Twitter bird. Courtesy of Andreas Eldh on Flickr.

The “Social Media for Good Roundups” are a series of posts in which I share interesting articles and other resources that I come across. This week’s roundup looks at good examples for email-newsletters, improved security for Twitter accounts, a critical look at the lack of coordination between crowdsourcing initiatives and additional thoughts on the role of social media after the Boston bombings.

• Three Nonprofit e-Newsletters to Learn From

I’m frequently shocked by how bad the e-mail newsletters sent by large International Organizations are. This blog post looks at three positive examples, that show how NGOs can integrate social media and donate-buttons into their newsletters. Speaking of newsletters: did you know there is a weekly Social Media for Good newsletter? You can subscribe to it here…

• Did the Kenyan Elections Really Need 3 Maps, 7 Phone Numbers, and Several Web Forms?

I recently described myself as a sceptical optimist and that is certainly true when I look at crisis mapping. That’s why I was very glad to read this very thoughtful piece, written by well-known crisis mapper, Anahi Ayala Iacucci, in which she looks at the Kenya elections and the multiple competing and confusing crowdsourcing system that had been set up. I’m a huge fan of coordination and think this post shows why it is necessary and helpful (even if it isn’t sexy).

• Twitter Will Soon Release a Two-Step Security Solution

Considering how often prominent Twitter accounts get hacked, it’s good to see that the company is finally starting to think about introducing two-step verification, rather than shifting the responsibility to the users. Unfortunately, there aren’t any details yet, and I’ll be particularly curious to see how they will deal with the fact that many accounts are managed by multiple users. I suppose we’ll find out soon.

• Reddits Reflects on the Recent Boston Crisis

The Reddit team has published this post on the Reddit community’s role after the Boston bombing. As you might have heard, Reddit users falsely identified a person as a suspect a process which then “spiralled into very negative consequences for innocent parties” – which is a very long way of saying “witch hunt”. Reflecting on the responsibilities that social media sites have, when their tools are used to harm people, is certainly something that more sites should spend time on.

Mobile phones and SMS can be great tools to help people with information or cash in emergencies. But they are just tools and should only be used, when they can be used responsibly and when it makes sense to use them.

To help organizations or activists decide, when to use SMS and how to use SMS in natural disasters, the GSM Association, which represents the interests of mobile phone providers worldwide, has recently published a draft “Code of Conduct for the Use of SMS in Natural Disaster” (PDF).

Seeing that the Qatar Foundation, where Patrick Meier is working these days, was involved in producing this document, it is no surprise that it is very useful and down to earth. I like particularly, that there is a very strong emphasis on not raising false expectations by setting up SMS systems without being able to follow up on requests. This lesson was hopefully learned in Haiti where multiple well meaning organizations had set up SMS systems without being able to do anything with the thousands of messages they got.

• You can download the Code of Conduct for the Use of SMS in Natural Disasters here (PDF).

(h/t Anahi Ayala Iacucci)

The Stormpins iPhone App – it even looks like Waze.

More than a year ago I wrote about Waze, a traffic jam app that I think could be extremely helpful, if modified for crisis mapping. Now it turns out that somebody has done just that.

Stormpins is an iPhone app (no Android version, sorry) that allows everyone to report hazards via their mobile phones, with an emphasis on weather related hazards. The app uses your phone’s GPS and let’s you report things like fallen trees, flooded roads, accidents and other incidents. These hazards are then visible on the web and within the app.

Closing the information – decision loop

In addition – and this is what I really like about it – Stormpins comes with an online dashboard for emergency managers that allows them to view all reported hazards, forward them to emergency responders or delete them.These last two options are what makes the app special, since most crisis mapping applications are only good at collecting data, but very bad at closing the loop between the information and the people who can do something about the hazards that have been reported.

Online dashboard for emergency responders that ties in with the Stormpin-App. (Click to enlarge image)

By giving the emergency managers a dashboard where they can evaluate and  process reports, they are making sure that the map has operational relevance. By enabling administrators to remove reports easily, the developers help to prevent another problem that plagues many crowd sourced maps – that there frequently is no good mechanisms to close incidents one they have been dealt with.

