Enhance the disaster management process through social media

Abstract

Disasters endure the economic and human losses emphatically around the globe in each year. Impacts of disasters are expeditious in the last decade due to the insufficiency of existing traditional Disaster Management (DM) tools. Social media as an internet-based platform and it is used as a critical tool for effective communication during emergency situations. This proposed research is mainly considered on Facebook and Twitter in terms of social media. Because, during the literature review and the preliminary expert interview, it is identified that the use of Facebook and Twitter is very much higher in Sri Lankan context compared to other available social media. Social media discovered as a vital factor to enhance DM in all over the world. To refer, Social media demonstrated its value as a viable complement to Indonesia’s comprehensive disaster information management system for governments, by informing the public and creating public value through its communication speed, reach and information quality. However, the use of social media is not extensively explored in the Sri Lankan context. Hence, this research focuses on enhancing the natural DM in Sri Lanka and improve the quality of assistance provided to people related to natural DM through the use of social media. A comprehensive literature review has been carried out to investigate the concept of social media and its relationship with DM. The literature findings contributed to develop the conceptual model pertaining for the study which highlighted that social media can be used in almost all stages of DM to enhance the process. This conceptual model will be used to develop the framework representing the method of social media application for natural disaster management in Sri Lanka. The use of social media for DM has number of benefits such as real-time communication, low level of capital investment requirement, provides useful situational awareness, early warning and supports the psychological well-being of disaster victims. However, limitations such as violates social policies, affects the social customs, quality and veracity of information could be compromised, and monitoring of accuracy of information transmission is complex were also reviewed from the study.