Pakistan: Twitter Reactions On Flood Situation

The floods in Pakistan got the Twitter users all over the world talking as the devastation become clearer day by day. The hashtag #Pakistan became a top trend on the 28th of July, when the plane crash near Islamabad happened.

The graph rose a little (but not as much like the 28th of July) as the news of the floods broke out in the first week of august. The floods did not create much buzz in the following week. By 16th of August #Pakistan climbed into the top ten of Twitter trends again as people started to realize about the impact and devastation of the floods and the help required from the world.

There are many hashtags being used by Tweeps and most notable are #Pakistan, #PKrelief, #Pkfloods, #HelpPakistan etc. Let us look at what the netizens are talking about the Pakistan floods on Twitter.

Plights of the flood victims:

FarrukhSiddiqui: Dying cattle scream for relief in flooded Pakistan: http://bit.ly/boFFDb #Pakistan #PKrelief

sfarazali: Please HELP! Pakistanis displaced by floods reach out for milk during an aid distribution at…… http://tumblr.com/xlegpf7i6 #pkfloods

Samancita: 4 million children in #Pakistan at grave risk of dying http://bit.ly/bHpRPU Donate to #UNICEF http://bit.ly/aEXd1h #HelpPakistan #PKfloods

googlewaveyour: Number of People Displaced by Floods in #Pakistan Exceeds Entire Population of #Australia #pkfloods #helppakistan via #farhanmasood

farhanmasood: nothing is important than help people who really need it. so help them as much as u can… #HelpPakistan #PKFloods

Flood Information:

CrisisCommons: RT @crisismappers: #Pakistan floods Interactive @ESRI Social Media Map site w/ embedded geotagged images, Youtube videos + http://bit.ly/a9Vois #socmed #GIS

The Effort that Time will Never Forget. Image by Omer_S from Twitpic.

The Effort that Time will Never Forget. Image by Omer_S from Twitpic.

Donation:

Dirk2112: Pakistan Flood Disaster Relief | Text “FLOOD” to 27722 | http://tinyurl.com/2ecclhc #PKrelief #PKflood

oOol_JaLoOl: RT @shariquess: Angelina Jolie donates $100,000(Rs.8.5m) MOREthan #Zardari & #Altaf Rs.5m each http://bit.ly/coKPzx – #pkrelief #pkfloods #pakistan #karachi

Relief and Rescue efforts:

etanvir: RT @sarwatJ: To #volunteer 4 #pkrelief efforts in #Islamabad contact Humza Afzal of IMPossible @ 03335424192 #pkfloods #Pakistan

RumaisaM: http://bit.ly/dh6Eay The difference we made in #PkRelief ..A beautiful picture of sheer joy after misery. via @DrAwab #Pakistan #pkfloods

DrAwab: RT @faisalkapadia Riots happening in shikarpur in front of us complaining of watered down food & bad managment #Pkfloods situation desperate

DrAwab: Now the corruption PPP-Khursid Shah's son has taken a contract for Roti at 7lac/day he fwds contract 2lac/day & pockets 5lac/day #Pkfloods

Interestingly media is also using Twitter to reach to netizens in Pakistan.

adrianma: CBC News looking to get in touch with volunteers on the ground in Pakistan for blogging. yournews@cbc.ca #pakistan #pkrelief

It seems that although a lot of people are tweeting, most of them are retweets or basically synthetic and derivative tweeting, rather than tweets as the original source of information. It remains to be seen how these Tweets make an impact on the collection of donation, flood relief and the rehabilitation efforts.

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