Uses of Social Media to Inform Operational Response and Recovery During an Airport Emergency (2017)

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3 CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION AN AIRPORT EMERGENCY IN WHICH SOCIAL MEDIA WERE IMPORTANT: THE JFK GUNMAN SCARE The rapidity, easy access, and unmoderated nature of social media create unique challenges for airport crisis/emergency management. Reports and visual imagery, even live streaming, can reach the public through social media platforms as fast or even faster than they reach dispatchers and first responders and typically much faster than they can reach the emergency operations center of an airport. Social media reports and images can create the sorts of confusion and chaos as was seen at John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK) in August 2016. On Sunday night, August 14, 2016, chaos erupted at JFK. Just after 9:30 p.m. EDT outside the security checkpoint at Termi- nal 8 there was a loud pop. Passengers and employees in the terminal panicked and began to self-evacuate out of the terminal (Santora 2016; WPIX-TV 2016). Several people called 911 to report gunshots (Wilson and Goldstein 2016). There was also a false report of a bomb. For a few minutes, the secure side of the terminal was unaware and unaffected, but word spread quickly via social media, and the airside of Terminal 8 panicked around 9 p.m. (Santora 2016; WPIX-TV 2016). Eventually, more than one hundred 911 calls were received. By 9:57 a 911 call came from Terminal 1, where the panic had spread, apparently as a result of Twitter™ and Facebook social media posts from passengers in Terminal 8 (Wilson and Goldstein 2016). [See Stack (2016) and Cleary (2016) for representative social media posts and tweets made during the incident.] None of the entities involved at the airport—the airport itself, the Port Authority Police, TSA, the airlines, or any oth- ers—got ahead of social media to correct the reports online and prevent the panic in the crowds. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey—the owner of the airport—issued its first public statement via Twitter at 11:00 p.m. According to social media posts and tweets by passengers in the terminals, traditional communications such as public address and verbal com- mands by law enforcement seemed insufficient to control the situation. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced an interagency investigation to determine how communications and the coordination of the response broke down, and the executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey ordered an after action review that began on August 15, 2016 (Stepansky et al. 2016). The report to Governor Cuomo was issued by the John F. Kennedy International Airport Multi-Agency Security Review Team on November 16, 2016. The Review Team found that the existing security protocols “do not reflect the new, changing reality at airports,” specifically that “the coordination and standard protocols for operations have not adjusted to the increased presence” of the number and variety of security forces present. Differing types and levels of training aggravate the problem. Although the Review Team addressed the state of heightened anxiety of passengers and security personnel and how it helped create overreaction and panic on August 14, its report did not mention social media’s role. The Review Team made four recommendations: 1. Establish a single, unified operations center responsible for overseeing and directing security operations for the entire airport and facilitating shared communications. This recommendation addresses closed-circuit television, public address system announcements, and other internal communications but does not mention social media—neither social listening nor outgoing notifications and warnings. 2. Coordinate training with security stakeholders, specifically to include mass self-evacuation events. 3. Require a coordinated security and emergency training for all airport employees. 4. Develop a plan for mass evacuation at JFK. In this recommendation, the Review Team addresses the use of social media: the JFK mass evacuation plan “should anticipate the need to maintain communication with airport employees and the traveling public through the use of signage, social media and direct communication platforms.” The recom- mendation does not say what should be communicated via social media beyond “ensuring that critical information is provided to the public throughout emergency situations.”

