Social media mapping innovations for crisis prevention,response, and evaluation

Social media has had a noticeable influence on the practice of crisis communication. Crisis managers are becoming increasingly attracted to social media because of the ability to expand the communication options available to organizations and their publics during a crisis. Previous researchers have identified a variety of benefits and challenges presented by the use of social media for crisis communication. Two new social media mapping applications, SituMap and PhotoSorter, were recently developed to cultivate participation, collaboration, and conversation specifically for crisis communication. The purpose of the present investigation is to explore the features of these applications and discuss the potential benefits of these features for crisis managers in each stage of the crisis lifecycle.     

The dynamic role of social media during Hurricane #Sandy: An introduction of the STREMII model to weather the storm of the crisis lifecycle

Social media has introduced a key ingredient, and a potentially unfamiliar variable, into the practice of crisis communication. In this paper, the authors critically assess the social media milestones related to Hurricane Sandy according to situational crisis communication theory (SCCT) (Coombs, 2007). Further, we discuss the crisis lifecycle of Hurricane Sandy with regard to the potential implementation of the STREMII model of social media crisis management, a proposed model originated through this research application. This original model develops from lessons and best practices discovered in historical and contemporary cases of social media crises and crisis management. The researchers acknowledge potential limitations and describe steps for further development of the model through research, all the while recognizing the powerful and paradoxical role of social media in the crisis management process. In reflection of Hurricane Sandy, further qualitative and quantitative examinations of crisis events are encouraged to evaluate the STREMII model continually in the dynamic social media climate and across the vast facets of crisis communication.     

Crisis communication,learning and responding: Best practices in social media

As noted by Seeger (2006) the notion of best practices is often use to improve professional practice; to create research and functional recommendations to use in a specific situation. This essay describes best practices in crisis communication specifically through the use of social media. It provides suggestions and approaches for improving the effectiveness of crisis communication and learning with and between organizations, governments and citizens. Seven best practices for effective crisis communication using social media are outlined.     

Communication in the face of a school crisis: Examining the volume and content of social media mentions during active shooter incidents

Little is known about the effectiveness of social media in delivering information during active shooter incidents at the P-12 level. This study analyzed social media activity that occurred during and after two active shooter events on September 30, 2014. Over 5000 social media posts from Facebook, Twitter, blogs, and mainstream news outlets were analyzed. Social media analysis outlined the scope of online communication during the first week following the incidents, revealed social media frequency, increases in conversation, misinformation, and differences between parent and student posts. Results revealed spikes in social media chatter following the release of the identities of shooters and victims. Consistent with media dependency theory and the high levels of uncertainty characteristic of the incident, users’ social media posts contained more information than affect displays during the active shooter event. Implications for scholars and P-12 administrators are discussed.     

Social media and crisis research: Data collection and directions

Social media platforms may be advantageous to those conducting research on communicative responses to crises and disasters, as they allow for the examination of public responses as cataclysmic events unfold. These technologies are also useful for reaching those affected by disasters in a manner not feasible with traditional methods of empirical inquiry. The current essay discusses recent advances in the use of social media for recruiting participants, collecting data, and evaluating audience needs and expectations. This literature is discussed in the context of its implications for scholars, social media managers, and emergency practitioners.     

Opening organizational learning in crisis management: On the affordances of social media

Research on the role of social media in crisis management has led to a deeper understanding of their affordances. This research, however, is fragmented, with a primary focus on crisis response. We lack a clear conceptualization of the affordances that social media offer by learning from them to prepare strategically for crises. Based on a systematic review of 128 papers, we inductively build a framework of social media affordances for organizational learning in crisis management. We discuss their role and interplay in strategic crisis management, focusing on organizational crisis learning, and outline avenues for future research based on this foundation.     

Exploring extreme events on social media: A comparison of user reposting/retweeting behaviors on Twitter and Weibo

Although recent research suggests that Twitter and other forms of micro-blogging are becoming increasingly relied upon by both the public and response agencies dealing with crises and disasters, little is known about how these dynamics may play out in a non-Western context. The current study examines the use of the Chinese Weibo service during a 2013 smog emergency, and compares user generated content to that found in earlier data concerning a weather event in North America. The results indicate that by way of comparison, the Weibo sample contained proportionately similar degrees of informative and affective content, but that users were less likely to use humor and showed no increase in affective outpouring as the crisis developed. Results are discussed in terms of implications for those designing social media campaigns for informing and motivating those affected by large-scale weather-related crises.     

