Emergency Management in the Era of Social Media

• Date: 01 March 2014
• Author: Rashmi Krishnamurthy,David M. Hondula
• Published date: 01 March 2014
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12184

David M. Hondula is a postdoctoral

scholar in the Center for Policy Informatics

at Arizona State University. Trained in

environmental sciences at the University of

Virginia, his research supports emergency

preparedness efforts by examining how

climate and atmospheric hazards affect

human well-being.

E-mail: david.hondula@asu.edu

Rashmi Krishnamurthy is a doctoral

candidate in the School of Public Affairs

at Arizona State University. Her research

interests are in the areas of economic

development in developing countries,

comparative public administration, and

collaborative decision-making.

E-mail: rashmi.krishnamurthy@asu.edu

Book Reviews

274 Public Administration Review • March | April 2014

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 74, Iss. 2, pp. 274–277. © 2014 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.12184.

movement. Crowe begins his treatise by outlining the

tension between the traditional hierarchical form of

public organizations and changing expectations and

needs of the people. Citing various research studies

and statistics, Crowe highlights two main factors that

have simultaneously contributed to the widespread

adoption of social media in the public sector. First,

over the last few decades, there has been a growing

loss of trust in public agencies. Second, people have

adopted technologies such as tablets and smartphones

and are increasingly sharing and connecting with each

other through platforms such as Facebook, Twitter,

and YouTube.

On January 21, 2009, President Barack Obama, on

his f‌i rst full day in of‌f‌i ce, issued the memorandum

on open and transparent government. In the memo,

he asked his administration to establish “a system of

transparency, public participation, and collaboration”

(White House 2009). In subsequent years, in accord-

ance with this memorandum, the federal government

has adopted various measures to incorporate the use

of social media to disseminate information, solicit

ideas, engage citizens in agencies’ functioning, and

co-create solutions to complex challenges (Noveck

2011, 2012).

Focusing on emergency management, Crowe next

highlights striking examples of the manner in which

social media is changing the way people experience,

react to, and recover from a range of disaster situa-

tions. Crowe identif‌i es the London subway bomb-

ings in 2005 as an early example of social media’s

signif‌i cant impact. In that case, citizen photos and

blog reports helped public agencies determine that

utility malfunctions were not the cause of explosions.

As social media became more widespread in the late

2000s, it became the primary news source for many

citizens; this was especially true for the Mumbai

f‌i nancial district terrorist attack in 2008, when news

of the bombings appeared on social media outlets

before formal news wires. Referencing the case of the

August 2011 Virginia earthquake, Crowe notes that

Adam S. Crowe, Leadership in the Open: A New Para-

digm in Emergency Management (Boca Raton, FL:

CRC Press, 2013). 313 pp. $69.95 (cloth), ISBN:

9781466558236.

Over the last few decades, the adoption of infor-

mation and communications technologies

(ICTs) in the public sector, including personal

computers, e-services, and social media, has gener-

ally been perceived as “a game changer” (Mergel and

Bretschneider 2013, 390). Public agencies have adopted

these technologies to varying degrees to connect with

and meet the growing demands of their constituencies.

 e current adoption of social media ref‌l ects a new form

of ICT, widely implemented as a measure to provide

open, transparent, collaborative, and participatory

government (Mergel 2013; Mergel and Bretschneider

2013; Picazo-Vela, Gutiérrez-Martínez, and Luna-Reyes

2012). For instance, as of 2012, U.S. federal agencies

and departments had created “2,956 Facebook pages,

1,016 Twitter accounts, 695 YouTube channels, and 498

Flickr pages” (Mergel 2013).

 e area of emergency management is not immune to

these changes. Over the years, the way in which infor-

mation is collected and shared in emergency situations

has rapidly evolved with the widespread adoption of

social media technologies. As a result, the capacity of

public agencies and individuals to ef‌f ectively coordi-

nate response ef‌f orts, identify communities in need

of help, and deliver services has evolved. In the text

Leadership in the Open: A New Paradigm in Emergency

Management, Adam S. Crowe explores the growth of

social media technologies as key resources available

to government agencies, private enterprises, and the

general citizenry when disasters occur. Organizing

the text around a series of well-researched case studies

ref‌l ecting nine dimensions of social media, Crowe

encourages capacity building for integrating social

media into preparedness and response ef‌f orts.

Crowe introduces readers to the rise of social

media contextualized under the Open Government

Emergency Management in the Era of Social Media

Sonia M. Ospina and Rogan Kersh, Editors

David M. Hondula

Rashmi Krishnamurthy

Arizona State University