4 What were the consequences of the incident? Terminals 8 and 1 were totally disrupted for nearly 3 hours on one of the busiest travel days of the summer. Terminal 2 was disrupted to a lesser extent by self-evacuees from Terminal 1. Civilians were in the aircraft operating area. Security doors were opened. The rail line to the airport was shut down, and the Van Wyck Expressway that passes between Terminals 8 and 1 was shut down (Santora 2016). On the positive side, the airport and its partners learned lessons about communications problems including the effects of social media in an airport emergency. The JFK false shooter report as well as other mistaken and real incidents show the unique challenges for airport crisis/emergency management that can be created by social media use by the public. The present study examines how airports can manage these chal- lenges and can use social media to enhance emergency response and recovery as well as to protect the reputations of the airports. HOW SOCIAL MEDIA ARE TRANSFORMING COMMUNICATIONS Social media have become ubiquitous, having started as a product of the web pages and user groups on the Internet. The first social networking sites followed soon after the creation of web pages and user groups, and Facebook was launched in 2004. Dozens of other social media sites have followed and continue to be launched. Most web pages changed from static to dynamic in nature, with this change opening the door for modern interactive communications applications. The popularity of social media was greatly enhanced by the introduction of the smartphone and its rapid acceptance by the public. A smartphone gave anyone immediate access to the Internet in a mobile form. Thus, social media with web pages, notifications, tweets, messages, and alerts became constant and real-time (pocketnow.com 2014). The combination of Web 2.0 social media offerings, smartphone convenience and mobility, and unlimited data plans on those phones led to an explosion of the popularity and usage of social media. Figure 1 illustrates how popular the top five social media platforms are (Greenwood et al. 2016). The graph is based on the percentages of online adults who use each platform. Anderson and Perrin (2016) found that 87% of all U.S. adults use the Internet; 52% used the Internet in 2000. FIGURE 1 Social media sources of news for U.S. adults (Source: Anderson and Perrin 2016). According to a 2016 Pew Research Center survey (Gottfried and Shearer 2016), 62% of U.S. adults (18 years of age and older) get their news from the major social media sites, as shown in Figure 2.

5 FIGURE 2 Schematic representation of use of SM-derived intelligence into emergency management process (Source: Gottfried and Shearer 2016). If the entire population is analyzed to see which platforms are used by which age groups, a more complicated view emerges (Figure 3; Gottfried and Shearer 2016). In early 2016, 18- to 29-year-olds preferred Instagram, followed by Twitter and You- Tube as news sources; 30- to 49-year-olds preferred LinkedIn, followed by Twitter and Facebook; 50- to 64-year-olds used LinkedIn, YouTube, and Facebook about equally; and adults 65 and older preferred LinkedIn. The popularity of social media platforms can change rapidly, and teenagers seem to lead the waves of change. Figure 4 illustrates this. Snapchat and Instagram are the teens’ current favored tools as of fall 2016 (Jaffray 2016), yet Snapchat did not even register in the 2016 Pew Survey of adult users (Figure 3). The trends in the demographics of social media use shown in Figures 1–4 mean that airports need to track both the audiences they wish to engage and the best platform(s) to reach them. What works today may be replaced quickly, with new platforms and changing preferences. Corporations and other institutions can clearly see ways to use social media to establish brand identities, advertise products or services, and provide information to potential customers or clients. Initially, these uses involved outgoing messages from social media account holders. However, the interactive nature of Web 2.0 applications and the ability to create conversations led to additional commercial uses, such as complaint resolution and customer service surveys. Once interactions and conversations were happening on social media via the Internet, corporations and new types of service providers realized that the information could be harvested and analyzed for such things as buyer preferences. If the analysis is done on databases of stored data, this is data mining. If it is done by capturing real-time or near real-time data pass- ing through the sites, it is data scraping, which is roughly synonymous with social listening and social monitoring. Vendors set up programs to search the flow through social media of key words and phrases and/or the special subject indicators called hashtags, then extract everything containing those words, phrases, or hashtags. Some vendors provide this as a subscription service, delivering the analytical results to the user client. Others created software packages that are sold to or rented by the

6 end users who then do their own capture and analysis of data. An alternative approach to social listening is to do it by geo- graphically defined areas using the geodata encoded by locations on smartphones; this is called geofencing. Most modern social listening programs have dashboards that allow searching by both words and geographic areas. FIGURE 3 Sample EIA informational tweet (Source: Twitter.com/flyeia). FIGURE 4 Sample conversation by EIA on Twitter (Source: Twitter.com/flyeia).

