Collage of The Age's Bushfires 74 online pages of Photos.
The morbid count keeps rising; 130 currently according to Vic Police/News.com.au with an end “forecast” at 230 people dead from Bushfires, the worst natural disaster in Victoria fullstop. The Age editorial page 20 today (9/2/9) said it best : “In the forthcoming weeks, as the extent of the tragedy is revealed, it will be recorded in statistics + measured by historical comparisons that help us understand it. But for the present list of fatalities and catalogues of damage do less to help our comprehension than the human stories that have emerged.
Already there is a Brian Naylor Facebook group, Lonely Planet’s Thorntree Bushfires thread, Friendfeed Bushfires room, and Twitter, with it’s 10 #bushfires entries per second is truly amazing in helping inform, provide links and mobilize donations. Similarly google maps of the Victorian Bushfires shows a useful application of technology in lessening the load on firefighters, council and government websites.
However, what is missing for me in this “social media explosion” is the human stories. These are being heard on ABC + 3AW radio especially, which can be listened to on the computer, but the weakness with these old delivery channels is the streams of human tragedy, escape and amazing bravery are not stored or classified to be accessed unless u r lucky enough to hear in realtime. The less mediated the better and social media could do alot more here, and hopefully it will as the longer term role will be in recording the lucky, unlucky, survivors and not stories. There is alot to learn for next time. And obviously modern social media such as podcasts and video streaming, twitpicing are internet/mobile network dependent, something which Telstra is working on rectifying but also largely struck down by fire.
Marysville, a stunning little town, is no more.
Where the internet is superpowerful though is in mobilising help in a distributed manner, and as the initial stages of fire containment, and saving the injured, and identifying the passed - are completed - there will be more people using the internet to help those affected with what they need. To quote The Age Editorial again : “The bonds forged by death and devastation are never willingly sought, but sometimes they are the bonds that sustain us the most.” This may be the first significant use of social media for an Australian event, so let’s hope we use the full plethora of tools - such as video, photos, blogging, status messages, geo-coding, to help tell the human stories that will give us and others the insight this doesn’t happen again.
What really needs to happen is (when the towns and technology are ready) is a handful to 50 bloggers spread across the google bushfires map embed themselves in the location and with 3G NextG Netbooks, everyday Macbook laptops + gps ready iPhones, N95/6’s, Curves, Bolds, loaded with Wordpress, Flickr, Ustream, Twitter, get first hand reportage and indepth stories from those affected; As unmediated as possible. Newspapers will do the stats and top level stories very well. But the story behind the story is what is fascinating and needs to be recorded for history. Not to mention CFA was on TV Friday saying Ash Wednesday would arrive Saturday - it did, but that message didnt get out.
Bloggers and social media pundits like to press refresh on twitter search (come on get a realtime autoupdating window like friendfeed - mmm ok tweetgrid do this but on 10 minute delay anyway) but the mainstream media they decry as dead, are at the frontline of the Victorian bushfires not them. (most of the conference going blogerati are at white collar monday-friday jobs/study) Instead of debating the definition of journalism, mainstream media ‘hacks’ are delivering the audio live streaming to your radio, computer and (not so much) television set. This first hand reporting layer of the human story, unmediated, is what is missing in the Australian social media industry. After the sadly departed, this is mainly what I’m thinking about, and calculating how much petrol would be needed.
ABC Radio have been doing great First hand reporting which the Aussie social media industry could learn from!
