ABSTRACT
This chapter looks in detail at how aid agencies have responded to the challenges of user-generated content by professionalising and taking an increasingly active role in trying to frame the media agenda around disasters. They have done this by transforming their press offices into pseudo-news operations and by using social media. The chapter looks at how aid agencies have used Twitter, bloggers and social media influencers to harness the power of social media and bypass problems with mainstream journalists. First, it looks at aid agencies’ use of beneficiaries to tell stories, using as examples Oxfam GB’s ‘Twitter takeover’ of 2013 when the agency’s Twitter feed was handed over to a refugee in the Zaatari camp in Jordan and the development of On Our Radar which allowed those caught up in the Ebola outbreak of 2014 to send stories out via SMS. Second, it looks at how many aid agencies turned to use bloggers and social media influencers to reach new audiences but the difficulties that this can bring, with the focus moving away from beneficiaries and concern around commercialisation. Finally, it goes behind the scenes at the Save the Children Global Media Unit, which attempts to co-ordinate the international agency’s media messaging on a 24-hour basis around the world, and how this indicates a desire amongst aid agencies to control the message in a fragmented media world.
