This paper sets out the methodology and the temporary results of an ongoing research project on the use of social media in crisis management (in France). It discusses the benefits and limits to use an emergency crisis exercise for research purposes. It describes an observation protocol and a coding method that could be replicate to survey further exercises. Some possible processing of the observation data is exposed, and further visualizations of the data are still in progress. One of the first analytical results tackles the way Var’s firefighters consider social media information. For now, social media seem to be regarded as questionable because they do not easily fit into the organizational routine. At the same time, the awareness of the need to use social media is quite strong. On the analytical level, the paper tries to use sociological concepts to describe and explain some results.