I find it amazing the way social media tools like Twitter, also Facebook are being used so spontaneously by young people around the world as a way of expressing their views, eg  against terrorism & being heard democratically.

Within 24 hours it was possible to add a red & white stripe to your avatar on Twitter to support #IndonesiaUnite in its push for peace - "KAMI TIDAK TAKUT" - over terrorism.

The young people of Indonesia so focused in wanting to tell the world how great their country is on Twitter and Facebook - getting support from Good Charlotte's @JoelMadden and seeking support from @MrsKutcher.

Sometimes the stats tend to suggest that Twitter is an English language focused social media tool. However the crises in Moldova, followed by Iran and Indonesia show the incredible global reach & influence of social media tools like Twitter.

Several decades ago folks like Professor Brian Martin of University of Wollongong in Australia, began writing of Schweik Action processes - ie use of peaceful ICT tools in times of crisis.

And then following crisis events such as Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans generated highly emotive community civil society collapsing stories. However in July 2008 Wikinomicsreported that Web 2.0 Social Networking tools were used by citizens, to ensure that rebuilding of their city was done in ways that made sense. Gurus such as Alan Gutierrez ran crash courses in social networking. They used tools such as Flickr, WordPress, Yahoo Groups, and Google Maps to prioritise rebuilding, ie occurred in the right areas soonest. Governments do not always have the right knowledge at hand in such crises to get the prioritisation right. In fact this was recognised in the 1980's, when the concepts ofcommunity empowerment & development were being explored. Gartner also observed similar community use of social networking with Hurricane Gustav .. "For example, as Gustav approached, Ning created a hosted wiki. Within 24 hours, volunteers copied useful emergency management information, such as links and feeds from Katrina Web sites, and updated them. These citizens also provided neighborhood and regional updates."

And as reported in Geoff Brown's yes!andspace blog, even prior to Australia's tragic February 2009 Victorian Bushfires, an enthusiastic volunteer has directed the Victorian Country Fire Authority's Incident Summary RSS's feeds to a Twitterfeed - saving Bandwidth for the CFA's website. Others are retweeting the message, to provide an even wider contact list. It seems like the 21st Century version of the "phone tree" approach, which communities have used for years to get out urgent messages. The enthusiastic volunteer is hoping that the CFA will set up their own Twitterfeed. There have been suggestions of using phone systems to spread emergency warning messages. Twitterfeed via mobile phones might be one way to spread disaster alert messages as more people become users.

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The above post was archived from posterous blog post of July 18 2009 - - http://kerrieannesfridgemagnets.posterous.com/twitter-global-reach-indonesiaunite