Social Media Monitoring and the Democratic National Convention: New Tasks and Emergent Processes

Abstract

Public information officers and FEMA external affairs personnel routinely monitor online media reports in times of crises and disaster events. Online news sources now include citizen driven social media such as blogs, i-reports, photo and video sharing and networked information and communication technologies such as Facebook, MySpace, and the microblogging network, Twitter. While these communication mechanisms are increasing, little is known about the attention public officials devote to accessing, monitoring, and addressing public communication through social media. Utilizing data gathered through observations, interviews, and document analysis, this study concentrates on the new task of social media monitoring and the emergent processes used by public officials during the 2008 Democratic National Convention. Although some strategies were developed to monitor and utilize social media, there was a tendency to fall back upon standard operating procedures, limiting the emergence of new processes. Recommendations are provided for media monitoring activities in future crisis and disaster response.

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