A network analysis of official Twitter accounts during the West Virginia water crisis

Online networks using Web 2.0 technologies have proven useful for communication among all parties involved in managing crises. These networks rapidly disseminate information allowing for coordination among organizations responding to the needs of those whose safety and wellbeing are threatened by the crisis and its aftermath. This study provides a network analysis of official Twitter accounts activated during the Charleston, West Virginia, water contamination crisis in 2014. The city’s water supply was rendered unfit for drinking or bathing after 7500 gallons of a toxic chemical leaked into the Elk River. The network created by the 41 Twitter accounts associated with the West Virginia water contamination lacked density, contained several isolates, exchanged information quickly (geodesic distance diameter), and contained both national and local accounts. The lack of density indicates limited exchange of information, particularly between national and federal accounts. The rapid dissemination of the information that was shared and the fact that some accounts did bridge the local and national gap, however, show the positive potential for such networks in responding to crises.     

Understanding compulsive social media use: The premise of complementing self-conceptions mismatch with technology

Some anecdotal accounts and research reports have suggested that obsessive social media involvement could turn into a compulsive behavior among university students. Unfortunately, the research that sheds light on the possible conditional nature of that relationship is scarce at best. Therefore, this study tries to address this issue by developing a contingency-based model and tests it using data gathered from a sample of university students. The model postulates that compulsive social media use arises due to self-awareness factors, and together they in turn predict problematic learning outcomes. It also postulates that these relationships are moderated by the influence of technological factors. The results indicate that self-esteem has a significant negative influence on compulsive social media use and that interaction anxiousness has a significant positive influence on the same. The results also reveal that only compulsive social media use has a significant direct influence on problematic learning outcomes; and that social media complementarity plays a moderating role in the model. We discuss the implications of these findings for research and practice.     

‘Breaking’ news: uncovering sense-breaking patterns in social media crisis communication during the 2017 Manchester bombing

ABSTRACT

Individuals, (media-) organisations, and crisis responders who are involved in ad hoc crisis communication steadily deploy social media to contribute to collective sense-making as an endeavour to create meaning in highly uncertain situations. Exerting sense-giving in order to shape others’ conceptions is causally preceded by an initial breakup of existing understanding. This study aims to explore patterns of sense-breaking in social media crisis communication and its impact on collective sense-making and sense-giving. To this end, we conducted a case study of the Manchester bombing in 2017, including a social network analysis of 708,147 Twitter postings and a content analysis of 2006 original tweets. We found individual role types to be initiators of sense-breaking in early crisis stages when uncertainty is at its height. Exerting successive sense-giving becomes more challenging if the collective sense-making has progressed along with the sequence of events. This understanding aims to encourage emergency management organisations to move their sense-giving actions closer to the point in time when sense-breaking occurs.     

Understanding the impact of social media usage among organizations

This study investigates the antecedents and impact of social media usage in organizations. This study uses the technology, organization, and environment framework and includes certain antecedent factors that are specific to social media usage in organizations. The items to measure different purposes of social media usage in organizations were developed, which contribute to the enhancement of social media usage measurement. This study develops and tests an integrated model that contributes to the scholarly research on social media and information systems. The study also helps organizations to understand the benefits of social media usage and provides a justification for investments in social media by organizations.     

Optimizing social media message dissemination problem for emergency communication

Social media is increasingly being used as a communication bridge between government, emergency responders and managers, and the general public in extreme events. Passing information through social media channels enables individuals to send and receive content in real-time and without limitation of location and geography. While the use of social media in extreme event situations has become prevalent, there is often little strategy involved in message dissemination and too little understanding of the effects that underlying online social networks have on message distribution. In this study, we introduce a formal model for social media message dissemination in social networks through time. Our proposed model includes emphasis on single and multiple message scenarios and examines key communication characteristics in the development of more intentional and targeted social messaging strategies. We present a detailed experimental design on randomly generated networks and real-world sub-networks of the Twitter social graph and discuss our findings. We also include a Tabu Search procedure for solving single-message problem and discuss its potential value for large-scale problems in real-world applications.     

A motives framework of social media website use: A survey of young Americans

Social media is increasingly important in daily life and is an especially important social interaction mechanism for young people. Although research has been conducted evaluating user types based on motives for using social media, no such framework has been extended to social media websites. We extend previous research by evaluating the underlying structure of social media website usage motivations using a 13 item survey and evaluations from 19 different social media websites administered to 1686 young Americans. Using a multidimensional scaling approach, we uncover 2 major motive dimensions underlying social media website use: fun-related and content-specific. Based on the derived dimensions, we generate a graphical “quadrant” system for classifying social media websites and depict all 19 social media sites based on their quadrant. We propose that our quadrant system can be used by other researchers to further refine understanding of social media website usage motives.     

Information sharing on social media sites

This study reports on an exploratory survey conducted to investigate the use of social media technologies for sharing information. This paper explores the issue of credibility of the information shared in the context of computer-mediated communication. Four categories of information were explored: sensitive, sensational, political and casual information, across five popular social media technologies: social networking sites, micro-blogging sites, wikis, online forums, and online blogs. One hundred and fourteen active users of social media technologies participated in the study. The exploratory analysis conducted in this study revealed that information producers use different cues to indicate credibility of the information they share on different social media sites. Organizations can leverage findings from this study to improve targeted engagement with their customers. The operationalization of how information credibility is codified by information producers contributes to knowledge in social media research.     

