Vol.59 – Social Media Becoming a Must for the Japan Disaster Victims

Following the previous article Vol.58 – Reality of Social Media Among Victims of the Japan Disaster the author would like to introduce two examples of how social media, which had not been much used by people in the devastated area before the Japan disaster, is now becoming something inevitable for the victims.




1. Source of information to protect themselves from radiation



1) Case: How social media is used to get information in protecting themselves from radiation



A housewife living in Fukushima always has her smart phone with her that he had installed an inevitable application. With the application, she leverages geo-location functions to know at a glance where she is, amount of radiation and wind direction.



She checks such information whenever she goes out, to protect her two children and herself from radiation. She uses the application as much as five or six times a day.



2) How the application was developed



The application was developed by an engineer working in Fujitsu group, living in Yokohama. He developed it after work and at weekends and published online for free, and he has been improving it late at night based on feedback and requests from the users. Now it has been downloaded more than 33,000 times in total.



3) More applications are being developed



There is an organization established by volunteer engineers from Google, Microsoft, Rakuten and other IT companies called “Hack For Japan”, which has been applications to help victims of the disaster one after the other.



Hackers include those that work with the objectives of contributing to the society and the organization is such a great example. Over 600 such people joined the organization and have developed over 40 applications, including an application of a system that manages volunteer centres. Such applications are being used heavily as something inevitable in their lives by victims.



2. Platform / tool in making a living in the near future






1) Case: Online community for victims to work via the Internet / social media



In this concept which is to become a reality in the near future, 1,000 victims will be able to have a new job. Tasks include data input, writing and so forth. Forking 8 hours a day for 21 days a month makes income of moderate 100,000 yen.



2) How this idea came up



It was an Internet venture company in Tokyo that came up with this idea. The company plans to undertake assignments from larger companies and organizations, and ask victims in the online community to do the tasks.



The executive of the company sincerely hopes that it would provide an opportunity for victims to make a living when they cannot evacuate from the devastated area because they have children or someone they have to look after, etc.



3) The upcoming plans



The company plans to start the business from July and is making haste in its preparation such as acquiring PCs that they are to rent to victims.



3. The author’s final thoughts



It is quite true that with the Internet and social media it is possible to provide information, wisdom and benevolence from around the globe to the devastated area, on condition that the digital divide mentioned in the previous article is eliminated.



What are introduced in the previous and this article would highly contribute to elimination of the digital divide, opening a new channel/source of inevitable information for their lives for victims. It means new lifestyle for the victims to take root even after they come to be able to lead normal live like pre-disaster. And it means new market created or expanded for online business owners and marketers.





Resources:-

Internet and social media is becoming inevitable for the Japan disaster victims, thanks to hard work of volunteer engineers developing useful, inevitable applications for victims. Online community to create 1000 jobs for victims is also to open from July by a venture company in Tokyo. Such trends are likely to minimize or eliminate digital divide, to change lifestyle of the victims, meaning market creation/expansion for online business owners and marketers.