Flood unites tweeters – In the state of emergency, social networks show their strength

You either like them or you don’t, “like” or “hate” them, but the flood which hit us ensured everybody that they have strength they have strength demonstrated at the most difficult moment. Regardless of the fact whether they use tweet, facebook, instagram, pin, social network users were sharing information on the endangered ones, private centers, essential help, the missing ones, every minute.

According to the data of the service for analysis and monitoring of content for the promotion of Twitter campaigns and Tvitni.me, almost a million of tweets helped in saving lives and help organization. A total of 517.300 tweets with a hushtag #poplave, and 215.450 tweets was sent from #SerbiaFloods throughout Serbia, region and the world in the period from May 14-20.

A news appeared in some media that twitter community, according to unofficial information, saved more than 1.500 lives.

Twitter is not the man who hates entire world

Twitter users showed their strength primarily in the fast information share and monitoring of the situation in endangered areas in the real time, Milan Vucicevic, known as Nichim Izazvan with more than 40.000 followers on Twitter, thinks.

(Milan Vucicevic - Nichim Izazvan)

- Twitter community gave tremendous contribution in saving lives of people and animals in this accident which hit us. Since it was impossible to communicate every call for help, with a couple of my friends I made site which connects people who offer and ask for help, accommodation, transport. Information can be found at www.pomoc.rs – our collocutor says.

He adds he is proud of the fact that people, apart from online activities, call for help and monitoring of situation every minute, helped on site, volunteered, filled bags.

- This way we showed that Twitter user is not just a man who hates the entire world in his own, dark room. We showed that Twitter community is responsible and that Twitter users are very capable and healthy part of the society.

Vucicevic had a number of activities with his friends even before floods.

The state of emergency made something possible – “the thing that happened to all the people in the region – we united”, a collocutor of our portal points out.

- At the end of the day, we are all the same. Nature showed us once more that a man must be more responsible when it comes to his or her environment, other people and finally, to himself or herself. Honestly, I am proud of the fact how all citizens of Serbia and the people in the region reacted in this state of emergency. Twitter users, despite the fact that social networks degrade communication, proved new technologies can be extremely useful into getting people together when used in the right way - Nichim Izazvan concludes.

The same task for journalists and twitter users

Social network users organized themselves in different ways outside the virtual space. Twitter users and the Association of journalists of Serbia (UNS) collected some 20 tons of different help which they have been collecting during the entire week in Resavska 28 at the premises of the Association of journalists of Serbia and within the action "Humanity in practice" with a hushtag #cabinet, Jovana Vukic ,i.e. Twitter user, JovanaVu, says for ekapija.

As she says, up till now, twitter users were shared between the ones who tweeted in their field of expertise and the ones who are there to have fun.

- Both of the groups are very popular and it proved they can all help. A large number of retweets show we all cooperated, with one objective and that everything else functioned perfectly well - Jovana Vukic, who became a team member of www.poplave.rs.

The site, Poplave.rs, was initiated by the group of citizens on Friday morning (May 16, 2014) and during the entire day in critical situations, due to timely information, the Army of Serbia and the Mountain Rescue Service followed it. The site recorded million visits and showed the importance of the Internet and information sharing.

How does a hen help?

Milica Jeremic known on Twitter as Kokoska (the Hen) agrees that current situation united twitter users and all social network users.

However that kind of democracy of social networks produced a problem – reliability of information.

- The problem was how to check information since neither official pages such as Red Cross did not have timely information all the time. I contacted myself everybody who is asking for help abd called the numbers and after that published a call for help on my account – Jeremic explains.

Twitter users are thinking how to use that strength so that the people from private centers know where to go and what will follow.

- The Tash Inn hostel will host people until their houses are built. Many companies offer help, a man offered furniture for equipping entire flat. There is a number of companies and individuals who offer different kinds of help so that these people could return to their homes as soon as possible - Milica Jeremic, whose main preoccupation now is to provide rooms in hotels or private accommodation where evacuated citizens would be until they return home, says.

#Zbogsrbije (#Forserbia)

A few days ago, the haštagom #zbogsrbije campaign was initiated at Facebook and Twiter. The idea is that people take photos of themselves on site and write reasons for volunteering because majority organized on their own without instruction of any kind of authority. Apart from that, they can write motivational tweets and statuses, anything with the hushtag #zbogsrbije because the objective is to make it a trend and that no one takes credits for the people who has not been sleeping for days, the initiators of the action explain.

(Photo: vs.rs)

Can really everything be measured?

The Tvitni.me service set aside some of the most commonly used words on Twitter during the tragic floods in Serbia for the period May 14-21. Key words mostly used were: help – 293.000 times, people – 290.000 times and foundation – 239.000. Hushtags which featured this period are : #poplave #SerbiaFloods #Srbija. At the end of this research, 10 most mentioned cities on Twitter during the previous days were: Obrenovac, Beograd, Novi Sad, Sabac, Krupanj, Paracin, Sremska Mitrovica, Svilajnac, Kostolac and Smederevska Palanka.

Statistics on the number of tweets, retweets, posts, links, key words are yet to follow but the strength which users of social networks showed and different kinds of support provided is hard to be recorded into any statistics.

Irina Milosevic