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    Categories: Social Networking

Best Online Resources for Following Haiti News, Taking Action

In the face of devastating news happening far away, there is comfort in making a connection. And those connections often are made online among strangers who are sharing video, photos, stories or tweets about the devastation around them. Such is the case in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, a city that was devastated by an earthquake last Tuesday, with tens of thousands feared dead.

While Twitter has had a growing role as a first-responder medium with breaking news, that role has grown this week into a major booster for giving. When the Red Cross said people could donate $10 by texting the word “Haiti” to 90999, those instructions were passed along virally via Twitter, helping raise more than $5 million for relief efforts. The Yele Haiti Foundation also used text messaging to raise more than $1 million; you can donate $5 by texting the word “Yele” to 501501. A search on Google’s real-time feed from Twitter for “90999” brings up more than 48,000 results, meaning it’s been mentioned in that many tweets.

The spirit of giving became infectious online. The cell carriers said they wouldn’t be taking their customary cuts of those charges, nor would they charge users for sending the text messages. Even the credit card companies got into the act, waiving their fees for donations to Haiti. Plus, I noticed at one point today that the home pages of the major U.S. cable networks had removed their most lucrative ad slots and replaced them with Haiti relief pitches. (Commercial ads came back later tonight.)

The only downside to all this kindness was the confusion brought by so many free offers. According to AdAge, UPS offered “in-kind services to Haiti,” which somehow became interpreted to mean that people could send free packages to Haiti if they were less than $50 in cost. When American Airlines offered free miles for donations to the Red Cross, people misinterpreted that to mean free flights. “It was misinformation that got picked up, and we got information back out on Twitter saying that it wasn’t the case,” an American spokeswoman told AdAge.

With so many people missing in Haiti and communication systems down, social media has in some cases played the surprising role of life-saver. The CBC reported that a Montreal woman got a Facebook message from someone in Haiti saying that their neighbor was trapped in rubble next door. The Montreal woman contacted the Red Cross and the neighbor was eventually saved. These are the stories that give us hope, even when we’re thousands of miles removed from the disaster zone.

Online Resources

Here’s a list of online resources to follow the news, tweets, find missing people, see satellite imagery, and take action to help out in Haiti.

Special sites and pages

Wikipedia page on 2010 Haiti Earthquake

Miami Herald’s Disaster in Haiti

Ushahidi’s 2010 Earthquake in Haiti

Global Voices Online Haiti Earthquake

Huffington Post’s Haiti Earthquake

CNN’s Voices from Haiti reports on the ground

Twitter feeds

Red Cross

OperationUSA

caribnews

haiticonnexion

Wyclef Jean

Ushahidi

etnos

UNICEF

InternetHaiti

FutureHaiti

MercyCorps

PierreCote

Twitter lists and searches

NY Times haiti-earthquake

LA Times haiti-quake

FoxNews haiti-earthquake

CNNbrk haiti

MSNBC’s BreakingNews haiti-quake

NPR’s haiti-earthquake

Google real-time search results for #haiti

Facebook pages

Earthquake Haiti

Haiti Earthquake Relief

Support the Victims of the Earthquake in Haiti

Photo Sets

Boston.com’s The Big Picture Haiti 48 hours later

Google Maps with satellite image overlay

Google Earth Library’s links to satellite images

BBC’s Haiti after the earthquake (from GeoEye)

International Federation of Red Cross and Crescent Society Flickr set (not Creative Commons; must get permission to use)

Boy receives treatment in Haiti; photo by Logan Abassi, UN

UN Development Program Flickr set (under Creative Commons)

Disasters Emergency Committee Flickr set (all rights reserved, mainly from Reuters)

NPR’s Photo Gallery

Hyberabad India’s Haiti Earthquake Image Gallery (optimized for iPod Touch and iPhones, as per Eric Rumsey in comments)

Videos

YouTube’s CitizenTube channel

YouTube videos geo-tagged in Haiti

iReport videos on Haiti earthquake

Take action

Google crisis response page with various ways to donate

CNN Impact

FoxNews How to Help

PBS Newshour’s Haiti Relief Effort

Huffington Post’s How You Can Help

NPR’s How to Help

Adam Sherk rounds up news sites’ help pages

Find people

Miami Herald’s Haiti Connect

Red Cross FamilyLinks for Haiti

NY Times’ The Missing in Haiti photo gallery

CBC Help people find loved ones

Haiti Missing Persons Bulletin Board

Person Finder – Haiti Earthquake (as per Erik from Ushahidi)

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This list will be updated over the coming weeks, so please add in your favorite online resources in the comments below.

Mark Glaser is executive editor of MediaShift and Idea Lab. He also writes the bi-weekly OPA Intelligence Report email newsletter for the Online Publishers Association. He lives in San Francisco with his son Julian. You can follow him on Twitter @mediatwit.

Mark Glaser :Mark Glaser is founder and executive director of MediaShift. He contributes regularly to Digital Content Next’s InContext site and newsletter. Glaser is a longtime freelance journalist whose career includes columns on hip-hop, reviews of videogames, travel stories, and humor columns that poked fun at the titans of technology. From 2001 to 2005, he wrote a weekly column for USC Annenberg School of Communication's Online Journalism Review. Glaser has written essays for Harvard's Nieman Reports and the website for the Yale Center for Globalization. Glaser has written columns on the Internet and technology for the Los Angeles Times, CNET and HotWired, and has written features for the New York Times, Conde Nast Traveler, Entertainment Weekly, the San Jose Mercury News, and many other publications. He was the lead writer for the Industry Standard's award-winning "Media Grok" daily email newsletter during the dot-com heyday, and was named a finalist for a 2004 Online Journalism Award in the Online Commentary category for his OJR column. Glaser won the Innovation Journalism Award in 2010 from the Stanford Center for Innovation and Communication. Glaser received a Bachelor of Journalism and Bachelor of Arts in English at the University of Missouri at Columbia, and currently lives in San Francisco with his wife Renee and his two sons, Julian and Everett. Glaser has been a guest on PBS' "Newshour," NPR's "Talk of the Nation," KALW's "Media Roundtable" and TechTV's "Silicon Spin." He has given keynote speeches at Independent Television Service's (ITVS) Diversity Retreat and the College Media Assocation's national convention. He has been part of the lecture/concert series at Yale Law School and Arkansas State University, and has moderated many industry panels. He spoke in May 2013 to the Maui Business Brainstormers about the "Digital Media Revolution." To inquire about speaking opportunities, please use the site's Contact Form.

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