Up for discussion: What role did new media play for hurricane Sandy? Find examples across the web (beyond the fake photos and 9gag please) to illustrate the response.
Your Media Class
Personally engaging with the media
Up for discussion: What role did new media play for hurricane Sandy? Find examples across the web (beyond the fake photos and 9gag please) to illustrate the response.
Your Media Class 
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During hurricane Sandy, new media had a huge role in either warning people, keeping people upbeat or providing relief. For example, Apple provided a link to donate to Red Cross via iTunes with just one click, making it easier for a wider range of people to help the victims of Sandy, seeing as iTunes is available worldwide and it takes nothing but a click in order to donate. Moreover, The Knot, which is a wedding website, set up a page on Facebook in order to connect brides whose weddings had been ruined by Sandy, with venues and vendors to keep more than 4,000 weddings stay on track, using social media to bring hope to the victims of the disaster. Another way new media was used is in the form of apps; a number of apps surfaced before the hurricane to keep people on their toes, from apps like ‘Hurricane Tracker’ which allows people to get the latest forecasts, to the Red Cross app which allowed people to send “I’m safe” messages to friends and family as well as a list of steps to use in an emergency and the location to the nearest Red Cross shelter. Lastly, during the disaster, Google launched a ‘crisis map’ which tracked Sandy’s path, which allowed users to see cloud imagery, shelter locations, public alerts and, of course, tracking the hurricane. All this, and more, shows how new media played a huge part in hurricane Sandy, allowing users to contact love ones, giving them hope and letting them provide relief amongst other things.
Hurricane Sandy being viewed as a traumatic destruction in the media, shocked the public and could be said to use elements and similarities with the “shock doctrine” providing images on the web and updates across various platforms. Through this many companies invested in creating apps and sites to track the hurricane such as The National Weather Service with providing updated forecasts and maps regularly on its website. Google responded to this with it’s own “Google.org’s Crisis Response Map” which points out danger zones and areas closed down. More over NASA’s Earth Observatory was also constantly active, posting some pretty stunning satellite photographs of the storm which were able to be downloaded on smart phones. Various Twitter pages were loaded to give updates on the storm too, for example NPR News is compiling a Twitter list of public media folks covering the storm giving live updates to the audience thus making them feel involved during the storm and stirring curiosity. Another aspect of this were the Twitter pages mocking the storm and gaining a large amount of followers. Lastly being labelled “the storm of the century” Apple wasn’t far off from creating a app specifically designed to help those who are caught in midst of the storm, and giving helpful advice to help others.
In conclusion all apps seem to of been created to inform the public of the storm and involve those who have may not be near but are able to keep track of it. This heightens the audience’s emotions and gets them subconsciously involved playing with their fears.
Media played a substancial role in helping with the hurricane crisis and asissting and informing people in the area and everyone around the world. The iOS app “hurricane tracker” is an app that came out that could track the current course of the storm and alert you about all the new info such as wind direction changes and the danger zones were clearly highlighted to alert everyone that had this app. Also television and ads on facebook promoting Anheuser-Busch beer that instead of canned beer sent canned water to help support people that needed clean water and could not get to fresh supplies. Facebook, Twitter and podcasts alerted people about this and helped spread the word about this , so that people knew that they could get water that way to be prepared. Myspace in its new updated format utilized celebrities such as the jersey shore cast and adam levine from maroon 5,to help raise money and spread the word about the hurricane sandy relief fund, to be sent to all the victims. This was people can see there idols and join into the cause. Blizzard , the company that created World of Warcraft are pulling a promotional campaign offering a new in game character, with parts of the proceed going to help the victims of hurricane sandy. This opens up a whole new area of media, as gaming is never really related to charity and a wider audience is appealed to here, spreading the word and helping by benefitting gamers with the limited edition feature of the game.
Many US residents went in the social media to find the last updates.Facebook and Twitter were used to share personal experiences and the latest news but also, to keep in contact with family and friends as they could see their status. On that day, estimates show that there were three and a half million tweets with the hashtag #Sandy.The ability to re-tweet, gives the feeling to the audience that they are also involved in this catastrophy. Instagram, which is owned by Facebook, there were 233,000 photos with the hashtag “Sandy,” 100,000 under “Hurricanesandy” and 20,000 under “Frankenstorm” as of Monday afternoon. The news have travelled across the globe faster than light, this shows how media is connecting people worldwide and the effect on humans.The hurricane has also helped to promote Obama for the elctions as the cameras pointed at him to show his response this catastrophic natural event.
Hurricane Sandy has caused great response from all around the web and different means of communication – twitter, instagram, etc. Pictures of the storm’s aftermath appearing from many different people in the states make citizen journalism appear more like “news”, where the public has more to offer than the actual news. As this article(http://mashable.com/2012/11/05/sandy-instagram-record/) states, instagram was filled with pictures of Sandy, “At peak times, users were uploading 10 storm-related photos to the service every second “, resulting in over 1 million pictures of the “Frankenstorm”, all of which were contributed to the web by the public. A few years back, this would have not been possible, but with instagram allowing people to take pictures and post them online whenever and wherever a person wants, provided he has internet, one does not need the news as much to get the idea of what is going on and even find out about the event in the first place.
As for Twitter, Sandy had more than 3 million tweets, as stated in the “Black Enterprise” article (http://www.blackenterprise.com/technology/hurricanesandy-hashtagsgenerate-over-3-million-tweets/). Once again, this social network, a medium of communication, has acted as a news and communication platform, sending out hope to people and reporting things related to Sandy, (https://twitter.com/search?q=%23sandy) “Epic night at the Laugh Factory. Thank you to all that helped us make money for Red Cross. All proceeds going to victims of #Sandy”(@DaneCook), identically to instagram (which provided visual communication between people). It also promoted other networks, like YouTube, “Mike from Sheepshead Bay describes the destruction from #sandy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dQJAMoYoiM … #OccupySandy ” (@OccupyWallStNYC). Never the less, Twitter had its own spin, with people tweeting things not directly related to the actual event or its aftermath, “Snooki is a lot like Hurricane #Sandy. They’re both heading to The Jersey Shore with intentions to blow everyone within a 50 mile radius.” (@FezTht70s). It is obvious that such networks like Instagram and Twitter are not only used to provide people with audience-generated content (apart from corporations to provide their news through these two platforms), but also to promote other things – users(themselves), opinions, subjects of their tweets (like Snooki).