The Position of New Media in Disaster Communications

The developed countries’ experiences in the last decade show that the emergence of new media, especially for communication during disasters, had effective role among managerial factors. New media, known as “Citizen Media,” has been shaped and is established by the Internet and its applications. This new media let the people participate more and be better collaborators in disaster management. The main propose of this paper is to find practical and useful recommendations for using information technology and new media for disaster communication management in Iran based on world and national experiences. This paper is based on the studies done in big disaster around the world, and mainly in USA. Studies show that information technology and its application, mainly the role of new media are the main axis for successful disaster management. Study of recent natural disasters in Iran, for example in East Azerbaijan earthquake on 12 Augest 2012, has shown that the main challenge for managing disaster was lack of communication between anchorites during disasters, which in turn have brought about different exceptations among disaster-stricken people. Lack of coordination between different authorities and different voices among them in disaster management of Azerbaijan earthquake was due to unsuitable use of new technologies for communication during the disaster. The new media used for timely notification had effective role in prevention of disaster outcomes, response to disasters and post-disaster reconstruction. Therefore, disaster communications using new media, is extremely important to be effective in emergency management for spreading accurate and timely information to the disaster-stricken people, high national officials and relevant managers, non-government social groups, and traditional media.