The Use of Social Media in Risk and Crisis Communication

Abstract

This report highlights the changing landscape of risk and crisis communications and in particular how social media can be a beneficial tool, but also create challenges for crisis managers. It explores different practices of risk and crisis communications experts related to the use of social media and propose a framework for monitoring the development of practices among countries in the use of social media for risk and crisis communications. The three step process spans passive to dynamic use of social media, and provides governments a self-assessment tool to enable cross country comparison to monitor and track progress in the uptake of effective use of social media by emergency services or crisis managers.