Harnessing the Crowdsourcing Power of Social Media for Disaster Relief

Abstract

Social media has recently played a critical role in natural disasters as an information propagator that can be leveraged for disaster relief. After the catastrophic Haiti earthquake on 12 January 2010, people published numerous texts and photos about their personal experiences during the earthquake via social media sites such as Twitter, Flickr, Facebook, and blogs, and videos were posted on YouTube. In just 48 hours, the Red Cross received US$8 million in donations directly from texts,1 which exemplifies one benefit of the powerful propagation capability of social media sites.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jan 01, 2011
Accession Number
ADA581803

Entities

People

  • Daniel Zeng
  • Geoffrey Barbier
  • Huiji Gao
  • Rebecca Goolsby

Organizations

  • Arizona State University

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Biomedical
  • Energy and Power Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Computers
  • Crowdsourcing
  • Data Management
  • Disasters
  • Emergencies
  • First Responders
  • Humanitarian Assistance
  • Information Operations
  • Intelligent Systems
  • Media
  • Mobile Phones
  • Natural Disasters
  • Social Computing
  • Social Media
  • Social Networking Services
  • Text Messaging

Readers

  • Agent-Based Social Robotics and Mobile-Assisted Learning in Virtual Environments.
  • Emergency Management and Homeland Security.