The authors also note the most popular social media sites are free to use, making it cost effective for universities to build pages and monitor activity across multiple social channels.

"Interacting with students on social media imposes a cost in terms of devoting critical manpower, but if universities develop strategies for managing various social platforms for different types of incidents, they can better prepare students during emergencies," says co-author Raj Sharman, PhD, associate professor of management science and systems in the School of Management. "For example, Twitter is appropriate for updating real-time information, while Facebook is effective for wide notification because of its massive user base, especially among students."

The researchers surveyed high-level campus safety managers from 183 universities that do not yet have social networking accounts in place for emergency situations such as criminal incidents, natural disasters or health-related crises. They found that campuses with higher incident rates used a greater number of traditional notification channels—including television, radio, alarms, and email and text message alerts—and were more likely to consider adopting social networking services for emergency-notification purposes.

Social media does have limitations, however, says Phys.org. The researchers caution that other users may post misleading information, or students may not subscribe to certain channels. As such, they recommend universities continue to deploy traditional methods as their primary notification system and use social media to provide supplemental information.

"Using a wide range of notification technologies can help keep students safer during a crisis," says Han. "Social media is especially useful to confirm information students received through other channels, provide additional updates and respond to student feedback."

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2015-02-social-media-students-campus-emergencies.html#jCp