Two weeks ago I left Liberia and moved back to Germany. My next project: developing “Social Media in Emergencies Guidelines” for a UN agency. It’s a project I’m really looking forward to, particularly since the focus is not fundraising but on story telling, advocacy and outreach.
The BBC has now published elements process for verifying social media content, which makes for an excellent read. What emerges is a process that is more like that of a traditional intelligence agency, than what most people had in mind when joining journalism school.
A while ago I posed the social media staff guidelines that I created for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC). Since then, I have been asked by a few organizations to talk about the process of getting there. It seems that more and more organizations see the need and usefulness of having such a document. Below you find a presentation I have given on two occasions on that topic. At the bottom of my previous[...]
I find it’s pretty rare that you come across good, fresh case studies of how non-profit organizations are using social media. And I’m not talking about “we use Facebook, too.” I mean something that shows how an NGO actually managed to get a concrete, measurable result with the help of social media. “10 tactics for turning information into action” from Tactical Tech is such a rare example. 10 tactics is first and foremost a one hour long movie, but it’s also[...]
To say that the last days were“intense” would be an understatement. From the minute the earthquake struck Haiti on January 12, the Red Cross Red Crescent Movement pulled out all stops to help the people on the ground.
Communications is only a small part of that response and social media an even smaller part. Nevertheless – here are my observations:
The Red Cross Red Crescent created a Flickr slideshow with photos from Haiti after the earthquake. This will be updated continuously. If you want to add it to your own blog, you can use this code: <iframe align=”center” src=”http://www.flickr.com/slideShow/index.gne?set_id=72157623207618658″ width=”500″ height=”500″ frameBorder=”0″ scrolling=”no”></iframe><br /><center><small>Created with <a href=”http://www.flickrslideshow.com”>flickr slideshow</a>.</small></center> If you want to change the size, please change the numbers marked in red. Created with flickr slideshow.
I have been using Flickr for about two years to increase visibility of the work of Red Cross Red Crescent. Today, I’d like to share some of the lessons I’ve learned.
I’ve used the New Year’s break to do some minor housekeeping on the blog. Among other things, I updated to WordPress 2.9 which has some really interesting new features. I also (finally) created a Facebook page for the blog so that you can see updates in your news feed – if that is something you want. I had been hoping that “Networked Blogs” would help me to get the word out, but so far I’m a bit disappointed. While I get some traffic[...]
