A big "aha" I had from this event is that the VOSTs described below are not necessarily volunteers. You can assemble a team from your own internal staff or from other departments.
Using Virtual Operations Support Teams (VOST) [Remember these may be full-time employees!]
Cheryl Bledsoe of Clackamas County Communications
A VOST is a team of “trusted agents” organized and directed by emergency response organizations.
These are connected to:
· Incident management Teams
· Incident PIOs
· EOCs
You need to figure out where the community “huddles” for information. Her community mall had more connections and influence than their internal agency page.
You define what you want your VOST to do. You cannot keep the public from interacting. So you need to engage.
Benefits:
· Ability to focus on the Web
· Variety of skills and abilities available based on the networks of participants
· Ability to see trends and issues
· Provides a filter for emergency management response agencies
Be sure you get your team member “culturalized” to your community and terminology
· One of things the VOST can do is just monitor what is going on in social media.
· They can also amplify what the official sources are saying.
· You can also use them to answer back with set talking points that are pre-established.
· They can set up an incident specific website for you.
Preparing a VOST — this is critical if it is going to be really effective.
· Understand the need
· Become familiar with social media
· Identify types of missions
· Achieve agency buy-in
· Recruit team members
· Establish protocols
· Train and exercise
Trust is critical to all of the above elements, starting with government employees, including the PIOs.
How do you exercise? Have them follow existing events that are happening in the world to see how they monitor social media. The Scottish independence vote, for example.
One of the things working now is typing of VOSTs. The concept is to get accredited teams established and then what to call them. These teams are not like the CERT and other volunteer teams that might be in a community. As of now, amateur radio teams are not typed.
You need to drill people in VOSTs. It is hard to have them participate in a functional exercise where there isn’t any
Helpful Websites: Virtual Operations Support Group CRESA VOST field operations guide
Most teams have 2-3 people.
You could take your permanent staff to be the VOST for other “regular” events, and in Clark County they were being called on by first responders to augment their efforts more than actual EOC activations to support responder operations.
IS-42 is the FEMA course on social media in disasters.
Why monitor social media?
· Time is valuable
· Can provide clarity during the fog of war
· Your messages may be confusing
· Public can be your ally
Define the “monitoring mission.”
· Define objectives
· What are you looking for?
· Where and what do you want to monitor?
· Prioritize and filter information
Things to consider
· Context is king
· Understand spoof and fake information
o If it sounds “too good to be true…”
o Warns of impending doom? Conspiracy theories pop up heavy
o Verify via www.snopes.com
· Internet Memes
o Comedians like to jump in during a disaster.
o People make fun of the disaster and establish hashtags
Remember that almost all pictures shown at the immediate onset of a disaster are fake, coming from another previous disaster.
Setting Trap lines
· You’ve defined your mission, know where you are searching, so what are trap lines?
· Use geocoded searches
· Social media aggregators
o www.icerocket.com or www.topsy.com
· Alerts: Information pings you when your “search term” is found
o Google alerts or newly emerging Twitter Alerts
o www.google.com/alerts and fill out the form
§ There can be time delays
§ May not be complete
Set up a “reader,” which is essentially a deposit place for your new information.
Yahoo Pipes is a more advanced tool.
Geo-location
Trendsmap.com will show you what words are trending in tweets via map view Log-in via twitter
Hootsuite has a pro edition that is very good.
So far in Washington state there has not been so far (knock on wood) a digital public information request.
