COMMUTERS across Oxfordshire have hailed the impact of social media in keeping them moving through the flooding disruption.

The Oxford Mail’s live blog logged hundreds of thousands of hits and has been thanked for providing a wide array of information.

Oxfordshire County Council and the Oxford Bus Company were also praised for answering individual inquiries through Facebook and Twitter and providing updates.

Oxford Bus Company operations director Phil Southall said: “We used social media to keep our passengers as fully informed as we could with updates every few minutes when required.”

He said the number of users attempting to access the company’s Facebook page rose by 874 per cent week on week during January and the website pages had 59,000 page views.

Mary Ellis, a childcare worker from Pegasus Road in Blackbird Leys, said: “I was constantly checking my phone for news as I was panicking about my bus being cancelled.

“You never had this when the floods came in 2005 and although it’s a miserable time it has helped.”

And Graham Huth, 46, from Kennington, said: “I needed to get to the JR fairly urgently in January so was constantly refreshing the Oxford Mail website and checking the bus company’s Twitter page. You wonder how we got along without it before.”