Two of the most significant issues that I see in the emerging use of social media by emergency responders are trust and authenticity. I have used Twitter to establish business relationships with people that live hundreds and even thousands of miles away from me. Most of these people I have never met in person and I have only had phone calls with a few. Otherwise all of our interaction is by Twitter message, Facebook posts, and email exchanges.

When you establish a social media presence you will begin to develop a community of followers. People follow you because they share your interests, they are curious, they want to be associated with your organization, brand, or personality, or they are simply trying to build a tally. Regardless of their intent I think most of us enter into social media relationship with a belief that the person on the other end of the interaction is who they state they are. Maybe that is naive, but I want to give people the benefit of the doubt that they are authentic.

Although I follow more than 2000 other Twitter users there are probably less than 50 people that I monitor closely. Over the course of time I have learned about their work, families, social activities, stress relievers, and their humor. Like any other clique my small group of Twitter friends that are also paramedics has developed a shared sense of humor and targets for skewering with snarky comments.

The premiere of the NBC show Trauma has been a rich target for EMS professionals using social media. In the days after the Trauma premiere many EMS twitter users mocked the show with fictional tweets about responding to only-possible-on-TV 911 calls. Within our clique the humor and sarcasm was obvious. Unfortunately, non-EMS professionals (users outside the clique) did not recognize the humor and sarcasm and though some of these Tweet messages were true.

The day after Trauma a paramedic wrote, “Dispatched to shortness of breath, prob. 2nd to massive explosion & helo crash. Pulling out the versed calling for helo #LPD #CaptainVersed.”

He used two hashtags – #LPD and #CapatainVersed” – coined by members of the clique that were meaningless to outsiders. As an insider I knew that either the entire tweet was fiction or everything but “shortness of breath” was false. A follower of this paramedic forwarded the Twitter message to a local news reporter. Some quick investigating of the paramedic’s Twitter feed probably would have quickly led any outside reader to conclude a group was having fun mocking the TV show.

The news report followed up on this lead of a developing story by calling the 911 dispatch center for location details. Obviously there was no story. The duped reported alerted the paramedic’s fire chief to the false tweets and asked what action would be taken against the paramedic. Since the paramedic was not working when the Twitter message was sent there was no follow-up action.

I asked this paramedic two questions about the incident:

1) Does your employer offer any guidelines about social media use while on duty? If yes, what are the guidelines? If no, what would you like to see?
“My department does not have any policy, written or verbal, regarding the use of social media. I believe a lot of this could have been avoided if we had some guidance. Use of Facebook or MySpace is not permitted on company computers. Use of Twitter has not been allowed, but when our Community Risk Division requested to set up a Facebook fan page and Twitter account to help our community outreach, the request was denied. Many companies are embracing social media and are seeing results. Emergency Service providers (the agencies) are a little slower to adapt to new media and change. Guidelines for usage on duty should include some form of basic PIO like course. We all forget sometimes the impact a simple little message over any social media can have in the general public. As a public safety provider the general public will take us seriously even when we are sharing an inside joke.”

2) How would you recommend fire/EMS professionals best use social media to share about their work and build relationships?
“EMS, Fire and police can use the social media in many ways to build relationships and network across international borders. I can ask paramedics in the UK, Australia, Canada and Germany questions and get responses within minutes. Twitter specifically has allowed more connections to other providers than any other social media application. As public service providers we all need to keep the sarcasm out of our messages. Any provider that uses social media that can be accessed by the general public should have some basic training in Public Information/Relations. Additionally, have a clear statement that the words are the opinion of the individual and not the company he/she works for nor does the individual represent the company in any way.”

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