7 HOW SOCIAL MEDIA ARE BEING USED IN EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT Emergency managers can use social media in five basic ways: 1. Disseminating emergency public information directly to the impacted public. This includes giving the public instruc- tions and directions. 2. Owning the media space and shaping messages. This includes general messaging and the correction of misinformation. 3. Providing the incident commander or unified command with indicators and warning of a problem so they can initi- ate a response. 4. Providing the incident commander or unified command with information about an incident or victims beyond the inci- dent commander’s or unified command’s direct view. 5. Providing command and control node (incident commander, unified command, or emergency operations center) with actionable information to allocate resources and shape response and recovery. Information from social media can reach emergency managers through several routes: • From social listening software or vendors; • Via telephone, e-mail, or other communication from a citizen or member of the airport community who sees the social media post and contacts the airport or 911 directly; • From an outgoing request for information—that is, crowdsourcing—that seeks information from the public; or • By monitoring conversations on social media. Social media allow the rapid creation of new bodies of information in ways that were not feasible before. Wikis enable to the co-creation of texts and images. Shared access document applications (e.g., Google Docs) allow real-time document management involving geographically dispersed participants. Storytelling is possible using photo sharing, video sharing, and live streaming applications (e.g., YouTube, Instagram, Vimeo, or Periscope). Social networking and microblogging platforms (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, or Snapchat) support conversation, information sharing, and news amplification. Social media can produce a torrent of information quickly and cheaply. Emergency management, by its nature, needs every possible input to give the most immediate, most complete, most accurate picture of a situation. This makes social media— especially since many social media programs and the social listening software that harvest information from them can convey images and videos—a highly attractive new source of information for emergency managers. Information is needed during all stages of emergency management, but especially during response and recovery. Social media for emergency management is already well established in many types of organizations. According to Holde- man (2016), “The train, boat, bus, airplane on social media has left the station and airport. Get on board if you are not already doing something in your emergency management program.” Holdeman noted that the 2016 Washington Statewide Social Media Summit was attended by over 500 more people than the previous year’s summit. Over the past five years, social media have impacted emergency management and disaster response in numerous ways. The emergency management professional must begin to accept this impact not as an arbitrary consequence of an uncontrolled disaster, but rather as a tool to help coordinate, manage and facilitate a safe and expected response during emergencies and disasters. (Crowe 2010, p. 409) Clearly, social media are changing the way people communicate not only in their day-to-day lives, but also during disasters that threaten public health. Engaging with and using emerging social media may well place the emergency-management community, including medical and public health professionals, in a better position to respond to disasters. The effectiveness of our public health emergency system relies on routine attention to preparedness, agility in responding to daily stresses and catastrophes, and the resilience that promotes rapid recovery. Social media can enhance each of these component efforts. (Merchant et al. 2011, p. 290) White (2012) lays out a roadmap for the use of social media in an organization for emergency management. The chapters articulate the processes for why, what, and how to use social media in emergency management. White also lists examples of how social media can prove useful in the four phases of crises/disasters.

8 According to White (2012) several challenges exist with social media. First, when aggregating information, it is important to direct information using hashtags, keywords, and other filters; however, the information needs to remain in one place. “One way to assist with this is to tightly couple the multiple sites together using another application” (p. 281). This is important during emergencies and when people need information that may or may not be posted at the location. A second challenge is stakeholder acceptance and involvement. “Social media are definitely transforming the way people exchange information and new employee positions will need to be developed to closely monitor incoming and outgoing information and organizations will need to be more responsible to the needs of the public during normal and emergency times” (White 2012, p. 283). Social media are also becoming vital to recovery efforts after crises, when infrastructure must be rebuilt and stress man- agement is critical. The extensive reach of social networks allows people who are recovering from disasters to rapidly connect with needed resources. Tweets and photographs linked to timelines and interactive maps can tell a cohesive story about a recovering community’s capabilities and vulnerabilities in real time. Organizations such as Ushahidi have helped with recov- ery in Haiti by matching volunteer health care providers with distressed areas. Social media have been used in new ways to connect responders and people directly affected by such disasters as the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, flash floods in Australia, and an earthquake in New Zealand with medical and mental health services (Merchant et al. 2011). In a case example of the Los Angeles Fire Department, using social media focused on several key findings, (1) there needs to be an “innovator” at the staff or public information officer (PIO) level who wants to develop the organization’s social media acceptance, often referred to as “evangelism”; (2) interacting with more citizens requires leaving old media and embarking on new media platforms; (3) leveraging Twitter indicates an opportunity to “listen” to citizen issues and respond; and (4) organizations will still need to respond and utilize traditional media sources in addition to the newer social media platforms (Latonero and Shklovski 2011). In June 2016, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) stepped up its social media presence by launching its own application (“app”) to educate the public on vital information to consider during an emergency. This app is not intended to replace the normal protocols but mainly to enhance resiliency among the public. The FEMA app contains preparedness information for different types of disasters, an interactive checklist for emergency kits, a section to plan emergency meeting locations, information on how to stay safe and recover after a disaster, and general ways the public can get involved before and after a disaster. The agency is also looking at ways to use social media to have conversations with communities affected by disasters. A major new feature of FEMA’s new social media platform lets users receive information and submit disaster- related images to be publicly hosted on the FEMA website. The ability to upload pictures and receive data in almost-real time will be useful not only to the public, but also to first responders. “The public is a resource and often times the initial and first reports we get are people putting up information, from tweets, from Flickr,” said Beth Freeman, FEMA Region VII Admin- istrator. “Rather than waiting for that to come up, they would be doing that in the app that will allow it to be shared with other first responders.” Authentication is a key component to the feature’s success. FEMA knows that altered submissions may happen. That is why they geo-tag and moderate all submissions to make sure they are not altered or do not put anyone at risk. The examples of organizations turning to social media to better communicate, respond, and promote resiliency among the public is ever-increasing. The importance and reliance that is being placed on social media is unprecedented. Members of the public want immediate information, and they also want to be among the first to witness, report, and add to the recovery of most critical situations. Organizations need to engage in this already-engaged group of consumers and work in tandem with this growing trend. WHY AIRPORTS SHOULD TAKE SOCIAL MEDIA SERIOUSLY FOR EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT The JFK example that opened this chapter shows what can happen if an airport and its partners do not use social media effec- tively. Many other airports have experienced similar problems that arose when social media spread real or false information to the public. The Vancouver International Airport case example in this report describes the consequences of a false social media report of a communicable disease on a plane that was still in flight. Social media posts had major impacts during the active shooter incident at Los Angeles International Airport in 2013 and the Zorro incident there in 2016. Photos posted by a just-evacuated passenger from Asiana flight 214 at San Francisco International Airport reached the Internet within 45 seconds of the plane coming to rest on the runway. These instances effectively illustrate why an airport cannot afford to take social media lightly, especially for emergency management.

