Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)

Why FEMA is involved in social media

FEMA is engaged in the expanding world of Web 2.0 communications specifically through its use of existing social media tools and through incorporating compatibility into its website and communications strategies. FEMA's venture into social media is being coordinated through its office of External Affairs, and provides supplemental products to enhance current outreach objectives.

FEMA's goals with social media are: to provide timely and accurate information related to disaster preparedness response and recovery; to present a human, public face to the agency; provide the public with transparency into the agency's operations; and engage in a public dialogue that provides the appropriate forum for internal and external voices.

How FEMA is involved

Starting with YouTube as a platform to host and share videos, FEMA began capturing stories from disaster response and recovery efforts to explain the scope of its mission. Videos have ranged in subject from preparedness, response, and recovery to mitigation and explanations of how specific federal aid programs operate. The approach to these web videos was to capture the voice and perspective of the community involved in a disaster and present it as an opportunity to help educate others on FEMA's mission and programs.

FEMA has been using Twitter since October, 2008 as a means to offer information about the agency's mission, efforts and perspective. The agency also launched its YouTube page www.youtube.com/fema in October, 2008 to provide stories about how its programs work in communities nationwide as they prepare for, respond to and recover from disasters.

Specific Social Media Tools

FEMA also promotes transparent communication and collaboration using Email and Web 2.0 technologies that allow any visitor to the FEMA website to register to receive updates across 86 important topic areas. Signup options are promoted on the homepage and across the website with "subscribe" links functioning as "add to cart" links might in the private sector. The site also provides robust collaboration with 15+ other agencies using a Web 2.0 mashup.

FEMA has also engaged in beta-tests, monitored, developed, and activated multiple third party tools, including the following:

* YouTube - Video service that provides FEMA opportunity to tell timely and accurate stories of its mission. Recently, the FEMA channel was used to help state partners host and share public service announcements, explain federal reimbursement process and mitigation efforts local to specific communities. These short videos provide access to the overall operation and offer an opportunity for the voices within the community to explain how programs affect, or don't affect, their lives.

* Twitter - Current followers of FEMA's account are from the emergency management community, the media, and the general public. Twitter provides SMS capability for instant texting during disasters. FEMA also uses Twitter to supplement the efforts of state and local responders by rebroadcasting, or retweeting, posts from these partners. And FEMA uses Twitter to engage the general public in discussions on disaster preparedness, recovery process and mitigation tools.

* FaceBook - FEMA has been using its FaceBook account since May, 2009 to provide a forum for preparedness information and to engage the public with links and topics.

Recent example

FEMA has recently been using its social media tools to tell the complex story of its mission and to personalize the delivery of aid it provides to American communities. One topic of focus has been the debris removal issue along the Texas Gulf Coast following Hurricane Ike. Media reports slammed the agency for a perceived sluggish response. In truth, debris removal can be a fairly complex issue involving many factors and levels of government and private sector involvement: which means it takes time, money and a lot of planning.

FEMA External Affairs captured some of these stories on video and played the vignettes online to help demystify the process. One such vignette, titled "Working Dog Searches for Missing in Bolivar Debris" focused on the Texas-based fire and rescue team performing searches for human remains among the debris. Told honestly and with dignity by the local team lead, the short video achieved several important goals: explained FEMA's commitment to the families affected by the storm, depicted how we work with state and local partners, and showed the complexity of debris removal following major disasters.

Since its upload to the FEMA YouTube channel on December 19, more than 879 individuals have watched the "Working Dog Searches for Missing in Bolivar Debris" video. Overall, FEMA's YouTube site counts new subscribers every day and currently 17,644 individuals have logged on to view the 60 videos currently playing.

United Nations

Here comes the UN, they have an average of 10 to 15 tweets per day and additional posts on platforms like Facebook and Instagram. With over 13 million followers across their Twitter accounts, the United Nations has a Twitter community worthy of its global presence.The reasons why the UN is involved in social media is that they try to cover what is happening around the whole UN system, to educate people about what they are up to all across organization.

And the content they tweet is a mix of content put together by the individual organizations, as well as UN's own content which is more to do with their wider campaigns or messaging.

"For example, this year the member states are negotiating sustainable development goals for the next 15 years, so we're leading the whole UN system to get everyone sharing content about #Action2015 that's relevant to what they're doing.

There're issues around education, the environment, climate change, jobs, healthcare and more. So our team is working to get individual areas of the organization to share content under this banner to present a synchronised UN focus. But at the same time, we'll also support their own individual campaigns."Said by Nancy Groves, social media team leader at the UN.

Another example is that in the lead up to the September 2015 UN Summit for Refugees and Migrants, we used the hashtag

RefugeesMigrants to draw attention to the work of the UN System all over the world.A key priority was to share facts about the crisis. One way we did so was to create infographics featuring the latest data which were widely shared.