Emerji

Sara Dean (California College of Art)
Beth Ferguson (University of California Davis)

The world is experiencing increased extreme weather and disaster as we feel the effects of climate change. Emerji helps us talk about these global threats and experiences through the language we use to talk about everything else ... emoji. Mobile phones and social media are becoming increasingly crucial to disaster response. Social media messages with platforms like Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, and SMS are time-stamped, geo-located, mappable, and media enabled. This crowdsourced metadata has proven to be vital in effective and timely disaster preparedness and response. Disaster response organizations have developed new tools to respond to this shift in technology, but most projects to-date have been individual apps or opt-in alert systems. These types of projects are effective for people well prepared for disaster, but miss most impacted people, who are either unprepared or unaware of an impending disaster. For reaching all communities, social media becomes the most effective platform for planning, alerts and relief information.