During the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, people have become more active on social media platforms like Twitter to help others facing hardships. For a huge section desperate in the face of the pandemic, trying to find help and relief for their friends and family, Twitter has become the place to turn to for help. It has become a place to help and assist people to survive in COVID-19 and is used to organise supplies and help deal with the latest attack of the pandemic.
This isn’t the first time we’ve seen social media be useful for emergencies — we saw the same during natural disasters earlier. However, this a first when the emergency situation has stretched out for so long. The change on Twitter is different from earlier despite the fact that the curbs any places saw were stringent that impacted people physically, financially and psychologically.
In the beginning people used social media platforms to beat lockdown blues and learn new things – such as baking bread. They tweeted about watching Netflix, and were planning return to normalcy in just a couple of weeks. A year later, we are in a completely new world and online there are countless posts asking for medicines, beds etc and some are seeking food that they could send to the COVID patients and the ones who left their jobs and work due to the new wave of the deadly virus.
Many social media users are using Twitter and other such platforms to help those suffering – people shared details of a COVID Care Centres , Google Sheet documents with details about plasma donors, isolation beds, ICUs, and medicine centres, as well as resources to find essential requirements. Some delivered home-made food for COVID positive patients and others retweeted details of patients requiring medicines and emergency support.
The useful part of social media is that we would find not only the issues on social media platforms like Twitter but also their solutions. Some doctors on Twitter are also helping people get an understanding of the pandemic and what exactly they need to do. Alongside Twitter we see people showing support and assistance those suffering from on platforms including Facebook, Instagram, and even LinkedIn. Some are also sharing the details over WhatsApp to help people receive timely support.
True there are challenges of misinformation and dissemination/verification of information received from these which need to be addressed. All said and done, ;Goodness is like a smile’ – it is contagious and when one person does it, others follow.
SYNE uses social media platforms effectively along with unobtrusive fundraising techniques that confirm to the necessary etiquette of these times while facilitating impact funding. SYNE’s secure payment network provide worldwide reach as well as transparency that makes it an ideal partner for non-profits.
