Use of Social Media in Teaching Emergency Management

Discuss about the Social Networking In Teaching And Business.

Summary of the article – The article “Teaching Students Involved in Emergency Management How to Use Social Media Effectively,” discussed about how social media can be useful to teach the students of emergency management about something. As stated by the article, students who are studying disaster management or primary management, generally take the primary responsibility when a disaster or an emergency arrives like cyclone, flood, and other natural disasters. As per the article, the usage of social media is growing rapidly. Nowadays social media are being used to keep people aware of the emergencies so that they can remain informed about the incidents and do not get anxious. For that reason, disaster control managers need to learn how social media can be effectively used. The study also explained the usefulness of social media in terms of communication during emergency. According to the article, minimizing the panic among people is first priority of the disaster mangers. As social media is a two-way interactive tool, it can be used to minimize the anxiety but then it needs to be handled carefully. For instance, as soon as any disaster occurs, people tend to get anxious. By using social networking platforms disaster mangers make them aware of the incidents, so that they do not get panicked. Therefore, social media can also be used as a tool for public commu­nication mode during such disasters. The article suggested that it is mandatory for the students who will be working for public information sector to understand the proper utilization of social media tools. In the article, social media platform EmSpace is mentioned. The site is structured in order to teach the emergency management students on proper usage of social media in course of health or natural emergency. As mentioned by the article, problem-based learning had been considered as the perfect way of teaching essential expertise of disaster management communication. The problem-based activity was split in two divisions. In the first part, the students were provided with required information, learning materials and the opportunity to group discussion. At the same time, the second part of the activity includes publishing posts and responding the posts in case of requirement of situation. The article stated that to examine or assess the learning of student, two methods were utilized. The first method was a round of interrogating the students. The students were asked few questions to evaluate whether they received proper knowledge of the social media tools or not. The ability of the students to provide public information was also assessed. Evaluating the social site made by the group of student is the second part of student assessment. The development of the EmSpace was discussed in the article along with the assessment of student learning. The students were asked few questions regarding their overall experience of throughout the learning process. The students were also given some example scenarios, where they were asked about different procedure of publishing posts over social media sites.

Effective Use of Social Media in Business Communication

Summary of the article – In the article “The Hype Social Media Use for Work Collaboration and Team Communication,” social networking sites and its role in communication is discussed. The article emphasized on the utilization and advantages of social media platforms in business communication. The article discussed about how can be social networking sites used for the purpose of improvement of the communication in corporate sector. The article elaborated the need of social media sites in the betterment of communication among team. The article described how corporate enterprises are adopting it for improving the communication system and collaboration. Surveys were conducted over 227 business individuals to evaluate the perspective towards tools of social media. While surveying, the study set some criteria over which the data were collected. The data were collected, stored, and reduced to analyze and then the data were transformed into numeric, charts, and bar graph. The research stated the benefits of social media sites as well. The survey result addressed three core areas: perception of social media and its effectiveness, path of communication, behavior towards social media as a tool for better communication among corporate sector, especially among business team. The result of the research explained that as the usage of is increasing rapidly; young business professional will solely depend on social media for team communication in near future. However, as a result, the research stated that traditional mode of communication in terms of business was adopted by the business professionals more rather than communication over social networking platforms. Most business individuals consider communication over social media platform is less effective than traditional mode of communication as far as improvement of team communication is concerned. The research also has given possible measures as recommendation for the scholar of communication in terms of business. It suggested that how they can improve business communication by using social networking sites. For e.g., business professional can share ideas over social networking sites, they can discuss over there and solve any kind of issues regarding communication among them. To carry out the research, the study conducted a survey that consists three parts. Firstly, the use of social frequentness of the utilization of social media sites for the purpose of communication among team and its comparison with other communication methods. Secondly, the perception of social media sites in terms of communication among the team. Lastly, the third and final part of the methodology is business professionals’ behavior towards adopting social networking in terms of team communication. The surveyed people were divide into three group based on age. To analyze the collected data, the data were transformed into numeric and presented in a chart and graph. However, the article is not free from limitations. One such limitation is the study suggested to give training to the professionals but it depends on the quality and quantity of the training provided to the professionals in order to encourage them.

