As I said in my last post, I am doing my research paper on Valley City. Mary Lee Nielson is still the spokesperson. Sandbagging started on Monday, March 23. The originally projected crest of the river was 18.5 feet from the National Weather Service. It got up to around 22 feet at its peak sometime around April 14th. There were about 450 national guardsmen helping fight the flood.
One medium that I found out was being used during the flood that I don't know much about is Twitter. Twitter is a social networking site that uses tweets which are text based posts that use up to 140 characters. They are similar to status updates on Facebook. I found this very high tech considering I don't even use Twitter yet.
It was announced on April 16th that classes for Valley City State University would be held online for the rest of the semester. An..... interesting experience it has been. April 17th Mayor Nielsen urged people to evacuate if they had not done so already while the sewer system that broke down could be repaired. They also ordered non essential businesses to close. On April 22nd they lifted the mandatory closure of nonessential businesses.
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Sounds like your researc is going good. Lots of good sources out there to get what you need to know in this small town. I still don't understand this twitter crap. Its like facebook status update with out all the other stuff stupid, but thats how it is. Ben is baking a cake right now! Who gives a flying you know what I think its dumb.
ReplyDeleteI also wrote about Twitter. I've had an account since January but rarely checked it. Once all the flooding started happening, I notied myself checking it more frequently. I also think Facebook and maybe other social networking sites were quite popular communication channels especially among the younger crowd. Even though I still haven't found the entire appeal in Twitter, I still found it useful in getting to know info from VCSU.
ReplyDeleteYou have a lot of good information to use. It doesn’t seem like you could get a lot of information across using Twitter if you can only use 140 characters but I guess you can still manage to get your message across. I think everyone was interested to see how online classes would go when VCSU announced that school would be online for the rest of the year. This flood is something that all of us will remember for a long time because not very often do we get to take online classes the rest of the year let alone deal with a flood.
ReplyDeleteI myself also do not know much about Twitter other than its like text messaging and facebook and email combined. I do think though that it would have been a good place for updates during the flood. It would be interesting to see how many peopel used Twitter as a source of info during the flood crisis. The city did a good job getting the closures and evacuations out to the public as soon as possible to try to control the damage of what was going on. VCSU relayed their messages through emails and texts. Which technology is what VCSU is known for!
ReplyDeleteI do not have Twitter myself yet, and I do not know if I am going to get it. It is a very interesting networking site where you can find out a lot of information about anything and everyone. Especially how people are feeling, which I feel is kind of personal. Networking sites were a good source, because people love to gossip and that is what they do best when a crisis is happening.
ReplyDeleteI heard about people using Twitter as well, but like yourself had no idea what it was, or how to use it still. I had no idea that twitter was so popular until the flooding in Valley City and they kept telling people that they could check on Twitter. It is was a good way to get information out to the public. Good research.
ReplyDeleteI would challenge you to discover Twitter and learn more about it. It seems like the hot spot when it comes to social networking. What were the gaps in the communication? I was in Valley City when the voluntary evacuation of the entire city was put in place. I had just woke up and was watching TV, when suddenly the channels were scrambled and it announced the evacuation of the entire city. It turns out this was an example of poor communication that caused panic. The mayor then came on the radio and announced that people should not panic and that this was a voluntary evacuation, not mandatory.
ReplyDeleteI definitely think that social networks like Facebook and Twitter were a big source of information for a lot of individuals during the flood crisis, especially college kids.
ReplyDeleteI myself got update through Facebook, a lot of students in Valley City created photo albums of the flood.
I also think that not all the information on Facebook was accurate, because when during the Valley City crisis someone had “Valley City State University currently under water due to flood” as we all know now, this was in no way accurate.
I did not know that there was that many guards men in town. I too find Twitter kind of out there for my taste. I find it funny that there was a Twitter set up for Valley City, I am wondering how well it was used. Because I checked out the Bismarck Twitter that was up... and lets say there was one post asking if there was a Twitter set for Bismarck. and that one never even got answered. So it would seem that it wasn't very effective in Bismarck at least not sure about here in Valley City. the only thing when i was trying to look up Twitter and Bismarck Flood I wonder if I was even looking in the right spot.
ReplyDeleteLooks like you are getting a lot of very important information pertaining to the flood for your paper. I have never used Twitter and don't usually understand that stuff very well. I did use facebook and enjoyed seeing the pictures and flood updates on there. Using these networking sites can be a very useful medium in these events but can also turn important information that the public needs to stay prepared completely around and cause serious chaos.
ReplyDeleteI never really realized until recently about the usage of social networking sights in crisis communications. I really only thought about the “social” aspect of Facebook, and staying connected with friends. I never really thought that it also could be an effective means for communicating during a crisis. I also know that the VCSU safety office has a twitter account and frequently makes updates on current events and issues. It is amazing how the times are changing really, before Facebook was perceived by me to be a fun too with friends, now it is a network that keeps one connected on all sorts of issues.
ReplyDelete