Rebecca and Genevieve Williams, who started the enormously successful Joplin Tornado Info website, are helping with a new University of Missouri Extension website designed to serve the same purpose after this week's Branson tornado. The following news release is from University of Missouri Extension.
A University
of Missouri Extension storm recovery resource named “Branson Tornado Info” on
Facebook was up and had 14,000 followers just 12 hours after the tornado struck
Branson on Feb. 28.
Actually,
the page was put in place back January by David Burton, civic communication specialist for MU
Extension in southwest Missouri.
“I created
three new pages on Facebook at that time for Branson, Springfield and Greene
County that are modeled after the success we had last year with the Joplin
Tornado Info and Missouri Flooding Info pages on Facebook,” Burton said. The
Joplin Tornado Info page is still very active, with more than 48,000 fans.
Facebook
users can “like” the Branson Tornado Info pages to find out how to help and to
learn about emergency and cleanup work from the organizations and groups doing
the work.
These pages
are designed to be a collaboration of state, federal and local agencies and
organizations involved in the affected areas. The pages are managed by MU
Extension but public information officers from various organizations and
community volunteers with media backgrounds can serve as co-administrators,
following a model used after the Joplin tornado.
In fact, by
March 2, the page had 11 volunteer administrators. The two most active
volunteers have been Rebecca and Genevieve Williams, the mother and daughter
team from Neosho, Mo. that were behind the establishment of Joplin Tornado
Info.
Persons
willing to help as administrators on these new pages should contact David
Burton at burtond@missouri.edu after
liking the Branson Tornado Info page. He will then send you the guidelines for
the page and instructions on getting set up as an administrator.
Having
co-administrators who post information and check facts on what others post is
important and was a key to the success of the Joplin Tornado Info page
according to Burton.
“I logged in
to Facebook at 5 a.m. on Feb. 28 and saw that this page had jumped from two
fans to 50 before I even knew there had been a tornado hit Branson,” said
Burton. “I got the word out to the media via email and we got things rolling.
Before the end of that first day we were up to 14,000 followers. As we saw in
Joplin, social media is a great communication tool during disasters especially
because of Smart phones.”
The
goal of the site administrators is to make sure posts are official in nature
and researched. In other words, the official information is unbiased and
research based, in keeping with MU Extension’s mission.
“On
Branson Tornado Info, we don't collect money for our own efforts and we shy
away from organizations that are merely collecting money. We don't post links
about fundraisers, or groups selling shirts, trinkets and such. Instead, we
link to sites that have collected information in lists, tables or officials
reports and we answer posted questions. We learned in Joplin that if we are
posting some new every five minutes the volume of the information will drive
away followers and will unsubscribe. That defeats the purpose,” said Burton.
As of March
2, the page has nearly 17,000 followers and 12 administrators who have some
clear goals and guidelines.
Burton is
also working with the Williams to write up a formal document of guidelines and
the lessons learned from the Joplin Tornado Info page so future presentations
can be made to community leaders or organizations interested in using social
media during natural disasters.
More information
is also available online from MU Extension at http://extension.missouri.edu.
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