In addition, emergency services can add their own information and advise people to avoid certain roads or places in the city etc.

From what I can see, Stormpins doesn’t seem to have attracted a lot of users yet, which of course is the make or break point for all applications that rely on utilizing the power of the crowd. Nevertheless, to me it seems like this iPhone app is better at serving the concrete needs of emergency response personnel, then what I have seen so far.

Have you seen any good mobile applications that support crisis mapping? Please share them in the comments.

Click to enlarge.

If you have been reading my blog for a while, you’ll know that I’m an optimistic sceptic when it comes to using social media for non-profits.

I love it, I see the potential and I’m really happy whenever I see a good case study, but I also frequently despair when I see how little impact many social media campaigns have and how much “snake oil” is being sold to NGOs.  And while some people feel that “slacktivism” has value, too, I tend to disagree. For clarification: I don’t call people who give money “slacktivists”, I call them donors and they definitely add value!

Unicef Sweden has just launched a campaign that makes their opinion about “slacktivism” more than clear and which I think is a great way to get people top open their wallets. Sadly, this type of campaign probably only works once, but that doesn’t mean we can’t appreciate a creative idea when we see it.

(h/t A View from the Cave)

Photo courtesy of Hahatango on Flickr.

Following Monday’s attack on the Boston Marathon, here are a few more posts that looked at the role that social media played in the aftermath.

• Social Media Shapes Boston Bombings Response

For me, this article by the National Geographic was the most surprising. In it the authors are quoting an expert saying that social media now shapes how people respond to threats: “Authorities have recognized that one the first places people go in events like this is to social media, to see what the crowd is saying about what to do next.” If true, this has all kind of interesting implications that I need to get my head around to.

• 3 Observations: Social Media and the Boston PD #BostonMarathon

Kim Stephens looked at how the Boston Police Department used social media.

• Self-Organized Crisis Response to #BostonMarathon Attack

I’m sure you have heard the saying that “to a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” That’s why I was particularly pleased to read this post by Patrick Meier in which he argues that an online crisis map wouldn’t have done much good in the aftermath of the Boston bombing. I totally agree because I think we are collectively very much at risk of applying the newest tools because that is the “hammer” in our hands when other things – like Google spreadsheets – can be far more appropriate.

• Social media : a blessing and a curse … the Boston Marathon bombing aftermath

Patrice Cloutier wrote a well thought out analysis of the role of social media. He also focused quite a bit on rumour control, an issue I had barely touched on in my post.

• The web’s failed hunt for the Boston Bomber

The New Yorker debates the risk of what happens when social media turns into a mob and how “the hive mind” can be used productively.

• How News Outlets Could Have Reported on the Boston Marathon Bombing

Mediabistro despairs at how the media has used social media after the bombing.

• Boston Marathon Tragedy Exposes Twitter’s Reporting Flaws

The interesting thing is that it was also Mediabistro who complained about Twitter’s reporting flaws the day before. I just find it plain weird, if people blame the channel through which information travels for lack of accuracy of the information that travels through the channel. It’s as if a journalist was saying: “Phones are so flawed! The other day somebody called me and told me something that was completely not true and I repeated it on air. Bad phone!”. I find this particularly ironic since both CNN and the Boston Globe demonstrated on April 17 that “traditional” sources can also produce bad results, when they mistakenly reported that a suspect had been apprehended.

• Social media and the Boston bombings: When citizens and journalists cover the same story

Hong Qu from the Nieman Journalism lab takes a step back and looks at how the role of journalists is changing as social media has become the medium where news breaks first.

• Finding facts in the heat of the moment

Do you want to know how to fact-check social media? This is how you do it! Storyful’s whole business model is verifying and packaging user generated content, so it’s no surprise that they are good at it. But it’s nice to see how they do it and learn from them.

Last but not least I’d also like to point out the post that I have written about my impressions about the role of social media in the aftermath of the Boston Marathon Bombings.

Do you have other blog posts or sites to add? Please include them in the comments section below.

My girlfriend and I have personal connections to Boston, so we obviously followed the developments of April 15 quite closely from afar. Here are my impressions, particularly concerning the role of social media.

