What Facebook Crisis Response Data Reveals About Nigeria’s Digital Disaster Response Readiness
This short piece is a prelude to an upcoming article on the assessment of Nigeria’s digital disaster response readiness. I am writing this article from my vantage point of a digital volunteer with Humanity Road and a PhD researcher in crisis informatics and social and collaborative computing domain. I decided to write this prelude following the sad incidence of the Building Collapse in Abuja, Nigeria on 17th August 2018. This write-up intends to address an insight from Facebook crisis response data and its implication to the Nigerian nation.
As a volunteer and researcher, one of my favourites hanging place on social media is the Facebook Crisis Response platform. The Facebook Crisis Response platform allows people affected by the crisis to share their status with friends. It also enables people to find or provide help during significant events. Besides, the platform will enable people to find the real time and up to date information about ongoing events around the world. Against this background, I discovered that Facebook activated safety check for people in Abuja and its environs. Facebook Safety Check is a feature on Facebook that is enabled during significant catastrophes to allow people to mark themselves safe.
According to Facebook, it activated the safety check based on information it received about the building collapse from NC4. Facebook described NC4 as an “independent global crisis reporting agency”. Following the activation, I began to monitor the crisis data with interest on how government and emergency management organisations and aid agencies will react. My interest in the response of government and emergency management organisations and aid agencies is because they are the official organisations mandated to provide up to date information about the ongoing response operations.
At Humanity Road, we are trained on how information blossomed during the crisis. Over the years, we learnt 5 types of information sources. These sources are: official, unofficial, trusted, untrusted and unknown sources. We were taught that the first place to get credible information is not from ‘reputable news agencies, newspapers or broadcast media’. The first point shall be from the official/trusted source or through the unknown source using verify twice approach. Official source refers to sources that are legally obligated to provide official pronouncement in respect of the ongoing crisis. For instance, in the case of Abuja building collapse, FCT Fire Service, Abuja Emergency Management Agency, FCT Minister’s office. Also, in the event where aid agencies such as Save the Children, Red Cross or Doctors Without Border (MSF) operates, Humanity Road labelled such agencies as Trusted Sources. Unknown sources refer to eyewitnesses that are physically on the ground, and their accounts will need to be corroborated by other eyewitnesses that are not related to one another.
As such, after seven hours of monitoring the crisis response page, I was able to see one official pronouncement from the Facebook page of the Acting President. This is although NEMA and FCT Fire Services were practically on the scene providing help. The rest of the information shared on Facebook were from news and broadcast services as well as emergent, spontaneous online bystanders. This is in spite of the fact that past studies have shown that such sources are bedevilled with information quality problems as such cannot be used on face value for decision making.
At this point, it is possible for someone to ask why is it a priority for NEMA and Fire Service official to provide official information on their social media platforms since they were on the scene and doing the needful? The answer is past studies in the crisis informatics field have consistently revealed that during significant incidence, people will troop to the internet to search for information. If organisations that are responsible for providing official information failed to do the needful, people would look elsewhere to find such information. As complex as Nigeria is, if such a mechanism is not in place, it will serve as a potential ground for other interest groups to take over and control the information space. Let us envisage what will happen in the event of a religious/political crisis, or bomb blast — God forbid. Our inability to be proactive will undoubtedly give rooms for untrained online bystanders or people with ill motive such as religious fanatics and tribal jingoist to fuel rumours and misled public.
It is also relevant to state that although this writes up is premised on the Facebook Crisis Response page. However, I tried to check with the official websites of the FCT Fire Service, FCT Minister’s Office, NEMA Abuja Office, NEMA, FCT Ambulance services and the Presidency. Nonetheless, my findings show that we still have a long way in our digital disaster readiness as I will illustrate in the following paragraphs:
First, by going through NEMA websites, I found that it has a functional website and active Twitter and Facebook accounts. But what I saw lacking is, NEMA is yet to obtain a verified badge status from Twitter and Facebook. Verified badge adds credibility to the organisation’s website. Likewise, the NEMA emergency call number is too long for an emergency number (080022556362). All over the world, the tradition is emergency call numbers tended to be 3 digits, such as 911, 999, 211. Again, on trying to find NEMA regional or state office, I realised all the regional offices are affiliated to the main NEMA websites. As such, during an event, information may probably need to be channelled to the person operating the account. This has implication to the overall response operation during significant catastrophes. It is worth noting that it takes more than 7 hours before the NEMA twitter account shared information even though NEMA officials were on the ground.
Second, on checking the Federal Fire Service website, I found emergency lines (+234 803 2003 557, 112, 122) boldly featured. However, the site does not embed its social media handlers. On searching the internet, I found that the Fire Service has an unverified Twitter account and 3 conflicting unverified Facebook accounts. Again, the Federal Fire Service does not share any situational information across all its platforms. Besides, I am unable to find any website or social media accounts for Abuja Federal (Regional) Office — if any.
I also struggle a lot while locating FCT Minister’s website. This is because there is confusion with regards to how government information is indexed in Nigeria. To find the site, I checked different potential websites related to FCT. These websites include Abuja Geographic Information System (AGIS), FCT call centre, FCT. Gov. ng and FCDA. I was able to settle for FCDA because when I browsed the state house website, I found a link to all the sites of the cabinet ministers. On clicking FCT Minister’s link, I landed into FCDA website. Ongoing through the site, it has social media accounts. However, all the social media buttons will only land you on the same website. Again, on checking Twitter, I realised the Minister does not have a personal or official account. I, however, found an unverified Facebook page bearing the Minister’s name. Surprisingly, the minister shared his visit to the disaster, but without providing any specifics about shelter, medication or any information that will make people receive assurance messages.
Having said that, this insight revealed some important implication about our digital disaster readiness. It shows that there is a need for a paradigm shift in the way we traditionally do things. Nigerian government needs to learn from other countries such as the USA, UK, Australia among others with regards to their digital disaster policies and interoperability frameworks. They need to learn from the UN and FEMA how to utilise digital volunteer communities and expert network to help them achieve a certain level of threshold of disaster readiness. NEMA can also take advantage of Humanity Road’s expertise to learn how to move forward. At the National level, the presidency can even come up with a scheme that can recognise volunteers. In the USA, any volunteer that works for more than 5000 hours will receive Presidential Merit Awards. With such policies, I believe Nigerian can leverage social media and technology to harness information as a form aid during any catastrophe.
