From Tangos:
Regarding tsunami of late 2004, Richard MacManus of Read/Write Web has summarized three ways that people used the Web in response to the disaster:
1) as a constantly updated source of news about the disaster;
2) as a way for ordinary people to respond emotionally;
3) and probably most importantly, to organize aid efforts.
In this post, we try to collect the ways how Chinese Internet users take the web to provide news updates and offer relief efforts.
Source of news. At the beginning of the earthquake, we can only rely on main stream media and web portals to get news about the quake. But when more and more rescuers and volunteers reached the epicenter to offer help, much more user generated content can be found online, which enable us to know more about the aftermath.
You can easily find many photos and text reports by users in Sichuan Province in various BBS, such as Tianya, Xici.net and Baidu Tieba. Especially, since Baidu Tieba is a keyword-based BBS, that’s Baidu Tieba has a board for each keyword, so you can use the name of the county in epicenter to enter a dedicated discuss board on that county, such as Wenchuan and Beichuan, to get information.
Besides general BBS, people also discuss and exchange info in SNS, such as Douban, and in IM groups, both QQ and Baidu Hi has dedicated groups for earthquake; they use blogs, and microblogging tools, such as Twitter, Fanfou to share information; and they upload videos. Besides video uploaded by users, PPLive, a p2p video streaming site, partners with various TV channel to bring live TV reports about earthquake online.
Pray and bless. People in China express their prayers and blessings to victims of earthquake in BBS, widgets and IM. Almost all main web portals have message board for users to express their prayers and blessings; Feedsky has a blessing widget ready to be add to blogs.
MSN China initiated an MSN Messenger campaign called Rainbow, you can add “(R)” before your MSN Messenger screen-name, which will display a rainbow icon, to express your blessings. (via Danwei). Actually, it is not only a blessing, for each signature, MSN China and Guangzhou Toyota will donate 0.1 yuan separately to a fund for rebuilding the school destroyed by the quake.
In additional to news source and blessing, it is more important to use web to provide aid and relief efforts.
People Finder: Though Baidu Tieba and QQ both have a message board dedicated for users to find people and seek help, it is more convenient to use people finder tool of Sina and Netease. Google China just launched a useful tool which enables users to search people information in various BBS, so you need not to check each main BBS to find people.
Online donation: Almost all sites call for donations. Users of Taobao.com and QQ can use Alipay and Tenpay to donate online. When I write this post, QQ users have donated over 10 million yuan. Some other third-party online payment solution providers also support online donations, such as 99Bill and Yeepay.
Taobao launch a campaign, call for sellers of Taobao to join and sell goods, then donate at least 50% of their proceeds.
Alimama encourage its users, most are webmaster of their website, to replace ads on their websites into an images ad to call for donation. By May 15, over 500k donation ads have been online on Alimama’s affiliated website.
If you want to donate, check this post to find the best way for you.
Organize aids: Web is also effective in spreading information and organizing aids efforts among users. Alibaba encourages its users, almost all of them are manufacturers or service providers, to donate not only cash, but also various goods needed in disaster zone. Blogbus let users to register their information for blood donation when needed. On many BBS, you can also easily find posts which people are planning various kinds of aid initiatives.
NGO is a very important force for disaster aid. NGO Aid blog keeps updating latest news of aids efforts by NGO across China. 1kg, a grassroot NPO in China which is dedicated to build a volunteer network to help kids in remote area to have better education, (CNReviews.com has a good profile about 1kg), has set up a special site to offer relief and aids efforts, including collecting information about schools in epicenter, organizing relief activities, and helping to provide necessary resource to rebuild schools.
Collaborative translation: Immediately after the earthquake, users of Yeeyan.com, the collaborative translation community, started to translate related earthquake guides from FEMA, they’ve finished Earthquake Search Strategy and Tactics, and Earthquake Safety Checklist, and are working on Epidemics After Natural Disasters. After the translation, many users distributed the guide through various BBS and website.
Tags: activity, earthquake, internet, users
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