We’ve seen how Facebook and Twitter users are helping people get back – or to – their destinations without flights in and out of the UK.

I first saw news of a rescue fleet of speed boats travelling to Calais, for example, via both these networks (follow @thehistoryguy for more details).

Meanwhile our mainstream media is full of flight news, but could they be doing more to help the community collaborative rescue effort?

I enjoyed this short post by Pirkka Aunola, who works for the Finnish Broadcasting Company as online strategist. Aunola suggests that the media sits outside the crisis relief effort:

In a moment of crisis people still come in masses to big media companies websites, and that’s right where media companies should take responsibility not just to inform, but to help people cope in current situations. Gather information, direct people to right sites and maybe put up a carpool site of your own.

Full post at this link…

Update: I should note that the blog post does praise one mainstream media site, however: Norway’s VG, for its Hitchhiker Central page. Kristine Lowe has also blogged about how she used it to great effect over the weekend.