Moments after the first cable news reports of tornadoes ripping through Texas on Tuesday, a map of the state began blinking red on a screen in the Red Cross’ new social media monitoring center in Washington.
The center’s computers monitor and sort postings on social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook around the globe in real time, searching for key words such as “earthquake,” “hurricane” and “tornado.”
The information conveyed in online postings and tweets helps Red Cross officials identify hard-hit areas and direct resources such as food trucks or volunteers more quickly and more accurately.
Relief groups are increasingly turning to social media to get immediate information during disasters.
“During an emergency, information is like gold,” Gail J. McGovern, president and CEO of the Red Cross, said at the opening of the group’s social media center last month.
But analysts caution that the use of social media in these circumstances could produce information that is secondhand, confused or just plain wrong.
“It’s a risk assessment. It’s not just yes or no,” said Neil Dickover, a social media consultant who has worked for the Pentagon and the State Department on disaster relief.
In the data gleaned during Tuesday’s tornadoes, “we saw three main streams,” said Laura Howe, the Red Cross’ vice president for public relations. “People passing along warnings, people seeking shelter, and … later in the day, people looking for or expressing concern about loved ones, or passing on news that they were safe.”
It was extraordinary that no one was killed, given the force of the whirlwinds that tore through the Dallas-Fort Worth area, she said.
“People were watching their mobile devices, they were watching social media and traditional media,” Ms. Howe said.
Ms. McGovern said the Red Cross opened its center, donated by computer giant Dell Inc., in part because of changing expectations of the public. “More and more people are relying on [social media] to seek information and assistance” in emergencies, she said.
Government disaster-response organizations also are adopting social media to get vital information about disasters.
“The public is putting out better [information] than many of our own agencies can,” Craig Fugate, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said in a speech last year.
Mr. Dickover said these changes are both exciting and scary.
“It’s scary because they haven’t got their [disaster] assessment teams in place” and cannot necessarily validate the information flowing in, he said, adding that relief teams often have to act quickly with the information they have.
“Everyone agrees that you can’t now wait for validation. … [If you do], a certain number of people will have died by the time you get there,” he said.
Another problem that disaster relief groups face in using social media is creating unrealistic public expectations.
A Red Cross opinion poll last year showed that about a third of Americans assume that they would get help within an hour if they asked for it on social media networks during a disaster.
“Unfortunately, the emergency management community is not quite ready for this,” said Wendy Harman, the Red Cross’ director of social media strategy. “We’re in the process of trying to manage people’s expectations.”
• Shaun Waterman can be reached at 123@example.com.
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