Increased Adoption of Social Media Tools

Conclusion

In conclusion, it can be said that both of the two articles highlighted the adoption of social networking platforms in two different sectors. One article focused on usage of social media in teaching emergency management students, while the other article emphasized on the utilization and advantages of social media platforms in business communication. It can be stated that the purpose of studying two articles is to analyze the published articles and understand the usefulness of social networking tools. The study has tried to cover every aspect while analyzing the articles. The first article emphasized the usage of social networking sites in teaching the students of emergency management. It sheds light on the need of social media platforms in controlling emergency like natural or health disaster. It also described the one social media site called EmSpace that teaches the students of disaster management on usage of social media tools. The article talked about the learning project where two different methods were developed to execute the teaching process. Another article (Jin, Liu, and Austin 2014) sheds the light on effective use of social networking sites during emergency. The aim of the study is to understand the key factors and its effect on the responses made by public. The findings of the study discuss about the usefulness of social networking sites in managing crisis. The study mainly focuses on the strategic use of social media in providing information to the people during disaster.  All the data and information after surveying were analyzed through 3x2x2 mixed design model. However, the study is not free from limitations. Meanwhile, other two articles by Alexander (2014) and Houston et al. (2015) discussed on a framework of use of social media in case of disaster. The framework elaborates how a wide range of entities such as government, individuals, communities and etc. can use social networking tools to produce and provide information during emergency. The article adopted literature review as methodology to carry out the research. The article mainly discussed on the use of social media platforms in disaster management in order to create awareness. The second article stated that how can be social networking sites used for the purpose of improvement of the communication in corporate sector. The study had conducted survey over business professionals. Three areas were addressed during the survey for e.g. how many organizations use social media tools for team communication, business professionals’ perception towards social media platforms and other traditional way of communication and the attitude or behavior towards the social media and its usage. The article also provided possible suggestions of an effective usage of social media tools. Another article of Meske and Stieglitz (2013) focuses on the growing adoption of social media tools. The article also highlighted the increasing rate of using social networking tools by organizations for different reasons, such as, communication between the higher authority and the employees. The article (Carim and Warwick 2013) described the inferences of social networking platforms for business communication. According to the findings of the study, the organizations of United Kingdom have been adopting social networking platforms for the purpose of business communication. After analyzing both the articles and five other articles, which have been given as support to the main articles, it can be stated that social networking sites have become a crucial part of all business irrespective of sizes and of teaching sector.

References

Alexander, D.E., 2014. Social media in disaster risk reduction and crisis management. Science and engineering ethics, 20(3), pp.717-733.

Cardon, P.W. and Marshall, B., 2015. The hype and reality of social media use for work collaboration and team communication. International Journal of Business Communication, 52(3), pp.273-293.

Carim, L.A.R.A. and Warwick, C., 2013. Use of social media for corporate communications by research-funding organisations in the UK. Public relations review, 39(5), pp.521-525.

Houston, J.B., Hawthorne, J., Perreault, M.F., Park, E.H., Goldstein Hode, M., Halliwell, M.R., Turner McGowen, S.E., Davis, R., Vaid, S., McElderry, J.A. and Griffith, S.A., 2015.Social media and disasters: a functional framework for social media use in disaster planning, response, and research. Disasters, 39(1), pp.1-22.

Jin, Y., Liu, B.F. and Austin, L.L., 2014. Examining the role of social media in effective crisis management: The effects of crisis origin, information form, and source on publics’ crisis responses. Communication research, 41(1), pp.74-94.

Meske, C. and Stieglitz, S., 2013, June. Adoption and use of social media in small and medium-sized enterprises.In working conference on practice-driven research on enterprise transformation (pp. 61-75).Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.

Ross, K., Taylor, M. and Fitzgerald, M., 2015. Teaching students involved in emergency management how to use social media effectively. Australian Journal of Emergency Management, The, 30(4), p.21.