Here's how it worked this time ... call it a case study if you want to.
So I'm on Facebook, and I notice my wife's boss in Alaska posted a weather map about 2 hours ago. It shows a huge storm, and she just said "OhOh ..." Below the map is a message the US National Weather Service Alaska posted 10 hours ago: "Here's the latest look at the storm heading into the Bering Sea this morning. It's a monster of a storm! Blizzard conditions will come on the front end of the storm for many locations. The extreme low pressure (less than 950mb) with hurricane force winds will create an 7 to 9 foot storm surge as this heads north. The irregular shape of the West Coast of Alaska will cause different timing of coastal flooding impacts. Please see the latest forecast for your location. http://www.arh.noaa.gov/ We can't stress enough the severity of hazards this storm brings."
In fact, NWS Alaska has a Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/#!/US.NationalWeatherService.Alaska.gov. As I'm writing at 10:20 p.m. CST (7:20 Alaska Standard Time), they've just posted a map dated 6 p.m. showing 40- to 50-knot winds with gusts up to 70 knots and this advisory: "Winds have picked up along the west coast of Alaska and over Saint Lawrence Island. Snow has spread inland causing near ZERO visibility. Hooper Bay to Emmonak and into western Norton Sound, along with Saint Lawrence Island, are already seeing sea level rises associated with the storm surge. Nome is currently about 4 feet above the normal tide. Unfortunately, it will only be getting worse. Stay safe everyone."
What gets me the most is some of the messages on the wall:
- Thank You for these updates!! 59 minutes ago.
- I'm praying for my son and all the other people on the water right now. 50 minutes ago.
- Praying for everyone in the area... 40 minutes ago.
- Thanks for posting....It's just starting in Bethel. Ours won't be anything near what the coastal villages are going through! 29 minutes ago.
All of whicy is the first I've heard of the storm. Here in the "Lower 48" [states], our news media are much too busy with Justin Bieber's trials and tribulations to worry about a little old storm.
So next I look at the Anchorage Daily News, and the main stories on their website tonight are a search for a missing student athlete at the University of Alaska Anchorage and the coming storm. It's off the coast of Western Alaska, 1,330 miles northwest of Anchorage, but the ADN is treating it as a big story. The headline: "Evacuations begin ahead of Bering Sea storm." Click on the headline, and it takes me to a live blog. The most recent post is from the city of Kotzebue on the Bering Sea coast:
6: 10 p.m. update: Message for Kotzebue: Stay indoors for the next two daysAll of which leads me back to the question on your assignment sheet for the COMM 150 paper due after Thanksgiving: How are social media changing the face of America?
In Kotzebue, the hub city for a collection of largely Inupiat villages in northwest Alaska, the city and borough planned to urge residents tonight to stay inside, acting city manager Keith Greene said. "One of our concerns up here is people walking through the snow and getting lost."
Even during garden-variety storms, winds and blowing snow can blind travelers on the outskirts of the city. The mega storm is expected to whip gusts as fast as 90 to 100 mph, Greene said. The message for Kotzebue residents will be "stay indoors, don't leave home for the next couple days," he said.
7 comments:
This is interesting that we find our news (even our most important news) online or through some kind of online social forum. Vivian states that Facebook has 312 MILLION followers and is the 5th most visited site worldwide. These stats make facebook one of the prime competitors for audience time(more traditional ways of seeking info like magazines or newspapers.) I won't deny it, facebook can sometimes be essential.
Thanks for posting, Haley. I looked at that weather service Facebook page this morning, and they were using Twitter to send in reports on wind damage, etc., that they couldn't get otherwise.
BTW, did you find your flash drive? I asked in my Tuesday class, and a couple of the students said they thought they'd seen it. If you want, I can ask again. So pls let me know.
i get a bunch of my news from facebook, i first found out that osama bin laden had been killed from a post on facebook
As many I use facebook everyday to stay updated and intuned with what is going on. Not only do i recieve news that closely relates to me, but can also find essential news about the rest of the world. As Vivian states, facebook is the fifth most visited site in the world. We can now consider facebook to be a major source of mass communication. Not only facebook but the Internet as a whole.
Most everyone uses facebook today this is just another way to put out information about something. It is an easy way for people that do not have TV to receive the information they need to get. Facebook is one of the most visited websites used today. This is a great way for the people in Alaska to get information and ask questions about what is going on or what is going to happen.
Social media is overtaking the standard news outlets, and information is spreading quicker through outlets like Facebook and Twitter. More people get on these to check the latest stories rather than picking up a newspaper, or turning on CNN. It is also an example of how the news outlets choose what we consider "news-worthy"; such as covering the latest celebrities divorce than a storm in Alaska or soldiers returning home from Iraq. Really these events aren't newsworthy at all, but more entertaining to the public.
This is a great example of how the people of today are turning to different outlets for the news. Some people just want to hear it from the horse's mouth. Cut out the middle man and see exactly what's happening. The weather channel even has a page on Facebook. I find Facebook to be very important for my means of learning the news.
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