Usage of Social Media and Smartphone Application in Assessment of Physical and Psychological Well-Being of Individuals in Times of a Major Air Pollution Crisis

Zhang, Melvyn WB; Ho, Cyrus SH; Fang, Pan; Lu, Yanxia; Ho, Roger CM

Previous research has highlighted the usage of the Internet and in a crisis situation. The recent developments in Web-based technologies such as Facebook and Twitter, have offered government and nongovernment organizations with new means of disseminating vital information. These new technological modalities have the potential to acquire information and feedback from the general population during a crisis as well, which is important in assessing how the population is coping and responding thus far to the crisis. In particular, Keim and Noji [9] stated that the usage of social media initially started out during the 2010 Haiti earthquake, where various technological modalities such as text messaging, Facebook, and other social media were used in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake. Text messages were used as a means to gather donations and funds for relief work. Other technological modalities were used to disseminate information, gather donations, and also provide psychological support. Previous research has also been done using Facebook technologies to compare the levels of post-traumatic stress symptoms that individuals experienced during the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster [10]. These allow the government and relevant agencies to closely monitor the current situation at the ground level and adjust the level of support accordingly [11]. Information acquired from the general population includes physical and physiological symptoms, as well as detecting new cluster of outbreaks of infectious diseases [11].