Virginia Tech Article

Today in class we talked about an article regarding the Virginia Tech tragedy. The main idea of the article is that social media tools such as blogs and social networks were not utilized to effectively manage the crisis situation. According to an article in the New York Times, students were not notified about the first shooting via email until 9:26 am, over two hours after the first gun shot occurred. Although students did utilize blogs, phones, and Facebook to communicate with one another, many question why instant tools were not utilized by the university to notify the students of what was actually going on. This is definatley an idea that organzations and universities across the nation should consider factoring into their crisis management plans in the future. Who know whether the proper use of social media tools would have helped during the tragedy? All we can do now is better plan for the future and hope that something this awful never happens again.