Technology Adoption and Use in the Aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, Position paper for the HCI for Emergencies Workshop

Disasters are highly dynamic situations, marked by high levels of information need and low levels of information availability. Advances in communication technologies have provided more ways to seek information and to communicate – a redundancy that can be advantageous for response to sudden disaster situations and subsequent recovery. Faced with a lack of information, people often take action and creatively adapt technologies not only to find information but also to disseminate it to others in the same circumstances. As the process shifts from immediate disaster response to recovery, newly adopted or creatively adapted technologies are used to maintain a community connection and to aid in recovery processes. In this paper we present results from a 2-year study of New Orleans musicians in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. We found that information technologies were used to both reconstruct a sense of belonging to a community and to restructure interpersonal communication. Mobile technologies, such as cell phones and blackberries, along with social network websites and discussion bulletin boards became important sites for reconnection both with personal contacts and with whole communities. Author Keywords CMC, communication, social relationships, disasters, mobilit