Last February, Madeira (a group of Islands on the Atlantic Ocean) was hit by severe weather and, as a result, landslides and floods caused a natural disaster that killed many people. During the first hours of the disaster,  social media platforms were vital to gather and spread information that was coming from people living in Madeira, and that had not been affected, to the rest of the world.  Looking at it from a distance there are lessons to be learned that might be helpful to everyone. My personal involvement in trying to help, what role my own twitter network played  and what tools were used, to what effect, will be covered on this post that aims to explain how everyone can use Social Media to help others.

Of course, every crisis is specific and some of these guidelines might not apply at all. Please bare that in mind while reading this post.

1. Observe before you get involved.

If you are really trying to help the first thing you should do is to watch what is happening on your timeline: Try to identify the sources of information and start following them; look for what hashtag(s) are being used and keep track of them; Identify keywords that are being used and setup a Twitter search: the best online tool, in my opinion, is TweetGrid. This website allows you to setup a search grid with multiple keywords  that you can monitor in real time. It also allows you to Tweet and RT right from the website. Unlike TweetDeck it doesn’t spend API calls which is something that is very important.

2. Try to add value.

When I started to try and help on #tempmad (the hashtag that was used to gather information that was coming from Madeira) 90% of the information that was being tweeted was in Portuguese. Instead of just making RTs of that info I started to translate them into English and sending them out. I also asked some of my followers to RT that info. My thoughts were with the Portuguese community (1st, 2nd and 3rd generations) living abroad, specially in the U.S.A., where there is a big Portuguese community as well as South Africa and Venezuela, that were looking for information on Twitter. My (wonderful) Twitter network started to RT the content that I was translating and spreading the word.

3. Target influencers and send them information.

One of the beauties of Twitter is that everyone is available to you. TV journalists, editors, producers, radio hosts they are all on twitter just like the rest of us. Target them and send them info that you want to see spread to a wider audience. Be factual, be polite and be persistent. By doing a quick search on Twitter I got to find whose CNN, Sky News and several radio hosts in Venezuela were online and started to send them information regarding the events in Madeira. After some tweets I got feedback and a request to send them more info via e-mail. Incredibly CNN, Sky News and radio stations in Venezuela were giving the news about the events in Madeira before Portuguese media. Something to think about.

4. Do not try to reinvent the wheel. Join efforts instead.

Dário Ornelas is a computer science student from Madeira, currently living in Lisbon. Alexandre Gamela is a Portuguese journalist living in Birmingham,UK. Dário had set up a netvibes website where he was gathering all the info that was coming from people in Madeira, via Twitter, and other data that he was gathering from the Internet. Alexandre had setup a Google Map where he has adding pictures and videos that were showing up on Twitter (and that was being used by online newspapers and television stations later on). All the information on Dário’s netvibes site was in Portuguese. It took one Tweet, two DMs and a 5 lines of G-Talk chat for Dário to grant me access to the website where I started to translate the available information to English, based on the information that was already on the site. Alexandre also put his map on this site and suddenly an ad-hoc team of 3 people was being used as an independent hub for information coming from several sources.

5. Be responsible and don’t give up.

From the moment that people are relying on the information you are sending out your responsibility grows. Double and triple check the information you are giving or posting on a website. In case of doubt ask different sources in order to get the facts right. No matter in what part of the world you are, official channels will try sooner or later to put a cap on the information flow and try to discredit  any other information. Don’t give in to any propaganda and keep doing what you were doing from the beginning: trying and help people.

In the case of  #tempmad, one of the decisions that was taken, by the three of us, was to setup an e-mail address so that friends and family members of people in Madeira, that were abroad, could contact us in case they couldn’t get any news. We would then forward that information to Linda Machado (someone that was from the first moment one of the most reliable source of information coming out from Madeira), that was tireless in trying to get back at us with good news. Be aware that to get into such an endeavor can be hard and very stressful. Only do it if you think you have what it takes to, if necessary, pick up a phone and tell someone across the world that one of their relatives/friends are missing. Once more, the use of TweetGrid, with the right keywords, was invaluable to reach out to people and letting them know we could help in trying and locate their relatives or friends. We got calls for help from many countries including Slovenia and we were able to locate almost everyone.

6. Be bold.

If you think that something makes sense and that will help people, try and make it happen. When the first donation accounts started to show up on several websites they were missing an IBAN or SWIFT code. Knowing that the Portuguese community was willing to help I got on the phone with 3 major banks in Portugal (that were managing the solidarity accounts) and asked to speak with their Communications Director. Two of those banks that were contacted, immediately changed the information that was on their website in order to have the IBAN and SWIFT codes available.

By using Twitter, TweetGrid, a netvibes website and MSN/G-Talk, a team of three people that had never met, based on the information that was being made available on Twitter, were able to produce an information central that was fundamental in the first 24h after the events in Madeira. None of this would’ve been possible without the people tweeting from Madeira and without the power of the twitter community (local and international) that showed that we all can put our differences apart to try and help those that need it the most at a certain point. I hope that this post helped shed some light on the backstage of what happened in this specific event and that it can be useful if there is need for it. Any questions, tips or comments are, as usual more than welcome.

Photo Credits: Paulo Henriques

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