Thread by @jeanburgess

I know that the #qldfloods situation is far from over (and NSW is copping it now as well), and I am safe and dry in a non-flooded home, but I wanted to put down a few reflections on how the local media ecology functioned in the crisis period before I forget. Thread:

First, the ABC is our national emergency broadcaster, and local radio (@abcbrisbane) did an amazing job as they always do - filling gaps in information, fielding phone calls, giving airtime to on-the-ground responders, and providing a sense of community.

But the evisceration and abandonment of quality local television news and journalism by both commercial and public service broadcasters is a serious problem, particularly for the many people people whose first impulse is to turn on the TV to find out what's going on.

This isn't the disaster olympics, but national news focused on Canberra bubble crap and wall-to-wall foreign affairs bloviation peppered with occasional cutaways to disaster porn footage of our flood emergency? That did not help.

Even the most digitally included and information-rich residents (and hey, I am not bad at this stuff) had tremendous trouble sourcing accurate, real-time information about flooding, the need to evacuate, and road closures - and in the crisis phase, that's what matters.

It did not feel as though there was much coordination of official info in comparison to 2011, which had good govt coordination and emergent social media communication. - @snurb_dot_info @katecrawford, @fugitive_sound & I wrote a big report about this:
oecd.org/governance/ris…

With all the fancy new emergency info and emergency management tech we have developed since 2011, what the actual hell was this alarmist and vague tweet from the Lord Mayor trying to do, and on whose advice?

https://twitter.com/bne_lordmayor/status/1497481792940822533

Followed by these now-infamous middle-of-the-night emergency texts telling us to 'evacuate if required', but no advice on who should evacuate; and to 'check roads' if evacuating, with no reliable or particularly usable (on mobile) way to find out about road closures.

Again, I'm not bad at using the internet, but to get out on Monday I had to resort to sprinting around South Brisbane on foot to figure out a route across the William Jolly bridge, going against the advice to not go anywhere and wait to be (not) told what to do.

The ad hoc, distributed nature of social media communication in 2011 was messy, but people developed some really useful, open tools (like, you know, hashtags! Maps!) to fill information voids.

It feels like those voids are now filled by proprietary tools developed by emergency management businesses and made available only to official responders who do not know how to talk to the rest of us. We need to fix this.

(also, would be curious to know more about Google maps and the barriers to providing better real-time information - apart from the obvious one, which is time)

A final shoutout to my university @qut who provided prompt and clear communication, told us basically not to worry about work on Monday, and simply cancelled classes for what would have been a hugely momentous first week of classes post-lockdown. This was really good.

Anyway, I'm sure we'll find out a lot more about what went down in coming days, in the meantime consider this a blurt informed only by a somewhat bewildering and disheartening personal experience.

Oh and thanks to the Twitter algorithm and apparent legions of retired/armchair engineers for obscuring everything else on the #qldfloods with arcane arguments about Wivenhoe levels. The damsplaining did my head in.

Great to be able to have a chat to @Annie_Gaffney about all this stuff on ABC radio just now. Lots more to find out and for media, tech, govt and universities to work on together as we try to do better next time (because there is definitely going to be a next time!)

PS: @brisbanecityqld this is what an actually useful emergency text message looks like: Situation, suggested actions, ways to get help and find out more via phone OR internet (and not just a generic homepage). Thank you @CouncilSCC - you just forgot "turn on your local ABC radio"

And an actual list of flooded roads