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Región de Murcia Consejería de Presidencia Dirección General de Seguridad Ciudadana y Emergencias General Directorate of Public Safety and Emergencies Information Manager Systems & Telecommunications Service Interaction with Mass Media & Presence in Social Networks The Beginning: 1-1-2 RM’s Media Manager Since the start of Región de Murcia’s 1-1-2 Emergency Center, back in 1999, there’s been a team of Media Managers, whose job is to inform to the mass media about the more relevant activities of different emergency services integrated within the Center, such as EMS, Firefighters and Civil Defense,. A continuous and straightforward relationship with the mass media: • Would emphasize and give value to the activity of emergency services • Would serve as a medium to transmit to population messages of prevention and self protection Since then, and up today, at 1-1-2 RM there is a media manager on duty, everyday and everyhour, with on-site shifts from 08:00 to 22:00, seven days a week, and locatable shifts at nights, obviously for important incidents with newsworthy interest. Evolution 1: web site “1-1-2 Informs” (2008) That relationship with the mass media has evolved. In the beginning, the Media Manager talked to them by phone, and spread the press releases by fax. In 2008 we built our own web site: “1-1-2 Informa” , which content is accessible only to registered users (more than 300), mainly, journalists and political responsibles in the emergency ambit. The “News” section of the site is updated every time that emergency services assist an event of potential interest for the mass media. An SMS is sent to the mobiles of registerd users to let them know that there are recent news inside the web site and, if it is of their interest, they can read it there. Evolution 2: New version of “1-1-2 Informs” (2012) The start-up of the web site in 2008 has caused, since then, a gradual decrease of telephone calls from journalists to the Media Manager to ask if there are incidents in course, because they are warned via SMS to their mobile. In 2012, our technical team began the developement of a new version of web site “1-1-2 Informa” equiped with a simpler, yet more powerful, interface for our people who input the content, and a cleaner look for the visitors. It was oficially opened by february 2013. Evolution 3: Presence of “1-1-2 RM” in Social Networks 1-1-2 RM hasn’t been unaware to the growth in usage of social networks and to the capabilities of the latter to get the two main goals previously stated: • Emphasize, give value to activity of emergency services • Serve as a medium to transmit messages to population So, last 11th of february, in celebrating the European Day of 1-1-2 as the Single Emergency Telephone Number, we opened the 1-1-2 RM official presence in: Facebook Twitter Presence of “1-1-2 RM” in Social Networks (2) Our Media Manager people started training in Social Media skills last year, and are currently consolidating its expertise on Community Management with technical courses and practice. At this moment we think there’s no need of such training for the rest of our workers. Obviously, our Social Networks posts and messages are addressed not only to mass media or political responsibles, but to general public, or, in other words, all those who pressed “I Like It” in Facebook or the ones who decided to be “followers” of our 1-1-2 RM profile in Twitter. Look of our Official 1-1-2RM Pages in Facebook and Twitter Presence of “1-1-2 RM” in Social Networks: Facebook Our Facebook’s posts are intended to maintain an institutional information channel that gives account of the more relevant events and facts related with “1-1-2 RM” and the world of emergencies inside our region. The posts, conceived as content elements with a certain durability, are a sort of official “Bulletin Board” for the Center. Presence of “1-1-2 RM” in Social Networks: Twitter Our Twitter messages are, on the contrary, immediate and dinamic, and aims to keep followers informed about the everyday activities and interventions of emergency services. They usually contain a link to the web site, be to general news index, which contain the brief abstracts for the general public, be to the extended piece of news, with access granted only to registered users. Two levels for news content As a novelty, there are two levels for accessing the web content: A first look, with abstracts of all the news, accessible to general public, while detailed extent of the news rests for registered users. So, mass media get exclusive contents (helping to good relationship between the Center and the media) and we leave an open door to general interest information, accessible for all visitors, such as meteo alerts and advices to afford it, wildfires risk and the way to prevent them, etc. Interaction and Participation with Social Network users In addition, social networks allow the interaction with their users. Sometimes, our followers, by mean of their smartphones, provide us significant data as, for instance, photos or video, that we may use to enrich or make more accurate the content of our pieces of news, so they help us in managing the emergency they witness and we thank them accordingly via our social media. These active users also serve as multipliers of messages issued by our Center, and can be for good or for bad. We are alert of hoax and malicious comments or tweets, and our stance is not to fight them back or give importance to them, for the sake of institutional dignity. Likewise, social networks allow that labour of 1-1-2 RM gets a major diffusion within the growing community of emergency proffessionals using Social Media, promoting ties with that collectives and improving coordinated operation when the time comes. The Facts: 1) The Past Our old working procedure lasted from 2000 up to late 2008. Most of the time and effort was wasted in answering phone calls from the journalists, at a rate of more than 100 a day. And, since no supporting system was used for this task, there are no records that can be used for research or filing purposes. Then, since the start-up of our web site “1-1-2 Informs” in its old version, up to february 10th, 2013, it received an average of 200 daily visits, which results in about 300.000 total visits during the period, and about 8.000 different SMS were sent to registered users. Most important thing is that this web site changed the philosophy of relationship with the mass media, and introduced a storage system which can give account of all our activity related with the news. The Facts: 2) The Present Currently, our news web site “1-1-2 Informs” (new reworked version), has doubled number of visits of the former version, having a daily average of 400, and showing a trend of growth. Our SMS Warning Service is now better, because the embedded link leads directly to the concrete piece of news, saving time to users. Our new official Facebook Page, has more than 450 fans who “Like it”, with a total reach of about 900 users. The situation is even better on Twitter: Our new official profile, has more than 2.400 followers!, which is higher than other official emergency tweeter profiles with many months, or even years, in use. Conclusions It is clear now for us that our presence in Facebook and Tweeter have resulted in an increase of people visits to our news web site. Then, the same is true for the opposite: People who visit our site gets more information, spread the idea by word of mouth and, as a result, we get more “likes” and followers in our social media pages. An important conclusion rises: the two branches of the same activity (web site and social media) reinforce each other, resulting in a strong synergy and more reach for our presence in both fields. In the future we plan to keep working under that philosophy, so we can consider to extend the model to more social networks, or increase the functionality of our web site. Región de Murcia Consejería de Presidencia Dirección General de Seguridad Ciudadana y Emergencias Thank you very much for your attention Contact: Luis Gestoso Director General de Seguridad Ciudadana y Emergencias Región de Murcia Spain [email protected]