The growing use of SMS for information dissemination was discussed earlier on Groundviews, and I would like to mention a recent development.
At least one government department has been pro active and is now making use of SMS for communication with media. The Media Centre for National Security obtained an application to send out SMS to journalists from a four-digit number. They started on Dec 5th, as far as I know.
What I hope now is that the Met Department, Disaster Management Center and other central authorities follow suit and send out quick SMS messages to reporters during an impending or occurring natural disaster. The message could also guide reporters towards a detailed announcement on a website.
It could be a short line such as “New announcement posted by Disaster Management Center on website www.xyz.lk” and a detailed message posted in all three languages on this site. This is fast, detailed and saves officials from being stuck on phone lines talking to the media during a crisis.
Such postings are vital for news organizations to save time disseminating key information to their audiences as well as to be accurate and not convey badly-sourced information while doing so. Use of fax, email or telephone would be far less efficient, but could be used as secondary means.
More on why such a system would be important was posted here.
816 have read this this article so far. You may also find these articles interesting:
- SMS news alerts during emergencies - The experience of JNW and the tsunami warning of 13th September 2007 Chamath Ariyadasa The coverage by the media of yesterday’s earthquake near Indonesia might be of interest to some readers, and as the editor of JNW, Sri Lanka’s first SMS news agency, I thought of penning my personal opinion and raising some issues that could be discussed further. My biggest concern at the moment, as a journalist, is... groundviews, September 13, 2007
- Sri Lanka on tsunami alert after Indonesia quake (Updated) 12 Sep 2007 12:31:03 GMT Source: Reuters COLOMBO, Sept 12 (Reuters) - Sri Lanka issued a tsunami alert on Wednesday for its north, south and eastern districts following a major earthquake in Indonesia, the National Disaster Management Centre said. “We have issued a warning for the south, north and east after the quake,” Keerthi Ekanayake, an official at... groundviews, September 12, 2007
