputation for?
- To what extent should media organisations assume responsibility for verifying contributions made by the public on social media channels in times of crisis?
- How best should media and emergency services organisations work together to achieve the greatest impact via social media and the tools that draw from them?
- How can all organisations, community groups and individuals combine to produce the clearest, most reliable content possible - that is, minimising duplication and inaccuracy - at a time when people need it most?
Ping Lo began working for the ABC in local radio, and has been involved in emergency coverage of the 2009 Brisbane and northern Queensland floods, as well as assisting remotely in other emergencies - fire, cyclone, flood - in other states.
