In Case Of Emergency, Read Blog

It may seem a little surprising that U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano received one of her early transition briefings from someone named “Blogger Bob.” But considering the growing importance of social media in homeland security it makes a lot of sense.
“Blogger Bob” a.k.a. Bob Burns heads the Blog Team at the U.S. Transportation Security Administration [...]

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The U.S. Homeland Security Department’s Ready Campaign and The Advertising Council have created a new ‘widget’ to provide citizens with emergency information. The widget provides users: 
“with updates on emergency situations, local emergency contact information, an instructional video, emergency kit checklists and guidelines on how to better prepare for an emergency. Users can also access a clickable map to find contact [...]

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I want to bring your attention to a terrific article, “New Media’s Moment In Mumbai” in Foreign Policy Journal, written by a friend of this blog, Chris Battle. Chris edits the excellent Security Debrief blog and is a partner in the Adfero Group.
In the article, Battle points out the use of social media by the terrorists in organizing [...]

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More precisely, Administrator R. David Paulison held a 45-minute q & a with the public yesterday using the microblogging tool, Twitter. 
Paulison took questions and offered answers (within Twitter’s limit of 140 characters or less) to all comers on the agency’s Twitter account, femainfocus.  A “tweet log” as well as an audio file and full transcript of the event [...]

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The Red Cross is asking media — both old and new — to participate in a “roadblock” today, Friday, helping to raise awareness of and money for the organization’s disaster efforts.
“In Case Of Emergency, Read Blog” is happy to be part of the blogosphere’s roadblock.

If you want to donate to the Red Cross, go to american.redcross.org/site/PageServer?pagename=ntld_main
For [...]

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Videos posted by citizens on YouTube during and after disasters are increasingly part of the new media landscape (whether it be Hurricane Ike, Hurricane Gustav, the Midwest floods, or the major earthquake in China earlier this year). However, there is not nearly as much video content on the topic of preparing for disasters in advance. Maybe that will change [...]

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With the Gulf Coast dealing with Hurricane Ike, new personal communications technology tools are being employed by citizens, government officials, the media and the relief agencies, including the Red Cross. In this segment, Wendy Harman, who manages the Red Cross’ burgeoning social media operations — including the Red Cross Hurricane Ike Newsroom – underscores the increasingly vital [...]

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In a previous post, I mentioned how I have been closely following the Red Cross’ social media sites, including the ARC Online Newsroom and its Twitter feed to keep apprised of what was happening ‘on the ground’ during Gustav. I have also been monitoring other non-Red Cross related social media sites over the past couple days as they provide [...]

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With anniversary of Hurricane Katrina approaching, CIO magazine has an interesting article titled “How Social Networking Saved New Orleans” about how web-based new media tools such as Flickr, Yahoo Groups, wikis and Google Maps have been integral in citizen efforts to help reestablish and rebuild their community. The article highlights the work of Alan Gutierrez from the nonprofit [...]

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Earlier this year, James Karl Buck, a graduate student arrested in Egypt while documenting local riots, sent out a one word Twitter message — “Arrested” — just before he was taken in custody by Egyptian police. As a result of the message, members of Buck’s Twitter network were able to get the word out, mobilize and then create enough outside [...]

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