Monday, April 13, 2015

Social Media for Disaster Prevention in Japan


      Japanese government has a lot of social media accounts in each ministry and agency. According to Japan’s e-government portal website, the number of Facebook account is 36 and the number of Twitter account is 54 in April 2015. I quickly check these accounts and realized that the most followed account is the Prime Minister’s Official Residence account for disaster and crisis management information which followers are 1.3 million. On the other hand, the Prime Minister’s Official Residence account’s followers are around 0.4 million although its number of tweet is around twice as disaster’s one.

     Cabinet Office also has a twitter account for disaster prevention and it has 0.15 million followers. This disaster prevention twitter account mainly disseminates natural disaster information such as earthquake, volcanic eruption, typhoon, floods, heavy snow etc. On the other hand, Prime Minister’s Official Residence account for disaster and crisis management information account disseminate terrorism and infectious disease information as well as natural disaster information. This Prime Minister’s Official Residence account for disaster and crisis management information account retweet other ministries tweet related to disaster information, so citizens can see all other information from different ministries on PC screen. It is very convenient for them.

     However, these accounts are used for only announcement for now. In crisis situation, in order to grasp accurate information about damages, government can cooperate with citizens and other organizations. For example, gathering information about hospital availability and communicate with rescue team. It is important to make relationship and to trust between government and other organization.

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