Kate StarbirdIn ~2014, my colleague & I argued that social media (esp. Twitter) had become part of the critical infrastructure of disaster response. People were turning to Twitter during crises to share information about impacts and resources. Disaster responders were using the data shared there for situational awareness, and were communicating in real-time with their constituents. Today’s events underscore just how dangerous it is for society to come to rely on private platforms as critical infrastructure.
Tim Chambers@katestarbird Amen.
@katestarbird In the DC area we had a serious weather warning for severe storms and where normally I'd look to Capital Weather Gang's Twitter account (the WashPost weather team's main source for breaking weather) now it was fully non-functional.
@tchambers And for folks like me who refuse to log in, it’s essentially useless for real-time information sharing. And that doesn’t even begin to get to the loss of research ability and automated tools to support info sharing about disaster events. In the first case study I worked on, Red River Floods of 2009, people set up automated accounts to tweet the flood heights. Over and over again, we saw innovation to support info sharing enabled by an open platform and API. That’s all gone. :(
Nathan Carpenter@katestarbird @tchambers I spent years promoting Twitter for emergency communications and have so many regrets