The community I have chosen for my research paper is Valley City. I have chosen this because I saw most of what happened first hand. It has affected me, as well as many of you, so I think it would be important to research.
So far some things I have found or noticed is that our mayor, Mary Lee Nielsen, has been the main spokesperson. She has been doing an exceptional job explaining the situation in Valley City and what is being done to solve the problems.
I think one of the most effective channels of communication was the sandbag siren. This was the siren to let people know that they need more people to fill sandbags at the Wintershow building also known as "Sandbag Central." Some other channels of communication were the TV channels 10 and 68. The radio station in town, KQDJ, made announcements whenever something important came up like the water ban. Also, valleycityusa.com had important announcements posted on it. Right now it has in large print "If it's yellow let it mellow, if it's brown flush it down" which is in reference to the water conserving efforts going on in Valley City at this time as the sewage system is getting fixed.
Along with these channels of communication there were some events on Facebook encouraging students to go and sandbag to save the town. As I was a resident during the flood, I know that word of mouth played a large part in gaining information as a lot of people don't listen or watch the local stations. The VCSU campus sent out emails updating students on information about the flood and how they can help. They also used notifind as you all know to announce that school was being cancelled.
There have been many successful channels of communication in Valley City that may have helped save the city.
I have also chosen to research Valley City in this project. I've never really witnessed a flood first hand before this year. I lived right next to the river, so I saw crews working hard to build dikes. The means of communication that you mentioned were all very popular from what I can tell. I also think that word-of-mouth was a popular, but not necessarily accurate means of communication. I think that too many people just listened to rumors instead of getting the actual news.
ReplyDeleteSounds like a lot of students are doing the research on VC. This will be cool to compare what everyone writes about the crisis. In small towns here in ND, most news spreads by word of mouth. Although it might not be the most accurate info, most people believe it and then distort it a little more the next time they say it. It is kind of a never-ending battle for PR people trying to get the truth out. I do like the way VC used the sandbag siren to get people's attention.
ReplyDeleteWord of mouth was also one of the means i got my information from however from experience I know not to believe everything you hear, because I heard stories about the campus being under water and like we all know now that was definitely incorrect.
ReplyDeleteThis experience thought me to not believe everything I hear and accept it with open arms, because a lot of things that happened during this flood were overly exaggerated and word of mouth was the least accurate source of information.
I am not from Valley City so when I heard go was some what confused as to what was happening but then i figured it out pretty fast that the city was calling for more sandbeggers. I agree Oc Ilogu that word of mouth can only be trusted to an extent, usually when someone tells me something that seems like it could be true I look it up or try to find the truth so i could make my own conclusion.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you that the mayor was the main spokesperson but she did have a lot of other people talk and give information when it was on TV. All of the ways of communications you have used worked at certain times. At first, I didn’t know what the siren was about but then on the radio they said if the siren goes off, they need more sandbaggers. I also like that people would use Facebook to get an important message across. To me this was important when I was gone for Easter because otherwise I would have had no idea what was going on.
ReplyDeleteI dont know why you would choose Valley City lol. But you did do a good job of it. I aactually did no know some of this stuff that you talked about in the blog and now I am glad I do. Valley did do a good job of communicating although not everyone uses facebook so they could do a little more then then what they did.
ReplyDeleteI thought that using the blog and other forms was a great idea. Maybe it did leave some people out of the loop, but it kept many more people in. It's probably a good idea to use as many mediums to communicate as possible to try to paint with a broad brush, so to speak, to get the message out to as many as possible.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you that Mary Lee Nielson was the spokesperson for Valley City. The sandbag siren was a very effective communication to call for help sandbagging. Many people were out to help sandbag at the Winter Show building. The TV channels and radio were also a great way of informing people and for those didn’t hear or see the information there were able to at least hear it from other people.
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ReplyDeleteI agree with you on the fact that the sandbag siren was one of the most effective forms of communication. As I did not have a radio in my apartment, I could not turn it on to hear the news. However, it seemed that no matter where you were in Valley City, you could hear that emergency siren calling volunteers to action. Once I discover the meaning of this siren, it proved to most definitely be the most effective form of communication for me.
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