This paper aims at presenting a survey of the ongoing research on use of various social media platforms to manage various phases of a crisis situation. A thorough research has been carried out on the existing works and their limitations and scope of future have been highlighted to understand the progress made so far. The aim is to identify the areas that still require attention and to help build a system which aims at higher accuracy in information filtering and is robust to meet the real-time information demands to counter the crisis using social media platforms. The research has been categorized into two parts: Analysis of situational awareness information propagated during a crisis situation and second, information sharing among various communities and understanding community’s role during disasters.