On Friday, March 11, Japan was shaken by an 8.9-magnitude earthquake, causing damage with blackouts, fire and tsunami. While cell phone networks were blocked from all the calls trying to go through, the Internet remained intact, thus becoming an important means of communication for the Japanese. The U.S. Embassy in Tokyo encouraged people “to continue your efforts to be in contact with your loved one(s) using SMS texting and other social media (e.g., FaceBook, MySpace, Twitter, etc.) that your loved one(s) may use.” Less than an hour after the quake, the number of tweets from Tokyo topped 1,200 per minute, according to Tweet-o-Meter, and Facebook activity was high as well.The message from the Embassy also suggested people use online services such as Google Person Finder and the Red Cross's Family Links website to help locate loved ones.
While cell phone networks couldn't hold up the magnitude of calls being made during this tragedy, the Internet proved worthy and enabled many people to get in touch with family and friends.
http://mashable.com/2011/03/14/internet-intact-japan/
I wrote about the same topic this week. I saw an episode of Dateline where the reporter was talking about how the citizens in Japan were doing this. She also said that since travel was impossible for reporters to get there shortly after the eartquake that they were also using the social media sites to find story leads. I think that this says something about the staying power of social media sites.
ReplyDeleteExactly. When other sevices failed, social media via the Internet remained intact. Something that powerful cannot be just a fad.
ReplyDeleteInstant contact with loved ones is one of the positives I see with social media. Although, I have said before I am not a huge fan of social media, this is a time when I see it has it's place today and will only get bigger in the future.
ReplyDelete