THERE ARE not too many aid workers who can claim they are followed online by the likes of Bill Clinton, Bill Gates and the Haitian rapper, Wyclef Jean, but Paul Conneally can. He became the voice of the international Red Cross relief operation in the immediate aftermath of the Haitian earthquake and boosted his number of followers on Twitter from 720 to 1,561 as his compelling tweets provided readers with a keen sense of what it was like in real time to be on the ground in the wake of such a calamity.
His pioneering use of the social media tool has proved its value in a new domain, disaster response. Together with its use by protesters in Iran and Moldova last year, the experiences of Conneally and others in Haiti may have finally broken Twitter’s image as a pasture of cyber space for bored teenagers and film stars anxious to connect with their fans.
His tweets or posts, limited to 140 characters, captured in a matter of fact, yet powerful way, the drama unfolding around him especially in the first few days of the relief operation.
The Ballinasloe native slept on the ground and had to inhale Vicks vapours to ward off the nausea which threatened to overwhelm him as he moved through the cadaver-strewn ruins of Port-au-Prince, tweeting and doing interviews almost non-stop with the world's media in a blizzard of communication that stretched from CNN in Atlanta to NHK in Tokyo with many stops in between including a front page story in the Connacht Tribunewhich made good use of the local boy's tweets.
His message-reach ran to more than 250,000 people as 80 per cent of his posts were retweeted several times. Cable news channels ran some as ticker tape across their screens and the celebrated American online newspaper the Huffington Post ran them all live as they streamed into Conneally’s Twitter account from his mobile phone.
As he sets out on a long slow journey across the border from Santo Domingo, he tweets to his then 720 followers: “On the road 2 haiti now with about 50 redcross aid workers and truck loads of relief inc Field hospitals, water purifiers, surgeons etc.” He gives a sense of the unfolding drama as he reports a stream of vehicles moving in the opposite direction and posts photos known as Twitpics to his account. He notes: “1st time i have evr updated live from such a disaster zone.”
As his followers grew in number, he reached out with important messages about the needs on the ground and counteracted sometimes alarmist reporting on the security situation: “We are not witnessing violence or rioting, the opposite. Calm Q’s water and relief items. Extremely harrowing scenes in the hospitals.”
To the whiners: “Aid effort undeniably slower than we would want but the reality is what it is. No infrastructure. Little central control (govn. in a tent).” He reminds the world that the Haitian Red Cross itself had mobilised 10,000 volunteers. And he quotes his local driver: “C’est l’heure pour le patience.”
He tweets about Joe, a four-year-old taken into care by the Red Cross after he was found “dehydrated + confused. his name is Joe. poor kid was trying to clean dust from his bedmat.” After days of non-stop activity, Conneally tweets at 4.09am on January 22nd: “Beautiful crescent moon over port au prince tonite. drinking a dram under the stars. 2morros another day.” He has also managed to move into a mosquito dome after a few nights on an abandoned flatbed truck.
As objections start to be raised about America’s commanding presence Conneally tweets another point of view: “Lots of talk about US handling of airport. let’s get real. US has increased haiti airport capacity to 170%. it’s a massive contribution.” He also quickly recognised the value of another social media tool being deployed in an earthquake zone for the first time. This is www.Ushahidi.com, a website first developed to aggregate violent incidents in Kenya after the last hotly contested elections.
Ushahidiis a Swahili word for witness. People throughout Haiti have been able to use e-mail, Twitter or SMS to report food and water shortages, violent incidents and people trapped under the rubble, thus providing a unique community-driven view of the geographical spread of the disaster and where the needs are.
Conneally is a big fan, and cites examples of its success in Haiti including the discovery of a hospital that had survived unscathed but was receiving no patients; in another case the Red Cross took just 20 minutes to respond to a post about a need for fuel for a generator at a health clinic.
David Clinch, a Dubliner who has worked on the CNN International Desk for the past 17 years and is an expert in the use of social media for newsgathering, says Twitter and other social media all played a role in helping CNN find information, contacts and content in the first few hours after the earthquake.
“People such as Paul Conneally from the Red Cross, that used to be just contacts in our Rolodex, are now also people we follow in real-time via social media. There was a lot of misinformation out there on the web and it helped to be able to keep track of official representatives like Paul to get more reliable information,” he said.
Conneally is now back at his job as head of media in Geneva for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies where he is still tweeting, and proving that he can both write and spell on his blog at ww.headdowneyesopen.blogspot.com