Social media can save lives!
Posted: Thu May 29, 2025 5:13 am
In March 2012, the American Red Cross launched the 'Digital Operations Centre' together with partner Dell: the first social media monitoring platform fully focused on coordinating humanitarian aid. Read about the 'Next generation digital disaster response', another social media best practice from this innovative non-profit organization.
If there is one application in which social media can no longer be missed, it is in humanitarian emergency aid, the 'core business' of the Red Cross. Especially during natural disasters, when the telephone network is overloaded, many people use networks such as Facebook and Twitter to contact their families and ask for help and information.
The Red Cross, which responds to 70,000 disasters each year, is the world’s largest aid agency and one of the social list to data media innovators with their strategy and handbook , monitoring program and mobile giving campaigns for fundraising . The organization saw the need to monitor social media messages between victims, citizens and aid workers in real time, in order to be even more efficient and effective in providing information, safety tips and aid before, during and after natural disasters.
Victims expect quick help after emergency tweets
Imagine: during the 2010 Haiti earthquake, citizens used Twitter to report to the Red Cross where their loved ones were buried under the rubble. Annual surveys also show the increasing importance of social media in disasters and emergencies. According to the latest survey (August 2012), three-quarters (76%) of Americans now expect help to be provided within 3 hours of posting a request for help on one of the social networks.
If there is one application in which social media can no longer be missed, it is in humanitarian emergency aid, the 'core business' of the Red Cross. Especially during natural disasters, when the telephone network is overloaded, many people use networks such as Facebook and Twitter to contact their families and ask for help and information.
The Red Cross, which responds to 70,000 disasters each year, is the world’s largest aid agency and one of the social list to data media innovators with their strategy and handbook , monitoring program and mobile giving campaigns for fundraising . The organization saw the need to monitor social media messages between victims, citizens and aid workers in real time, in order to be even more efficient and effective in providing information, safety tips and aid before, during and after natural disasters.
Victims expect quick help after emergency tweets
Imagine: during the 2010 Haiti earthquake, citizens used Twitter to report to the Red Cross where their loved ones were buried under the rubble. Annual surveys also show the increasing importance of social media in disasters and emergencies. According to the latest survey (August 2012), three-quarters (76%) of Americans now expect help to be provided within 3 hours of posting a request for help on one of the social networks.