A little help, please

Next week I'm going to be giving a talk at the 2010 Great Lakes Homeland Security Training Conference & Expo. The title of the talk will be "Medical Blogs: An Under-Recognized Resource for Public Health Awareness and Communication", but I'll probably speak more broadly about web 2.0. In preparation for the talk, I'd like you to help me with an exercise.

One possible ways to enlist blogs and social media in disaster response is to direct people to a specific link where official information can be found. As an experiment, I'd like use this post to see how disaster information might be propagated from a site like mine. I am going to tweet this post, and I'd like others to retweet it and/or post it to your social media of choice. I'll be using a bit.ly link so that I can gather some crude data about the post's propagation. Please feel free to use the comment section to give feedback about the process, and if you're not a regular reader, to let me know how you came here.

This may seem a little spam-y, but it's for the greater good.

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Directed here by Dr Isis tweet

Directed here via drugmonkey on Facebook. Reposted on my fb status.

By Nora Streed (not verified) on 27 Apr 2010 #permalink

directed here via a friend on facebook

Directed here by @scicurious retweet of @ericmjohnson's tweet

By Margaret Smith (not verified) on 27 Apr 2010 #permalink

Came via @vaughanbell

Directed here by Allyson via fb

By Glenda Reynolds (not verified) on 27 Apr 2010 #permalink

Ok, I took the URL from your post and created my own bit.ly (you'll see me as mem_somerville). I tweeted it. I have science and politics peeps mostly--all community active and chatty.

In other social media/public health stuff: I joined by local Medical Reserve Corps this year. When the H1N1 vaccine became available (the very evening it was released to the general public) I was at an MRC meeting. I was the first person in my community to tweet availability. Subsequent to that, I also published posts on 3 community blogs about upcoming public clinics. My local public health team did not seem to know about those blogs. Two were neighborhoods (which my house straddles), one was a city blog.

People got vaccinated because of that. They responded on the at least one of the posts.

Oh, I came here as a regular reader of SBs, from the landing page based on your title.

Happy to share my data if you want to email me.

Facebook posting of a friend

Facebook posting of S Zvan. I tweeted it, facebookeyed it, blogged it. All mmy stuff is happening around midnight in the US (plus/minus), which is probably not ideal.

Directed here by Greg Laden's facebook post. Was expecting some kind of disaster, feel cheated.

Also directed here by Greg Laden's facebook post.

Also came via Greg Laden (blog) and I'm usually satisfied with where he leads me.
good luck with the project.

Directed here from Greg Laden's blog.

I am not sure what disaster in Australia you could warn me about though!

-Google Reader
-Greg Laden's Blog
-here

-I'm off to post on fb

By C. Anderson (not verified) on 27 Apr 2010 #permalink

Sent here by Greg

By Eric Juve (not verified) on 27 Apr 2010 #permalink

followed link at Rationalwiki

Via Greg Laden, whose post appears (twice) in the Around The Blogosphere feed on www.layscience.net

Directed here by a post on RationalWiki's Saloon Bar. Hai Pal.

By Concernedresident (not verified) on 27 Apr 2010 #permalink

Arrived here via Greg Laden's blog at Science Blogs.

Sent here by Greg

The good professor Pavlov--er, Greg Laden sent me here.

Saw your post, copied it to my Facebook page.
Came back through Drug Monkey's facebook link.

via Greg Laden's blog.

Blame Greg Laden.

@zackoz#14: We're taking over Australia - or didn't you hear? First NSW ... you don't really think the premier is working for the Australian people, do you? Oh no, I hope I didn't spoil the plan.

By MadScientist (not verified) on 28 Apr 2010 #permalink

Directed here by greg ladens tweet

This has been a test of the Emergency Blogging System. Had this been an actual emergency, you would have been directed here by PZ Myers' blog.

I don't use FB or Twitter. Am I screwed?
I came here via the RSS feed.

Greg Laden sent me. Let us know the results of your experiment, please.

By ancientTechie (not verified) on 28 Apr 2010 #permalink

I would also like to see the results of this. If you could provide a ppt slide or two I might like to also show it to my public health meeting next time.

Spotted on the 'most active' list on Scienceblogs.

By Squiddhartha (not verified) on 28 Apr 2010 #permalink

Another one of Greg Laden's lemmings.

Greg Laden lemming.

followed a link from RW. I'm more or less random

Saw it here, checked Twitter and none of my contacts had retweeted you yet (shame on you, Dalai Lama), so I looked you up on Twitter and retweeted it ... I'm going to be desolate if no one shows up.

By Tsu Dho Nimh (not verified) on 28 Apr 2010 #permalink

Greg Laden wrote 'click here' and, being the mindless drone I am and having no will of my own, I did.

Greg Laden's post but I would have gotten to you later on your blog.

Greg Laden's blog.

Late to the party, but...I found your old blog from comments you made on Orac's site and have been following your various blog incarnations since. So I can't say I was directed to this post in particular by anything other than curiosity to see what you wrote today.

from Greg Laden's FaceBook post.

By susanbrown (not verified) on 28 Apr 2010 #permalink

Via Greg Laden's blog.

By Mango_greentea (not verified) on 28 Apr 2010 #permalink

Physically, I'm in NZ and got here via Greg Laden's blog. Will link to this page via Facebook.

missed this last night because I was obsessing about the frontline autism show (#vaccinewar)

But perhaps I'm a bit addled -- I had a hard time figuring how to play.

Also -- hashtag integrity -- I seem to recall this came up several times re the Haiti earthquake and other events.

Greg Laden's blog directed me here.

Excellent point, Liz. It hadn't occurred to me.

not to put down your great idea but the ice storms of the NH/VT cut off electricity and many homes in the mountainous areas do not have cellular towers so there is no internet during these emergencies. Pick your project accordingly. Or find a compensating solution. Assume electricity and computer access to internet is down. DIrect TV Internet is down usually during bad weather even when electricity is not. Not sure how cell phones work during a other storms. Does any bad weather affect cell reception?

Great idea. Good luck.

Wandered in here on my own. Not sure if "better late than never" applies to disaster awareness.

via @matthewherper on twitter (toxic substances post), your article on Greg Noll (hilarious), Greg Noll websites (the usual dangerous buffoonery), google searches for Greg Noll, listing @prn_radio twitter ("for progressive minds") as DANGEROUS (it's like porn, you know it when you see it), back to your sciblogs post on Greg Noll, then on to your request for "help"...viva la social media!

Laissez les bon temps roulez!

By @murmur55 twitter (not verified) on 30 Apr 2010 #permalink

skepchick tweet to here. where are the goats?