Social Media – Viable for Crisis Response?

Abstract

On September 8, 2011, the Great San Diego/Southwest Blackout occurred affecting approximately 5 million people. This paper explores the availability and use of social media as a crisis response tool following such a crisis event. Contrary to expectations, Internet and the cell phone system had less than the expected availability and as a result, users had a difficult time using social media to status/contact family and friends (even though they wanted to). This paper presents a survey exploring and analyzing the use and availability of social media during the Great San Diego/Southwest Blackout event.