Repertoires of collaboration: incorporation of social media help requests into the common operating picture

ABSTRACT

Disasters present us with dynamic and emergent multi-stakeholder scenarios. Complex decision-making is supported by Emergency Management Organisation (EMO) ‘command and control’ disaster response systems that if pushed to failure, present problems in the development and monitoring of situational awareness. Nowhere is this more evident than when the general public use social media platforms to report crisis incidents when the official emergency management hotline (e.g. Triple Zero (000) in Australia) is overwhelmed or not available. This causes a number of issues for EMO as it is difficult to verify and determine the accuracy and veracity of social media posts and how to best incorporate the information within them into situational awareness for the assessment of and response to, an emergency incident. This paper analyses interview data from five Australian EMO that outlines and discusses these issues in detail. As a result of this analysis, we suggest that developing a supplementary ‘repertoires of collaboration’ approach to incorporating social media posts into the development of situational awareness during a disaster event, would help improve disaster response outcomes. We then recommend a way forward through the application of the Negotiated Arrangements for the Common Operating Picture (COP) in Extreme Events framework.     

Enterprise reputation threats on social media: A case of data breach framing

Reputation threats on social media in the aftermath of a data breach is a critical concern to enterprises. We argue that any effort to minimize reputation threats will require an orderly assessment of how reputation threat manifests on social media. Drawing on crisis communication and social media literature, we analyze Twitter postings related to the 2014 Home Depot data breach. We identify a taxonomy of data breach frames and sub-frames and the related reputation threats as manifested by data breach responsibility-attributions and negative emotional responses. Results indicate that reputation threats vary for intentional, accidental, and victim data breach frames. Based on crisis stage theory, we also analyze the dynamics of evolving reputation threats as data breach situation unfolds on social media. Results suggest that the data breach frames and associated reputation threats vary across the crisis stages. Further, intentional and accidental frames increase subsequent responsibility-attributions and negative emotions. Tweets with responsibility-attributions further increase the subsequent generation of reputation-threatening tweets. Negative emotions, particularly anger and disgust, also increase subsequent reputation threats. Our study has implications for enterprise reputation management and word-of-mouth literature. The results yield valuable insights that can guide enterprise strategy for social media reputation management and post data breach intervention.     

A theoretical acceptance model for computer-based communication media: Nine field studies

This research study develops and tests a theoretical acceptance model to explain users’ acceptance of computer-based communication media. The model, which is referred to as TAM_CCM, originated from the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and conforms to the context of Computer-based Communication Media (CCM). It explains perceived usefulness and actual system use in terms of system characteristics (information process support and facilitating conditions), social influence (subjective norm and rules on media use), and user characteristics (experience and computer self efficacy). The model was tested using empirical data collected at nine organizations (N = 425), of which four had media rules and five had no similar rules. The TAM_CCM model was strongly supported accounting for 74% of the variance in usefulness perceptions and up to 74% of the variance in behavior intention to use. System characteristics (information process support), social influence (subjective norm and rules on media use), and user experience significantly influenced user acceptance of computer-based communication media. These advanced theory findings on computer-based communication media adoption and the research approach contribute to future research aimed at incorporating the TAM into specific contexts.     

Improving geolocation of social media posts

Pervasive social systems often take advantage of geographical information to provide real-time information to users based on their location. However, due to privacy concerns, many social media users do not share their exact geographical coordinates. In this paper, we describe our technique that predicts locations of posts that are not associated with explicit coordinates, a process called geolocation. Existing research has utilized the content of a post as well as the post author’s social media relationships with other users to estimate location. Our research provides a novel approach to geolocation by combining multiple techniques, as well as adding a new technique: estimating location by clustering similar social media posts that are centered in a geographical area.     

Sticks,stones and Facebook accounts: What violence outreach workers know about social media and urban-based gang violence in Chicago

Recent research has identified a relatively new trend among youth (12–24) living in violent urban neighborhoods. These youth use social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to brag about violence, make threats, recruit gang members and to plan criminal activity known as Internet banging. Studies have typically examined youth communication by mining data on social media and surveying or interviewing youth about their social media behaviors. However, there is little to no empirical research that examines how adults who work directly with youth in violent, urban neighborhoods shape, conceptualize and intervene in urban-based youth violence facilitated by social media. Utilizing qualitative interviews with violence outreach workers, we asked outreach workers to describe how youth use social media and the extent to which they use social media to intervene in crisis that emerge in violent Chicago neighborhoods. Participants describe youth behavior that included taunting rival gangs, posturing and boasting about violent events. We also found evidence that social media enhanced crisis intervention work in violent neighborhoods when coupled with close, trusting relationships with youth.