FluPortal.org

I have been thinking about systems and tools that could assist public media stations plan and launch websites in crisis scenarios. This website, FluPortal.org, is built on Wordpress, and I have been wondering whether a centrally hosted Wordpress MU installation could serve as a public media publishing platform when stations need a website up and running in a matter of hours. So I was intrigued when we came across a project using Google Sites to assist local governments to rapidly deploy websites in emergency situations.

Local governments face many of the same resource limitations that public media outlets do — namely too few web developers and IT infrastructures unable to handle large surges in traffic. The government of Santa Clara County, home to California’s Silicon Valley, ran into trouble with its website when H1N1 first emerged. The County’s website was overwhelmed by visitors searching for swine flu information and it quickly collapsed under the strain. The Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship Program at Stanford University (the school is located in the County) offered its assistance and helped the County publish its H1N1 pages on the Google Sites platform. Google Sites is basically a hosted wiki that allows users to build websites without any html or coding experience. And with Google’s redundant server infrastructure, sites hosted on the platform should be able to handle any large spikes in traffic.

The new Santa Clara County presence on Google Sites was a stable, straightforward warehouse of H1N1 information, but the default templates provided by Google made it somewhat difficult to navigate. Santa Clara officials and the Stanford team saw a need to create a custom template to meet the needs of communicating large amounts of information and improve the user experience.

The Stanford team contacted Bolt|Peters, a San Francisco design firm, to help construct custom templates to serve the emergency response needs of local governments like Santa Clara County. The results are two Google Sites templates — one for public health scenarios and another for more general emergency needs. You can read about the details and approach that went into the planning of these templates on the Bolt|Peters website.

These templates have been made available for anyone to use on Google Sites. They could be a good option for public media outlets that need to get a site up fast when a crisis hits. It took me less than 5 minutes to launch this test site and place the FluPortal logo in the header. The templates provide a visual layout and page structure as well as plenty of pre-populated content and links that local stations can edit and customize as they see fit.

It must be said that Google Sites has a number of limitations (to name a few: limited html control and no CSS editing), but I am impressed with these emergency templates and by the ability to get a website up and running in a matter of minutes. I’m not entirely convinced that Google Sites can serve as a crisis response platform for public media at large, but the work by Bolt|Peters and the Stanford SIE team highlights important elements of crisis communication and preparedness that we should all be thinking about.

FluPortal will be winding up as an active project at the end of March. So we’ve recently been trying to evaluate what the site has done well and what its shortcomings are — with the idea that FluPortal might be a model for future “crisis portals.” (You could imagine a generic CrisisPortal or something more specific like EarthquakePortal.)

A few days ago, I spoke with Katie Donnelly, Associate Research Director at American University’s Center for Social Media. Donnelly focuses specifically on the intersection of social and public media. She featured FluPortal a couple of weeks ago in a blog post and told me she feels it’s a “really good solid model” for helping pubmedia to report on crises. So I pushed her on what she really thinks — on what constructive criticism she might have.

Donnelly had two main recommendations.

First: She suggested encouraging more direct interaction among stations. This could happen in a forum on the site, for example, or in something like a webinar or an online chat. The idea here, she said, would be to “improve ways for stations to connect with each other” to share ideas about crisis coverage.

FluPortal did experiment early on with a Google Group for just this reason, but very few people signed up. Perhaps it was the wrong technology for convening pubmedia people — or perhaps it indicated that station staff are simply too busy for this sort of thing.

I also mentioned to Donnelly that the FluPortal blog was a possible place for stations to interact (in the comments section). She observed that for some reason pubmedia people very rarely seem to comment on blogs — that blogs probably aren’t the right place to persuade stations to talk to each other.

Second: Donnelly felt that FluPortal is “lacking first-person accounts” about H1N1. She suggested soliciting crowdsourced information and encouraging the general public to tell their swine-flu stories on the site. Donnelly understood that FluPortal is aimed at public media — and not at a general audience — but felt it could be a good place for reporters to make contacts with regular people who are part of the H1N1 story. She acknowledged, however, that any public forum on swine flu would require active moderation to avoid “propagating inaccurate information.”

