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The Power of Social Media and Word of Mouth:

Social media and the internet in today's generation is a powerful tool. Most people look for social media articles for the latest news instead of the papers. Technology allows information to be public quickly and accessible for anywhere in the world. Having technology and social media allows us stay in tune to the problems that are happening around the world and the current trends. Without having social media the world wouldn't have the immediate information available to them when dealing with world wide events.

For example, the Haiti disaster the power of having Twitter, Facebook and YouTube made it possible for people across the world to keep updated about the earthquake. Not only does it keep everyone involved but it is a useful tool to promote donations for disasters and causes. With Haiti, "in just 48 hours, the Red Cross received US$8 million in donations directly from texts, 1 which exemplifies one benefit of the powerful propagation capability of social media sites" (Gao, 2011, p.1). Without social media word of mouth would not spread near as fast compared to the power of the internet. Social media is also powerful for people to communicate with one another. Regarding Haiti it gave survivors the opportunity to keep in contact with other survivors. "Survivors also use social media sites to keep in touch with the world after a disaster"(Gao, p.1).

Also, using social media to enhance emergency situation awareness can "offer new information sources from which the right authorities can enhance emergency situation awareness" (Yin, 2012, p.52). "Survivors in the impacted areas can report on the-ground information about what they’re seeing, hearing, and experiencing during natural disasters. People from surrounding areas can provide nearly real-time observations about disaster scenes, such as aerial images and photos. This is particularly useful during severe emergency situations, in which people within blackout areas would experience limited communication ability"(Yin, p.52). There are negatives that come along with social media and disasters but in many cases the information that can get across the world is very positive and eye opening.

"Because of its ease of use, speed and reach, social media is fast changing the public discourse in society and setting trends and agendas in topics that range from the environment and politics to technology and the entertainment industry" (Asur, 2010, p.1). Having assess to the internet all around the world makes it easier to keep the world connected. By having the chance to make environmental issues, storms or health issues known around the world because of social media is a source that we should not take for granted. By having the opportunity to make world issues known or having the chance to fund raise for a good cause half way around the world are things that we shouldn't ignore.

References:

Yin, J., Lampert, A., Cameron, M., Robinson, B., & Power, R. (2012). Using social media to enhance emergency situation awareness. IEEE Intelligent Systems, 27(6), 52-59.

Gao, H., Barbier, G., Goolsby, R., & Zeng, D. (2011). Harnessing the crowdsourcing power of social media for disaster relief. Arizona State Univ Tempe.

Asur, S., & Huberman, B. A. (2010, August). Predicting the future with social media. In Web Intelligence and Intelligent Agent Technology (WI-IAT), 2010 IEEE/WIC/ACM International Conference on (Vol. 1, pp. 492-499). IEEE.