9 Most airports have learned the value of social media for marketing and customer service including complaint resolution. The next step is for them to consider ways to apply their social media expertise to the informational needs of emergency man- agement. De Magristris (2016) benchmarked the use of social media for emergencies at six international airports (Calgary, Halifax Stansfield, Toronto Pearson, Vancouver, Dallas Fort Worth, and Geneva) on behalf of Montreal Trudeau International Airport as it began to develop a social media for emergency management program. Each of those airports uses social media for emergency management; Vancouver International Airport is a case example in the present study and Toronto and Dallas Fort Worth were interviewed during the reconnaissance phase. Before an airport can determine how to extract information from social media and use it to inform its emergency man- agement functions, the airport needs to decide if the effort is worthwhile. The first thing the airport must do is decide what it wants to know. This is the area in which many fail. Actual communications and data needs must drive this decision, not technological innovation or cultural trendiness. Once the data needs have been identified, the airport can identify suitable data sources, such as social media. If the airport identifies more than one social media data source, it will usually become necessary to integrate the data; that is, to put it into a homogeneous format that a processor can understand. There are various ways to process the data: purely manual, purely automatic, and hybrid. Purely manual means that people must look at data streams—for example, a Twitter feed—to find relevant information. A purely automatic system could, for example, group similar tweets into stories that can be viewed together. A hybrid system blends manual and automatic analysis for greater flexibility; that is, to learn analytical patterns from users that can then be applied to new incoming data. Which kind of system is appropriate for an airport depends on several factors, including the volume of data being handled and how many resources the organization is willing to devote. Exactly the same concerns apply to outgoing messages sent by an airport during emergencies. The key to creating impact from the data is to move beyond the technology and set up the right organizational structures and processes to move relevant information from processing to decision making. Theoretically, the soundest approach is to analyze what is already in place, then selectively add information from social media and automate where necessary and/or possible. The idea is to let technology adapt to human workflows instead of just setting up a new system and expecting people to change their ways to use it. Complex web-based emergency coordination systems that are not practiced routinely usually lead to problems, as was documented in ACRP Report 94 (IEM Inc. et al. 2013). Blindly assuming that social media can be used to enhance emergency management can be dangerous, diverting scarce resources from where they are needed most and exacerbating information overload, which leads to worse decisions and worse performance (D. Link, personal communica- tion, Nov. 8, 2016). This ACRP synthesis examines the full range of how airports and other organizations use their social media platforms and social listening to enhance responses to and recovery from airport emergencies. As previously noted, social listening, social monitoring, and data scraping are synonymous; social listening will be used throughout this report to indicate the extraction and analysis of actionable information in real time from social media.