The world watched in horror and awe on Dec. 26, 2004 as an earthquake
and tsunami devastated wide areas of Southern Asia.
As neighboring nations and relief agencies began organizing to help, so did another
group of people: bloggers. Unlimited by geography and powered by
easy blog-publishing tools, bloggers quickly sprang into action to
provide information that was otherwise impossible or extremely difficult
to find or disseminate.
In a remote part of the world, where traditional news crews wouldn't arrive for
several days, bloggers provided some of the first eyewitness accounts,
news of relief efforts, videos, still photographs, lists of victims
and missing persons, and other helpful disaster aid and coordination
information. Over a period of days and weeks, blogging would move
yet another notch from novelty to acceptability.
BlogPulse's analysis of tsunami-related coverage in the blogsphere follows.
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Tsunami-related buzz spiked starting Dec. 26, 2004 and into 2005
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Tsunami-related "buzz" in the Blogosphere spiked incredibly in late December 2004 and remained high
into mid-January 2005, especially when compared with other
natural-disaster events. Rarely do such spikes in discussion
occur so quickly.
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New Tsunami-Dedicated Blogs Entered the Blogosphere
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The Rise of Regional Blogs
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Some of the same political bloggers that fueled discussion during the U.S. 2004
Presidential election—Instapundit, Daily Kos, PowerLine Blog,
Captain’s Quarters, Little Green Footballs, Juan Cole and others—were
key influences of tsunami-related discussion. But four of the
top 10 were new bloggers from Southern Asia.
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Visual Patterns in the Blogosphere
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BlogPulse's analytical tools help track the coverage of the
tsunami and relief efforts, as these maps illustrate.
Discussion spiked considerably in the affected countries and
the Southern Asia region.
By mining posts for mentions of towns, states and other areas we can discover
which locations hit by the tsunami gained most attention in
the blogosphere. The map above illustrates these results by
coloring states and, where appropriate counties, according
to how many mentions there were of those administrative areas
or towns within them. The colors represent the share of attention
for that state with respect to the country. As the map indicates,
the most discussed regions per country were: Pulau Pinang in
Malaysia, Aceh Besar in Indonesia, Phuket in Thailand and the
Nicobar Islands in India. This map analysis is a sample of
the area, not an analysis of the entire set of tsunami-affected
places.
BlogPulse's trend-graphing capability, which tracks buzz based on postings, captured
the phenomenon as well. |
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Group Blogs Mobilized Quickly…and across International Borders
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While group blogs—those authored by several different
bloggers—are not new, the quick devastation caused by the
tsunami spurred equally fast cooperation in the blogging world,
often across international boarders.
The South-East Asia Earthquake and Tsunami Blog (http://tsuanmihelp.blogspot.com)
at Blogspot is a prime example of a group blog, made
possible by a team of contributors in different countries,
translators,
volunteers and other services that made videos, photos and
other information possible. The bloggers were based in Sri
Lanka, Malaysia,
India, Guam, the United State, Canada and elsewhere.
Other group blogs moved into BlogPulse’s top 10 list
during the days and weeks immediately after the tsunami hit,
including:
http://www.command-post.org/nk
http://www.worldchanging.com
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Blogs Embraced Video Capabilities
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Bloggers Provided Eyewitness Accounts
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Bloggers Tracked Relief Efforts
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Likewise, BlogPulse's trend graph plots discussion about various relief agencies
over time. While most of the discussion focused on Red Cross/Red
Crescent agencies immediately after the 26 tsunami hit, UNICEF
gained a larger percentage of discussion in the ensuing weeks
as attention
turned to orphans, fears of abducted children and efforts to
reunite families.
This entry was linked to a lot because it provided a table
of aid organizations, with ratings and explanations:
http://www.benjaminrosenbaum.com/blog/archives/2004_12.html |
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Bloggers Focused Disaster Relief Accountability
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Often, people donate to charitable causes and then wonder, "Where did my money go? How was it really spent?"
Asha (Asha for Education), a notable and reputed social / non-profit
organization in India, created a blog (http://ashatsunamirelief.blogspot.com)
to provide real-time updates from its various project sites
to track how communities are benefiting from donations,
volunteer efforts and outreach.
Will blogs begin providing a valuable service of monitoring,
ongoing education and tracking of various efforts like this
(and will the movement spread to government spending?
Private spending/
wartime spending? Other issues?)
A timely article on the subject http://sudhir-lp.blogspot.com/2005/01/efforts-to-increase-transparency-and.html examines the implications. |
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Keeping "Disasters" in Context: What Other World Regions Need Help?
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BlogPulse
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Intelliseek Inc. supports any and all efforts to aid disaster relief in the countries
affected. Although no one from our company was personally affected,
many of us have relatives and friends in India, Malaysia and
other countries affected by the tsunami.