社交媒体成民间救灾利器

    另外，谣言和虚假消息也传播得和真实的求救信息一样快。比如，有人知道红十字会在此次灾难中遭受的批评真的是因为救灾迟缓？从我的朋友到我在布鲁克林区的邻居中，讨厌红十字会的大有人在。很多人都深信红十字会这次行动迟缓且救灾不力。我不会对此事发表任何评论，因为是不是真的这样，我也不知道。不过当我问我的朋友们，他们为什么如此确定红十字会救灾不力时，他们往往会说，他们自己、或是他们的一个朋友去了一个避难所，但红十字会的人不在那儿，或是缺少物资。每个称职的记者都知道，一个人的经历不能概括整个救灾努力，但是在社交网络平台上，一个人的经历却可以传播得很广。

    为了更好地了解社交网络发起的救灾活动，上周四我亲自去了安迪的“救灾厨房”，不过现在，他的“救灾厨房”已经从他的餐厅搬到了纽约市公园坡的老第一归正教会（Old First Reformed Church）。这座教堂已经成了存放救灾物资的仓库。本周早些时候，两辆大巴从巴尔蒂摩出发，载着狗粮、帮宝适和罐装食物等物资抵达这里，这些物资都是由本地的一家广播电台倡议募捐的。

    萨拉•安吉维妮是志愿者的协调员之一，她带着我参观了一间厨房。里面有六名志愿者厨师正在忙活，还有一间办公室，用来登记灾民的地址和送饭需求。萨拉以前从来没有在一家专门做汤的厨房里帮过忙。桑迪飓风刚过，她就登陆了Facebook，告诉朋友们，往她的房子里送食物，她会把食物送到本地的避难所去。然后她与安迪联系上了，当时安迪已经开始为灾民做饭了，于是萨拉就帮他组织配送食品。为了把热汤送到灾民手里，萨拉、安迪和其他志愿者们前往布鲁克林海滨地带寻找受灾的地方和灾民的联系方式。从那以后，萨拉把大多数时间都花在救灾上，每隔几个小时就给灾民中的联络人打电话，看谁还需要更多的食物。萨拉把志愿们的需要张贴在自己的Facebook主页上（比如“我们上午10点需要司机”），她的Facebook页面和Two Boots披萨店的网页俨然成了他们这个救灾活动的临时官方主页。而这个由丹尼尔•米特神父领导的小教堂，也志愿充当了捐赠物资的接收和分配人员。

    笔者到达10分钟后，坐上了一辆丰田RAV4越野车的副驾驶。司机名叫海德•约翰逊，职业是编写菜谱。他是通过教会与安迪的救灾组织联系上的。当时我们的车上大概载着300碗汤，还有200多份火鸡三明治。海德对我说：“我平时也做饭，过去几天我一直都在这里做饭。但是他们非常需要司机，于是我想：‘我有一辆车，而且现在还有点汽油。’”在街上开了半小时后，我们到了霍华德滩。一些孩子们背着书包，穿过废墟放学回家。有一个大牌子上写着“联邦应急管理局，请帮助我们。”我们穿过了这个地区到了罗克韦，然后向左拐，到了一个更贫穷的地区。

    我们首先停在一个住宅区里，不少人在门外排队。一名警察说，他们早上5点就集中在这里了。他说：“附近真没什么还开着门的地方了。”.我们的联络人山姆要了150碗汤，我们把汤搬到一个厨房里，志愿者们往外发放花生酱果冻三明治。然后我们给萨拉打了电话，她告诉我们第二站去什么地方。

    Also, rumors and misinformation spread as swiftly as the calls for help. Case in point: does anyone really know whether the Red Cross deserves criticism for a lethargic response to the storm? Among my friends and neighbors in Brooklyn, hating on the Red Cross abounds. There is a belief it has been slow to respond and inadequate in its efforts. I won't address whether this is true because I don't know. Here's what is true: when I ask why my friends are so certain the Red Cross has failed, they often report they've been down to a shelter, or a friend has, and the Red Cross wasn't there or was undersupplied. As any decent reporter knows, one experience doesn't sum up a relief effort, but on social platforms, that one experience can be broadcast widely.

    I wanted to better understand the relief efforts that Facebook and Twitter have supersized, so last Thursday I took my own trip down to Andy's kitchen, which had been relocated from his restaurant patio to the Old First Reformed Church in Park Slope. The chapel had been transformed into a warehouse for supplies. Earlier in the week, two large buses had arrived from Baltimore, stocked with dog food and pampers and canned goods collected by a local radio station.

    One of the volunteer coordinators, Sara Angevine, toured me through a kitchen with a half-dozen volunteer chefs and an office papered with addresses and delivery needs. Sara had never helped run a soup kitchen before; she jumped on Facebook shortly after the storm to tell friends to drop food in the vestibule of her building, figuring she'd bring it by a local shelter. She connected with Andy, who had started to cook, and began to help him figure out where all the food could go. To do this, Sara, Andy, and others went down to the coastal neighborhoods of Brooklyn to scout out locations and contacts. Sara has spent most days since then calling her contacts every few hours to see who could use more food. She posts the needs on her Facebook page ("We need drivers at 10am"), which, along with the official Two Boots page, has become a makeshift news outlet for the relief effort. The church, led by Pastor Daniel Meeter, volunteered to act as a fiscal pass-through for donations to the effort, which Sara and Andy both began collecting through links on their pages.

    Ten minutes after I arrived, I found myself riding shotgun in a Toyota RAV 4. The car's driver was a recipe writer named Heather Johnston, who had connected to the effort through the church. We were transporting 300 cups of soup—and 200 or so turkey sandwiches on walnut bread. "I cook, and I've been cooking here for the last few days," Heather told me. "But they really needed drivers so I thought, 'well, I have a car and I have gas right now.'" After winding our way through city streets for half an hour, we reached Howard Beach, where children in backpacks were picking their way home from school across piles of debris. A large sign read "FEMA Please Help Us." We crossed the bay to the Rockaways and banked left into a more impoverished area.

    We made our first drop-off at a cafeteria inside a housing project where a line of people stretched out the door. A policeman said they'd begun gathering with carts at 5am. "There's really nothing around that's open," he said. Our contact, Sam, asked for 150 cups of the soup, which we brought into a kitchen were volunteers were handing out peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches. We then called Sara, who gave us directions for our second stop.