This month’s column is about use of digital tools in emergency situations and then digital strategy as a leadership tool. In this case as a response, taking advantage of the immediacy and ease of rapid deployment of digital devices, instinctively, by a generation described by some as “born with a phone in their hands.” How these tools, digital devices and online resources enabled communications, coverage, and the creation of a nationwide movement -in a matter of days-- is a testament to the coming of age of Digital Reality.
A reality that enables leadership. And can spark a nationwide movement.
The catalyst was horrific, the Valentine’s Day Parkland incident, an assault weapon massacre in a high school. Teenagers seeing their friends, teachers, schoolmates, coaches, being shot. Many wounded, seventeen killed. What did they do, how did they react? Immediately these teens were texting their parents, their siblings, their friends. Others, at the very moments the shooting was occurring before their eyes, were videoing it. Not for sensational reasons, but to document it for the police and the families. Consider that for a moment. 20 or 25 years ago, in the early days of the web, Citizen Journalism was a concept. It had its moment, but never really took off. Some local blogs do well, but they are more the exception than the rule. What has that morphed into, in the true Digital Era?
What took place at Parkland was at once both proximate and global, Digital Journalism.
The connectedness of the Digital Generation, the immediacy of publication (meaning getting online, be it a blog, a news story, a post on a website, or on Reddit, Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Flickr, or any of the many Social Media online outlets), empowers notification and messaging with urgency. In the event of emotion, exigency, the dispatch is successful.
From New York City
Digital Strategy Comes of Age
by Dean Landsman