by Timo Luege, TC103: Technology for Disaster Response facilitator

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if all public social media messages in a disaster would come with a flag that identifies them as relevant? The Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) is trying to pave the way for that with the brand new Hashtags Standards for Emergencies.

UNOCHA Hashtag Standards for Emergencies

The document builds on experiences gained in the Philippines where a set of standard hashtags such as #RescuePH or #ReliefPH have become so commonly used, that the government recently endorsed these as “official” disaster response classifiers to help identify needs. OCHA is now trying to elevate this system to the global level in the hope that we will start to see more consistency across countries and disasters. If successful, this hashtag standards could help disaster responders and their supporting software systems identify needs more quickly and reduce the amount of time needed to find relevant messages in flood of updates.

OCHA proposes three different types of social media hashtags:

  1. Disaster title hashtags. This type of hashtag (e.g. #Sandy) would be used by anyone to generally comment on an emergency (e.g. Hurricane Sandy) and would not be actively monitored by response agencies.
  2. Public reporting hashtags. By suggesting a specific hashtag that citizens can report non-life-threatening emergency items they see (e.g. #311US for broken power lines or a damaged bridge in the USA), we would be making sensors of the entire population. The resulting data could be scanned, mined and filtered to the relevant responding agencies.
  3. Emergency response hashtags. By providing a standard hashtag to trigger emergency response, based on local standards (e.g. #911US for the USA), we would enable citizens to tag content that is absolutely critical.  It would also enable responders to set up dedicated social media monitoring tools and channel the resulting information into their already existing mechanism(s). Social media would become an official information source.

(source: verity think)

I think this is great initiative and governments should pick up the ball and use this document as guidance for their own national strategies. That national authorities make this their own is essential because it can only work if the affected population knows about these hashtags in advance of the disaster and if the hashtags have been localized.

The graphic the report uses to illustrate the idea for the Ebola response is a good case in point:

Standard Hashtag

The suggested hashtags seem pretty straightforward until you take into consideration that Guinea is French speaking, meaning that people there probably will use something like #EbolaBesoin instead of the English #EbolaNeed.

Of course that would still be a huge step forward, since it would increase consistency even in cases where an emergency spans multiple countries and languages. After all, a limited number of hashtags that are used in multiple languages is still much better than no system. But it also shows that this document is not so much a blueprint as a concept study. It is now up to governments and other national disaster response organizations to make it work.

Interested in learning how social media and other technologies can help with disaster response? Enroll now to lock in your early bird rate for our Technology for Disaster Response online course that begins June 22.

This post originally appeared in Social Media for Good

About the TC 103 facilitator: Timo Luege

Timo Luege

After nearly ten years of working as a journalist (online, print and radio), Timo worked four years as a Senior Communications Officer for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) in Geneva and Haiti. During this time he also launched the IFRC’s social media activities and wrote the IFRC social media staff guidelines. He then worked as Protection Delegate for International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Liberia before starting to work as a consultant. His clients include UN agencies and NGOs. Among other things, he wrote the UNICEF “Social Media in Emergency Guidelines” and contributed to UNOCHA’s “Humanitarianism in the Network Age”. Over the last year, Timo advised UNHCR- and IFRC-led Shelter Clusters in Myanmar, Mali and most recently the Philippines on Communication and Advocacy. He blogs at Social Media for Good and is the facilitator for the TechChange online course, “Technology for Disaster Response.

With social media technology changing daily, it can sometimes be challenging to keep up with the latest platforms and their newest features, and the seemingly endless stream of content, information, and campaigns.

Recently as we’ve been preparing for the Social Media for Social Change course, we’ve been focusing on the power and limits of “hashtag activism” by examining examples such as #BringBackOurGirls and #YesAllWomen.

Check out the Montreal-based CJAD news radio talkshow interview from last week featuring TechChange’s Director of Marketing, Nancy Ngo, on hashtag activism here:

Hashtags aren’t the only way social media users are advocating for causes. We’ll be analyzing a variety of campaigns and social change movements that have used various social media tools in different ways in our second round of our Social Media for Social Change online course, which begins on Monday, June 16. A very dynamic group of guest expert speakers will join us from organizations such as Change.org, the Resolve LRA Crisis Initiative, Uber, and more. Lawrence Grodeska from Change.org who will share how Change.org has revolutionized online petitions in campaigns such as advocating justice for Trayvon Martin. Resolve LRA Crisis Initiative’s Michael Poffenberger will share his experiences from the Kony 2012 campaign to capture Joseph Kony and draw comparisons with the recent BringBackOurGirls campaign. Alex Priest of Uber will discuss ways that Uber utilizes social media in optimizing urban logistics.

Several participants from many countries including Czech Republic, Jordan, Mexico, New Zealand, Thailand, and across the U.S. have already enrolled in this round of this course, representing organizations such as World Bank Group, USAID, ICRC, World Green Building Council, Oxfam, AARP International, Cornell University, Abt Associates, Chemonics International, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, and many more. All of these participants will be bringing their own perspectives as both social media users and social change advocates for their respective organizations and initiatives.

What’s your take on hashtag activism and social media advocacy? Do you agree with Nancy? Join the conversation with these social media experts and participants across the world to learn more about social media’s role in catalyzing social change. Enroll now in our Social Media for Social Change course here.