It is a bit of a cliche in the technology press that whenever there is a natural disaster modern internet communications prove invaluable and amazing.
We have just lived through two weeks of disruption from snow, ice and prolonged subzero temperatures I cannot say it happened here in modern Scotland.
My main interest was in getting to work using public transport. Though I also had a general interest in the worsening situation. My family was mainly interested in whether the schools were open.
Neither of these things were exactly state secrets nor difficult to ascertain, apparently.
The media was not much use at all, it mainly focussed on a few big stories, such as political arguments, rather obvious points about the weather, or fatuous statements such as you should get contractors to knock off icicles and pedestrians should not walk close to buildings. In this country pavements generally run close to buildings, so I suppose they might have been suggesting that people should walk down the middle of the road, though who knows. I cannot imagine any "contractor" rushing to come out and knock off your icicles for you either.
The local radio station was excellent, they really come into their own at these times. But they cover too large an area to provide highly specific advice, they did seem to be spot on with things like the Forth Road Bridge closing, they were not much use at reporting on train problems, no media even seemed to really attempt to cover the disruptions to the trains.
The media based websites were pretty much as per their reporting, though more out of date.
The specific websites for schools were problematic. They were often totally unavailable because of high traffic. People would just hit the refresh button to get updates. Schools seemed incapable of making decisions, for example deciding at 8.58 to close a school that opened at 9, turning away any children that arrived. The school had also signed us all up to get text updates to our mobile, but the few we did get were too late to be much use and they did not send out messages that they should of. It was certainly not something that you could rely on. My wife was getting constant phone calls from people with no internet, or no mobiles asking what was going on, when she did not know herself, despite having a mobile and internet.
The trains were not operating to timetables, and the website purported to reflect what trains were running, but was often completely wrong, reporting trains were running when they had all been cancelled. The station announcements when you could hear them tended to be accurate, though stuff on the screens was often completely wrong. In fairness to the railway people they were attempting to run a service that was falling apart around them, but their provision of information was dreadful.
Accordingly you could scour the web and find nothing of any real use, just more and more contradictory information.
The most useful information was other people, people on trains phoning people still at the station, direct first hand information that you could trust. The children tended to use Facebook to discuss school closures and this seemed to work well apart from the fact that none of them actually knew very much or had any authority.
The lesson would appear to be that user generated content is key, there needs to be some sort of infrastructure available for users to share content, and authoritative voices should take part in these discussions, or they should ensure that they maintain authoritative sources of advice across a vareity of channels. Mobile texts will not reach everyone, the internet will not reach everyone, etc etc. Decide on a media strategy and commit to it.
No comments:
Post a Comment