By Kathryn
Ryan M, Syed Asad Raza and Hakan
Yerlikaya
In preparation for our class discussion of the
Commonwealth Edison Case and the role of social media during natural disasters,
please consider your own experience with storms and other natural disasters.
Have you ever lost power as a result of a storm? Have you ever been stuck in
your home or another shelter? If so, what was the most important tool you had
or wished you had access to?
For an increasing number of people, the answer to the
last question is a fully-charged Smartphone. Because cellular phones operate on
cellular signals coming from cell towers rather than the electrical grid,
cellphone signals are not usually interrupted during storms. As a result
residents of areas affected by storm activity usually will still have access to
a cellular signal even if they lose electricity, and therefore, access to
radios, most landlines and television, home internet routers, desktop computers,
and other media and communication platforms.
Smartphones provide an opportunity for people who once
lost communication channels during power outages to remain connected to their
families, communities, utilities, and the government. Consider the situation in
New Orleans immediately before, during, and after Hurricane Katrina, which made
landfall in Louisiana on August 29, 2005. During the hours before the storm,
New Orleans issued an evacuation order. However, many residents chose not to heed
the evacuation order and were forced to wait out the storm in their own homes
and in temporary shelters like the Superdome. After the storm, hundreds of
residents were trapped in their attics and the roofs of their homes as a result
of the storm surge flooding, waiting to be rescued by first responders. In 2005,
Twitter was not yet released and most Americans did not have access to social
media platforms. For many, cellphones remained a luxury. Many people lost their
lives waiting for help, with no access to communication tools.
Compare the situation during and after Hurricane
Katrina with the situation during and after more recent storms like Hurricane
Sandy or the 2011 storms that caused the Commonwealth Edison outages. The
Commonwealth Edison case shows how a private utility could learn from past experiences
and use the new wave of online social media users to improve its ability to
respond for the needs of its thousands of customers in the region. The
Commonwealth Edison utility learned from its mistakes during the July 2011
storm and prepared a social media plan shortly after the storm in order to
respond to the concerns of its customers who wanted to be informed about how
long they would need to wait before getting power back online. It is important
to note the Commonwealth Edison utility is a private utility. This may have affected
the speed of the company’s implementation of a social media plan, as well as
its willingness to take risks that more bureaucratic public utilities may be
less willing to take.
In preparation for today’s class, please consider how
the proliferation of social media has changed how you prepare for storms.
Please also consider the agencies and companies that are responsible for
preparing for and responding to storms and other natural disasters in your
community. Is your power utility private or public? How do you view the
response of government agencies compared to private entities? Where does the
Commonwealth Edison case fall in your assessment?
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