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The Role Social Media Played During Hurricane Sandy As Hurricane Sandy swept the country and destroyed homes, families, and businesses, there was one thing that seemed to still keep people together during this time of stress and disaster- social media. Social media was the primary source of information distributed to people who were in the midst of the hurricane. It was used to gain insight on the events occurring before, during and after this massive natural disaster. Prior to Hurricane Sandy even hitting, social media was being used for cautioning, to let people have time to prepare. The mayor of New York City, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, started to take part in social media to begin enabling information to prepare for this storm. He had gained about 3 million followers all together through all the different platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. The purpose of this was, "to provide the city with the means to share information in various formats, enabling people to find and consume information as they preferred".

Social Media in A Time of Need

Twitter was being used as a source that offered the most recent updates by city officials, public transit authorities, and news outlets. The most popular hashtag on Twitter that had been set up was #Sandy. This allowed people to reach a page for news relating to the event, with photos, updates and links to other related topics. Instagram had pictures being uploaded at 10 photos per second. As of 12:30 P.M., "Instagram's tag #Sandy had accumulated more than 484,600 photos, while #Frankenstorm garnered roughly 38,000". Instagram's ability to visually show major events is a big reason for the instantaneous use for this social media site.

Raising Awareness

In March of 2012, in order to raise awareness, the American Red Cross announced it was launching the American Red Cross Digital Operations Center, which was an app to monitor social media crises. This app provided people with so many ways to stay and feel safe by providing them with the ability to find the nearest shelter zones, hospitals, and allowing them to share their stories of the latest happenings in their neighborhoods. It was an app that was being used world-wide giving the options to either volunteer or donate, to learn ways in which to prepare, and what a local citizen can do in case of emergencies if help was not there. This was a different way of utilizing social media to provide more help in the needed areas more efficiently and to also keep everyone in the country united during this time of stress.

The Down Side

As a culture, we tend to trust easily. In an interview conducted with a journalist, Justin Auciello, he explained his way of gaining the trust of his readers by saying, "I was super careful with not only how I sourced the info but also how I presented it. My rule was: 'The stakes are too big to make a mistake. Lives depend on your accuracy and calm demeanor.' So, I triple checked the news and information I disseminated". Having a triple checking rule is a way of preventing mixing up the flow of fake news with real news. Fake news is very important, and it especially was during Sandy because people were in desperate need of information and would believe anything shown to them. It is something to be cautious of because it will continue to happen as long as people are believing it.

Conclusion

During this time of disaster and tragedy, social media was able to unify. It was a go to source of information, that helped update the different neighborhoods and states on the events going on. With the destruction of many homes and neighborhoods, rebuilding strategies were in place, which are still being used to this day. Techniques such as hashtags, apps, the different platforms and blogging allowed people to confirm their status during the storm to family members or just the public in general. With social media having both its positive and negative effects, it brought out more positives with the ability to keep everyone in touch and aware of the current events at hand. All the information needed was displayed on platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, and this allowed people of all ages around the world to be updated and informed more easily and more quickly.

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