During the FluPortal project, we’ve searched the blogosphere for good H1N1 stories but haven’t found much that stood out. (Most posts and tweets were of the “I’m on my couch and I feel terrible” variety.) For other types of crises, however — earthquakes or storms, for example — personal narratives offered up online might indeed be more provocative.

What would you add to Donnelly’s critique of FluPortal? And what improvements could you recommend for future crisis-reporting sites modelled on FluPortal? (If you prefer not to comment directly on this post, you can email us!)

The Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) recently hosted a talk evaluating how well journalists and health officials communicated H1N1 information to the public.

Dr. K “Vish” Viswanath
[Viswanath Lab]

One of the speakers, Dr. K “Vish” Viswanath, runs a lab at HSPH dedicated to researching health communication. Viswanath highlighted some particularly difficult aspects of transmitting the H1N1 story:

• Health journalists have to straddle two cultures: the world of medical complexities and uncertainties; and the world of deadlines and commercial pressures.
• “More information does not necessarily mean more communication”: even if scientists and journalists do an exemplary job during a health crisis, the internet makes it impossible to control the spread of misunderstandings and misinformation.

One interesting positive lesson: Viswanath noted that whether or not the subtleties of the H1N1 story were getting through to the public, people seemed to be following recommended behaviour — if it was easy to follow. He tracked sales of hand sanitizer during the pandemic, for example, and saw that they went up significantly:

[Dr. Viswanath, screenshot from lecture on H1N1 communication]

Finally, Viswanath made one more very important point: different social groups — whether based on “class, race, ethnicity, or language” — differ widely in their access to information and where they go to look for it. This “communication inequality” is hugely significant during a public-health crisis.

Not everyone, for example, has equal access to online information — or the skills to learn from it or act on it. As he put it, while “it’s exciting to see social media being exploited [...] not everybody uses the internet.” If media and public-health departments rely too much on the web, he says, this can actually widen disparities in access to reliable information. In a survey done in April 2009, only 19% of people reported getting “the most information” about H1N1 online. The lesson here: local and ethnic news sources in traditional media — whether broadcast or paper — remain critical; it’s not just all about Twitter and Facebook.

I asked Viswanath whether he feels there’s a dearth of experienced health reporters (see this post). He said yes, that because of cuts in journalism, reporters are covering multiple beats and not necessarily able to stay on the health beat over the course of their careers. He hasn’t had a chance, however, to study this in relation to the H1N1 story specifically.

You can learn lots more from Dr. Viswanath in this video of the talk.

Two links caught our attention this week that could be of interest to stations covering H1N1. While these examples are not directly related to swine flu, they may inspire you to try new approaches in your coverage.  

WNYC’s audience submitted economic indicators

The first is Crowdsourcing: A Field Guide from WNYC. Crowdsourcing entails soliciting your audience to help collect, curate, and vet information around a specific topic or issue. WNYC has been experimenting with crowdsourcing for the last few years, most notably on the Brian Lehrer Show (recently, the program asked the audience to contribute examples of the recession’s impact for their Uncommon Economic Indicators project). The guide provides case studies on how to implement crowdsourcing at your station, along with tips on where it fits in your existing editorial process and standards. There’s a useful 10 point quick-guide that rounds up the big takeaways from the field guide.

While the recent snowstorms in the Washington DC area don’t reach the crisis threshold, it’s fair to say they had a major impact on the region. The Washington Post is using the Ushahidi platform (which we mentioned in our round-up of responses to the earthquake in Haiti) to map the impact of the storm. The map provides an online tool that allows the audience to highlight locations still buried from the storm — impassable streets and sidewalks, cars buried, and power outages. But they also encourage folks to map opportunities to help in the dig out — snow blowers available or a shovel to share.

Getting to know emerging tools and techniques during more routine scenarios will allow public media outlets to respond more effectively when and if a crisis hits.

WILL (TV and radio) in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, worked closely with local public-health authorities on its H1N1 coverage. It found that this was a very effective way to get the word out during a health crisis. Jack Brighton, who heads up WILL’s new media, explained to me recently how the cooperation evolved.

