These are few slides that advise for small NGOs to invest and opt for social media when they are interested to create awareness in emergencies

1. Why Humanitarian agencies
should prefer the social media in
emergencies such as COVID-19
Henry Neondo
Regional communications Coordinator
+254703618872
henry.neondo@helpage.org
April 2020

2. SM in Emergencies
Some basics
• COVID-19 is an emergency
• Information is rapidly changing and the publics
are eager and want to keep abreast with what is
happening
• Such an understanding will inform the CSOs who
may wish to communicate with its publics

3. Why focus on social media now
• Because of the fluidity of information flow from
policy makers, researchers, families and people,
traditional media should not be a preferred
means of communication in emergency for CSOs
• It must be remembered that in emergencies,
governments and its appointed agencies assume
official position as the ‘source of information’.

6. Aim: Influence?
• As advocates, CSOs would want to cascade the
official information from the government to their
constituents so that they too understand what is
being said and that CSOs also infuse their own
messaging to what is cascaded.
• At the same time, for CSOs whose population like
older people are easily excluded, they would like to
influence what the officials are releasing to the
public. This influence however only happens with
large NGOs. For smaller NGOs, that could be on a
wishlist

7. AIM for social media
• These two aims can not be achieved using
traditional media –which tend to be
bureaucratic and would be slow to relay the
information CSOs want out to their audience as
fast as they would have wished
• In a normal scenario…CSOs would be eager to
give or broadcast information to people by use
of press releases, op-ed and features through
the mass media.

8. Mass media at arms’ length
• But this is not to down play the roles of mass
media. CSOs still need to maintain what they do
with the traditional media
• But crucially in emergencies, CSOs needs to know
what segments of their constituents are saying.
What are their fears? What do they think should
be done and is not being done? What sort of
solutions are they are suggesting and who is
listening?
• By and large, these can best be picked from the
social media platforms

9. 2 WAY COMMUNICATION
• Social media is proving CSOs an opportunity for a
two way conversation
• CSOs want to tell the public their stories. But also
want to hear what the publics are saying and with
that, formulate better responses to the crisis
• CSOs must be able and ready to use the channels
the public are using and what they think they
should be using (both social media and traditional
media).
• For options on the kinds of channels, look at the
next two slides

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12. Thank you