Social Roles and Consequences in Using Social Media in Disasters: a Structurational Perspective

Disaster management officials, as well as the general public, are increasingly using social media to communicate. Such usage has resulted in new and emergent social consequences for disaster management and has reformed the roles of its relevant stakeholders. However, the existing literature on social media use in disasters is still preliminary and incomplete, and does not capture the change in social roles that stakeholders have taken and the consequences of the actions that people take in using social media. In this paper, by using Structuration theory as a meta-theory and by analysing the posts and comments in three officials’ Facebook fan pages in three different disasters, we theorize the social structures (i.e., social roles and social consequences) and the human actions taken by both the public and the disaster management officials during disasters. Furthermore, we explain how the social structures emerge out of the human actions involved, and how the social structures further shape those actions. Our research provides theoretical and practical insights into how the usage of social media in disasters benefits disaster management and reinforces the roles of the different stakeholders.