Online Information – Good and Bad – About Japan’s Crises

As Japan responds to multiple and worsening crises, the Internet is proving to be a helpful, but  sometimes confounding, tool.

Thousands of Japanese are dead and many more missing, following the earthquake and tsunami on March 11.  Hundreds of thousands more are homeless or in temporary shelters, and millions in Japan and around the world are desperate to make contact with loved ones.

Screen-grab of the Ushahidi map and reports on March 16

Mobile phones and the web are proving their worth, becoming something like a giant bulletin board – helping people share information about where they are, their condition and what’s most needed.  As in the Haiti disaster, such crowd-sourcing tools are proving particularly effective when local Internet access is spotty. Read the rest of this entry »

Spreading News & Offering Help Via the Internet

As quickly as the news filtering out of Japan has become more grim, millions of concerned people have taken to the Internet to learn about the unfolding tragedy.  And, like Haiti’s earthquake last year, governments, organizations and humanitarian activists are using the web as a tool to help.

Unlike the Haiti quake, there are literally hundreds of videos users have uploaded to sites like Vimeo and YouTube that captured what happened during the 8.9 magnitude temblor, and the dozens of aftershocks.  This video, uploaded from Tokyo, gives viewers a sense as to how long, powerful, and terrifying it was. Read the rest of this entry »

Reporting and Responding to a Massive Earthquake & Tsunami

Friday morning’s historic 8.9 magnitude earthquake off the eastern coast of Japan, and the resulting tsunami that tore into the Japanese coastline, set the Internet into overdrive across the entire Pacific basin.

Even more than the 2004 Indian Ocean or “Boxing Day” tsunami, the first fierce waves to hit Japan Friday were heavily recorded and broadcast on video, perhaps to be expected for a nation that’s among the most wired and connected as any. Farther south, it was a different situation in Northeastern Indonesia where news was far slower and video unavailable in the early hours. Read the rest of this entry »