COLL300 — Analysis of Rhetorical Situation

Jeremiah Hall Palmer
Prof. Myron
COLL 300
Analysis of Rhetorical Situation
June 24, 2012

Thesis Statement: Social media—with its ease of use and maintenance, viral potential, and the connections made with the public at large—is an important tool to harness for the emergency manager.

1. What is the goal in this paper? Social media has been growing over the past few years and has shown to be a viable tool for distribution of information amongst the public. Through the use of services such as Facebook and Twitter, people with a wide range of interests and class have the ability of connecting to differing circles to listen and speak to matters that they might find interesting or may be of great concern; best of all, these services are free to use and available to anyone that can have access to the Internet or a mobile device capable of SMS. Using such services would be a great advantage to any emergency organization in order to deliver to as well as receive reports and inquiries from the public.

2. What do I already know about my topic? Ever since my high-school days, I have had interest in emergency management and information technology; I first married these two interests in the mid- to late-90s with an “official” website for the local Emergency Management Agency—then Disaster and Emergency Services. Since that time I have continued to manage the online presence of the agency, and have made every effort to keep up with the “next big” Internet related fad, while also trying to stay just slightly ahead of the area agencies. My first big jump ahead came with Twitter.

While listening to one of my favorite technology podcasts—This Week in Tech—I had heard mention of the service again for what may have been the tenth time; this time, however, I heard the potential of the service from the mouth of a tech enthusiast—Robert Scoble, I believe it was. The gentleman had painted a vision of the then more personal service stretching beyond a “geek” circle and going main-stream, with government agencies and corporations jumping on board, turning the “micro-blogging” service into a rapid-fire way of delivering messages to the public. I began to wonder whether this would work—whether the site/service would catch on and be used for more than telling a group of friends where I was or what I was doing; I immediately registered the @HarrisonEMA handle and began to experiment, years before @FEMA and @KYEMPIO.

In a manner similar to my experience with Twitter, I had heard of Facebook moving to allow “pages” for products and services—and that these pages could be easily administered by an ordinary person; at around roughly the same time Facebook had created “groups”. I studied both options, but didn’t jump until I had heard rumor of “Facebook names”—customizable short-URL handlers—and that the names option would be available for pages in the future; I chose to create a page, and jumped to register “facebook.com/HarrisonEMA” as soon as names were released to pages—this proved to be a wise choice, as later groups disappeared, which created a problem for the community that KYEM had tried to create.

3. What do my readers already know? My “intended audience” of emergency managers would likely have a similar knowledge or experience as members of the general public; knowledge of services such as Facebook and Twitter, and perhaps a slight understanding of the concept of a “blog”. Knowledge beyond these general points will not be necessary, as the rest of this paper will deal with selling the concept of using the services for the delivery and retrieval of information.

4. What do my readers need to know to understand my point? Beyond the knowledge that I am expecting—that the Internet exists, and that there are “sites” that deal with social networking news—there isn’t much else that the audience must know in order to understand the point which I plan to deliver.

5. What information do I need to research and add to my paper? In order to write a successful argument for the use of social media in emergency situations, I believe that I would benefit in conducting research on the number of civilian users currently taking advantage of social media. Evidence of situations where the public has been notified or interacted with media and government agencies will also be beneficial. Additionally, I would like to give example of how some information has spread “virally” on social media before becoming a blurb on broadcast or network news—one example in mind is that of an earthquake incident that had been noted by the tech enthusiast that sparked my fascination in the concept of using social media for emergency management.

Further information will come from the various speeches and writings of FEMA Administrator, Craig Fugate–@CraigatFEMA–as well as posts that have been published by FEMA.