| Popis: |
Recent disasters have exhibited an increase in the significance of social media for both affected citizens and volunteers in the coordination of information and the organization of relief activities, often independent of and in addition to the official emergency response. Current research is focused on how individual platforms are used by volunteers in response to disasters. This paper examines the use of social media during the European Floods of 2013 and proposes a novel cross-social-media application for volunteers. Besides comprehensive analysis of volunteer communities, interviews were conducted with ‘digital volunteers’ such as Facebook moderators of disaster-related groups. Based on the challenges identified, we designed and implemented the cross-social-media application XHELP, which allows information to be both acquired and distributed cross-media and cross-channel. An evaluation with 20 users leads to further design requirements for applications that aim to support volunteer moderators during disasters. |
