Información pública en época de crisisredes sociales de la Secretaría Nacional de Comunicación de Ecuador en el terremoto de abril de 2016

Resumo

On the 16th of April of 2016 Ecuador suffered a 7.8 magnitude earthquake which epicentre was found between the parishes of Pedernales and Cojimíes, within the province of Marabí. It was the strongest earthquake in Ecuador since 1979, with the Colombia earthquake, and the most destructive since 1987, causing 745 deaths and affecting 1 million people, according to official data from the Ecuadorian government and other international bodies like the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. The interest and importance of this research is rooted in the unique approach to this phenomenon from the perspective of organisational communication in social media during a crisis. The social media channels analysed were Facebook, with 139.55 followers, and Twitter, with 204.000, between the 16th and 30th of April, as they were the accounts used more often in a systematic and professional way. Moreover, these two channels had the highest impact among the general public and they are the main source of information for some sectors of the population. The methodology used in this research included a file card to monitor and analyse the content created by the institution in order to assess the general and specific procedures of crisis communication. The general trend is to produce biased, insufficient and irrelevant information (Art 22 Ley Orgánica de Comunicación) too focused on the president, and not providing enough information about prevention or other significant data for the whole population.