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Author Kiran Zahra; Muhammad Imran; Frank O Ostermann
Title Understanding eyewitness reports on Twitter during disasters Type Conference Article
Year 2018 Publication ISCRAM 2018 Conference Proceedings – 15th International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management Abbreviated Journal Iscram 2018
Volume Issue Pages 687-695
Keywords social media, disaster response, eyewitness accounts
Abstract Social media platforms such as Twitter provide convenient ways to share and consume important information during disasters and emergencies. Information from bystanders and eyewitnesses can be useful for law enforcement agencies and humanitarian organizations to get firsthand and credible information about an ongoing situation to gain situational awareness among other uses. However, identification of eyewitness reports on Twitter is challenging for many reasons. This work investigates the sources of tweets and classifies them into three types (i) direct eyewitnesses, (ii) indirect eyewitness, and (iii) vulnerable accounts. Moreover, we investigate various characteristics associated with each kind of eyewitness account. We observe that words related to perceptual senses (feeling, seeing, hearing) tend to be present in direct eyewitness messages, whereas emotions, thoughts, and prayers are more common in indirect witnesses. We believe these characteristics can help make more efficient computational methods and systems in the future for automatic identification of eyewitness accounts.
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Corporate Author Thesis
Publisher Rochester Institute of Technology Place of Publication Rochester, NY (USA) Editor Kees Boersma; Brian Tomaszeski
Language English Summary Language English Original Title
Series Editor Series Title Abbreviated Series Title
Series Volume Series Issue Edition
ISSN 2411-3387 ISBN 978-0-692-12760-5 Medium (up)
Track Social Media Studies CO - Expedition Conference
Notes Approved no
Call Number Serial 2142
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