Back in the spring, Brighton told me, Champaign-Urbana’s healthcare providers and public-health officials began meeting regularly about H1N1. WILL decided to join in and sent staff from TV, radio, and new media to “become part of that conversation.”

One result was a series of PSAs that aired on WILL TV and radio and were featured on WILL’s H1N1 page.

Another outcome was the H1N1 page itself, which, based on anecdotal feedback, was helpful to WILL’s audience. It became the second project on a site called WILL Connect. This site is separate from WILL’s main website, and Brighton explained that it’s “envisioned as a community engagement portal.” It’s a place to do projects, he said, “in partnership with other public-service entities.” (The other WILL Connect project is on the economy.)

Brighton said that the cooperative H1N1 project was a “good model” in a couple of ways. First, it was “really effective in developing relationships with community partners — and in their seeing our value in getting the word out.” Second, working with WILL’s staff helped the other project members spread information more effectively through their own channels. 

Brighton says he “can’t overstate the importance of the relationships built in the process” of the H1N1 collaboration. He feels it set WILL up to “be more effective with other [public-health] projects down the line.” In assessing WILL’s work on H1N1, Brighton is also figuring out possible improvements. WILL’s H1N1 page, for example, didn’t display WILL’s own reporting on the story — something Brighton plans to remedy on future similar Will Connect pages.

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Minnesota Public Radio was able, during the height of H1N1’s second wave, to devote one reporter full-time to the story. In FluPortal’s recent webinar, that reporter — Lorna Benson — described how her station has approached swine-flu coverage — and what she’s learned from it. (This is the third excerpt from the webinar; first is here and second is here.)

Benson explained that before H1N1 appeared last April, she happened to attend a weeklong CDC workshop for journalists that included a section on pandemic flu. Once H1N1 struck, she found “that experience was very helpful.” It had introduced her to CDC flu experts, and she had a “good understanding” of how state and federal officials would work together during a flu pandemic (on medical testing, school closings, etc.).

During the summer H1N1 lull, anticipating a bigger outbreak in the autumn, MPR “took some time to sort through [its] pandemic coverage plan.” Benson also attended another CDC briefing — this time focused entirely on pandemic flu. And then a similar Minnesota Department of Health briefing. As a result, she was up-to-date on virus and vaccine details that helped her enormously when H1N1 resurged.

Among other things, Benson used the briefings to create an online swine-flu Q&A — which became one of MPR’s most-viewed web features. It received, Benson said, three to four times more hits than most. One lesson she drew from this and from audience questions during online H1N1 chats: there was a huge appetite for very basic H1N1 information.

Swine flu also taught Benson to stretch herself as a local reporter. She began listening to the CDC’s flu-update conference calls — which was, she said, “the first time that I had done something like that.” Prior to H1N1, she had thought these government calls were mainly for national media, but she learned that they included lots of information relevant to local H1N1 stories. As swine flu has tapered off in the last month or so, Benson has started reporting even farther afield: calling flu experts around the world to investigate the possibility of a third wave of H1N1. In other words: she found that national and international elements were indispensable for the best local reporting on pandemic flu.

To hear more about Benson’s experience reporting on H1N1, click on the “play” button below:

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[FluPortal]

You can also find links to much of Benson’s H1N1 reporting here. MPR’s H1N1 page is here.

Watch the entire webinar here.

Joe Neel [NPR]

In FluPortal’s latest webinar, NPR Health Editor Joe Neel pulled back the curtain on NPR’s health & science desk to reveal how it has reported on H1N1 — and how it plans to continue in the months ahead. Using social media, he said, has been a lynchpin. There are interesting lessons here for all health/science reporters.

Neel summarized the current global H1N1 situation by showing the graphs and data sources that NPR relies on for its information. He then explained why NPR was ready to cover H1N1 when it emerged in April 2009: the network had been reporting on pandemic flu since the H5N1 bird flu of 2004 and therefore had “amassed a lot of reportorial experience in this area.”