As soon as we heard about the explosions, we switched to CNN to see what is going on and for the rest of the evening (it was already past 10 pm here in Berlin) we listened to the tv with one ear while monitoring the various social media channels.

How are my family and friends?

The first thing we did was to try to call the people who we thought might have gone to see the marathon. However, we found that we couldn’t get through as too many people tried to make calls.

Verizon quickly put a message asking everyone to use text and email instead of their mobile phone.

Verizon: Enhancing network capacity in Boston’s Copley Square; customers advised to use text/email to free up capacity for safety officials.

— CNBC (@CNBC) 15. April 2013

(If you can’t see the embedded tweets on this page, try refreshing the page.)

Facebook best for “safe and well” messages

In the end we found that Facebook was one of the most efficient ways to see whether people were ok. Many people posted “I’m ok” as quickly as they could, which in some cases took quite a while since the runners didn’t have their mobile phones with them.

Nevertheless, to me it seemed like Facebook was far more efficient at communicating the well-being of people to their friends, then dedicated services like the Google People Finder or the Red Cross’ “Safe and Well” service.

The problem with these services is that people need to know about them and think about posting to them, for them to be useful. What’s more: their friends and relatives also need to know about these services, else the information won’t reach them. When you think about it, this is a lot of hassle and particularly after a traumatic event it is unlikely that many people will try to use a service they are not familiar with. Facebook on the other hand is a service that people are intimately familiar with which makes it far more useful, at least if the goal is to share information with people who know and care about you.

The lesson learned is (once again): use the tools that people are already familiar with, rather than try to make them use your tools. Besides, the Red Cross service was down for a considerable amount of time. 

Situational awareness: Geofeedia and Flipboard

To find out more about what was going on I quickly went to Geofeedia who had already set up a feed showing all geotagged social media updates from close to where the explosions took place. It was quite interesting watching this in parallel with CNN because the social media feed was consistently about 15 minutes ahead of what CNN was reporting and the information was not more (or less) confused then what the journalists were saying on TV.

All things considered I’d even say that the flow of information on Twitter was more to the point and more focused on facts, than what I heard on CNN where pundits filled airtime with wild speculations.

@judithdubin saw nothing just heard loud booms from area we had just left. After second boom people started panicking . I hope everyone isok

— dbanks (@DeniseEastie) 15. April 2013

A number of organizations also used Twitter to dispel rumours.

Verizon & Sprint say no request was made to shut down cellphone signals in Boston.Heavy traffic caused slowdown.#bostonmarathon

— WGRZ (@WGRZ) 15. April 2013

BPD does not have a suspect in custody #tweetfromthebeat via @cherylfiandaca

— Boston Police Dept. (@Boston_Police) 16. April 2013

Flipboard curating content about the Boston Marathon explosions.

After a while I also noticed that Flipboard had created a special section on the Boston marathon explosions. In my opinion this was the best curated social media resource I found. I’ll clearly have to change how I think about Flipboard and also keep them on my radar when it comes to breaking news.

The police are watching social media

I also found it interesting to see that the Boston Police Department (BPD) asked people to share their videos and photos with the police to help them with their investigation.

On a critical note, I found it was a bit weird that most communication came from the Twitter account of BPD spokesperson which was then retweeted by the official BPD account and not directly from the police. Very strange.

BostonPolice looking for video of the finish line #tweetfromthebeat

— Cheryl Fiandaca (@CherylFiandaca) 15. April 2013

BPD asking for tips #tweetfromthebeat

— Cheryl Fiandaca (@CherylFiandaca) 15. April 2013

“The Atlantic” also writes about how the BPD uses social media to collect information in an article called: “When you attack a crowd of people, you also get a crowd of witnesses”.

Helping people help each other

This Google spreadsheet filled quickly with offers to host runners for the night.

For me, one of the most relevant uses of social media was that it facilitated assistance by the local population for affected people.

Within a very short time, a Google Spreadsheet had been created where people could offer runners a place to stay, since many of them were not able to get to their hotels. In less than two hours, 3,000 people had volunteered to host someone for the night.

These were my impressions. Do you have anything you would like to share? Please leave a comment below.