Social Media aids humanitarian efforts and causes divergent coverage of Japan Quake

How social media is helping -The role of social media during international and national disasters is now widely acknowledged globally and the result is social media being placed highly on crisis communication agendas.  During the earthquake crisis in Japan social media has helped three distinct groups.  First there are the victims of the earthquake.  US Google Developer created Person Finder for families looking to discover the whereabouts of friends and family.  It was created after the Haiti earthquake in 2010 and is now helping those affected in Japan.  At last count, Person Finder contains 306,600 names and has been instrumental in helping victims.  News Outlets have tapped into social media to improve their coverage of natural disasters such as the earthquake in Japan.  In Japan traditional methods of communication (television, telephone lines, radio etc.) were lost immediately after the earthquake but social media wasn't affected.  Only an hour after the earthquake tweets coming out of Tokyo reached 1,2000 a minute.  Just a few hours after tags like prayforJapan and earthquake were tweeted thousdands of times a second.  Twitter gave victims a voice to be heard – news stations like CNN utilized user-generated information like images and accounts from ground-zero to raise awareness of the crisis.  Finally there is the Relief Aid.  With such a large scale disaster, getting charitable donations and relief aid to affected areas is critical, costly and difficult.  With the help of Twitter, Facebook and text messaging, Relief Aid foundations are able to raise awareness rapidly and make it easier for people to make donations.
How social media has been disruptive - There is a stark contrast between the way in which foreign and Japanese media have covered the earthquake.  Western Media has focused on the nuke scare and has been running sensationalistic headlines.  This, and the fear of the unknown, has lead to foreigners in Japan receiving phone calls from family and friends pleading with them to leave Japan.  That differs from the way Japanese media is covering the situation and actual gravity of the situation.  Most Japanese citizens are going about their daily lives and routines as normal.  Most children are back in school and playing outside.  Most businesses have resumed operations.  Many attribute this gap in attitude to the differing information people are receiving from their media sources.  Hiroshi Ishikawa, the general manager of the National Press Club in Japan says that "deep down, the Japanese media has a view that the situation will be resolved but that the foreign media is portraying the situation as getting out of control."