The other significant element that has allowed NPR to cover the story in depth: social media. Specifically, Shots (NPR’s health blog) and Richard Knox’s Twitter stream. Neel explained that through sheer coincidence, he had started a Shots prototype just days before H1N1 emerged last spring. So the health desk was able to “turn on a dime” and get the blog up and running immediately. Why has it been so useful? First, Neel said, there was simply too much news to put on the air; the blog was an additional outlet. Second, the news environment was so competitive that the hour between newscasts seemed an eternity — and the blog allowed the health team to post breaking news immediately. Here’s how Neel summarized the centrality of social media in NPR’s H1N1 coverage:

Our experience with the blog really changed the orientation of the journalists on our desk to see the usefulness of a blog and of social media. Dick Knox has started tweeting and really starting to use it as a journalistic tool as other journalists are doing. It really brought us into this age. It’s one of the most exciting things I’ve seen happen here at NPR.

Neel wrapped up with ideas for future national coverage and for future local coverage (these are screenshots of his webinar slides):

[Joe Neel, FluPortal webinar]

It’s well worth a few minutes to watch Neel’s full presentation:

[FluPortal]

You can see the entire webinar here.

Last week, in our webinar on crisis reporting, FluPortal’s tech whiz Josh Andrews outlined some of the newest resources available on this site.

He highlighted our revamped “Reporter & Program Resources” page, where among other things you’ll find our curated list of the best H1N1 news articles; he laid out the new guides to web tools and social media available on our “For Station Websites” page; and he emphasized that we continue to offer H1N1 story angles regularly on our blog.

The new web tools Josh outlined include the Public Media H1N1 Widget. It automatically displays the latest H1N1 reporting from public media, and you can easily customize its size and appearance so that it fits the look of your website.

Josh also explained that you can use many of the tools available on FluPortal in other crisis reporting — or to enhance your coverage of any subject. Learn more in this clip from the webinar:

[FluPortal]

You can watch the full webinar here.

The renowned Mayo Clinic offers not just clinical medical care but also health information — both for individuals and for the media. I spoke recently with Lee Aase, who manages Mayo’s social media and much of its news, and with Joel Streed, who produces Mayo’s free syndicated daily medical-news podcast. They explained how to find health news and information on Mayo’s several websites — and the various ways it might be useful to journalists.

There are two main places to look: mayoclinic.com and mayoclinic.org. Each has a different focus. Mayoclinic.com, Aase explained, provides free consumer health info — “analogous to webMD.” (Search here by disease, here for podcasts, or here for videos.) It also offers syndicated “health content” for a fee.

Mayoclinic.org works a little differently. Its information arm focuses primarily on medical news — and especially on news relevant to the practice of medicine at Mayo. Its natural primary audience is therefore the communities surrounding Mayo’s three clinics, though in reality much of the information is also useful to a global audience. Its news blog and Medical Edge videos and podcasts are good places to start. Medical Edge content is freely usable and embeddable by anyone.

Aase and Streed explained a couple of ways that the news blog and Medical Edge could be useful to pubmedia journalists: they can be a source of story ideas and leads for guests, their content can be embedded or linked to directly from station websites, and the audio/video resources can be a quick way to vet possible Mayo experts — to judge, for example, whether they’re good talkers or camera ready. (If you book a Mayo guest for a show, it’s possible to use Mayo’s in-house ISDN and satellite uplink facilities free of charge.)

Because much of the technology that Aase’s team uses is nimble — a WordPress blog, Twitter, Facebook, Flip cameras — it’s able to react quickly to breaking news, which is especially useful during public-health crises.

Here are some examples of their work on H1N1:

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["Dr. Greg Poland and Dr. Bill Marshall on H1N1 and Seasonal Flu," 24 Oct 09]

["H1N1 Flu and Asthma in Kids", 17 Nov 09]

["Mayo Clinic Physician: 'H1N1 Vaccine Is Safe'," 28 Oct 09]

["Swine Flu FAQs," 27 April 09]

Screenshot of some of the Flu Fighter characters [Facebook]

Children’s Hospital Boston and Health and Human Services have developed together a Facebook application called “I’m a Flu Fighter!”

The app is part of a project designed “to empower individuals to promote positive health behaviors amongst their friends and family through the use of social networks.”

It has several elements: you can pick a flu-fighter character for your profile, advertise your vaccination status, and “challenge” your FB friends to “join you in the fight against flu.” It also includes info on flu vaccines.