Jess Kropczynski, Rob Grace, Julien Coche, Shane Halse, Eric Obeysekare, Aurélie Montarnal, et al. (2018). Identifying Actionable Information on Social Media for Emergency Dispatch. In Kristin Stock, & Deborah Bunker (Eds.), Proceedings of ISCRAM Asia Pacific 2018: Innovating for Resilience – 1st International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management Asia Pacific. (pp. 428–438). Albany, Auckland, New Zealand: Massey Univeristy.
Abstract: Crisis informatics researchers have taken great interest in methods to identify information relevant to crisis events posted by digital bystanders on social media. This work codifies the information needs of emergency dispatchers and first responders as a method to identify actionable information on social media. Through a design workshop with public safety professionals at a Public-Safety Answering Point (PSAP) in the United States, we develop a set of information requirements that must be satisfied to dispatch first responders and meet their immediate situational awareness needs. We then present a manual coding scheme to identify information satisfying these requirements in social media posts and apply this scheme to fictitious tweets professionals propose as actionable information to better assess ways that this information may be communicated. Finally, we propose automated methods from previous literature in the field that can be used to implement these methods in the future.
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Jess Kropczynski, Rob Grace, Shane Halse, Doina Caragea, Cornelia Caragea, & Andrea Tapia. (2019). Refining a Coding Scheme to Identify Actionable Information on Social Media. In Z. Franco, J. J. González, & J. H. Canós (Eds.), Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response And Management. Valencia, Spain: Iscram.
Abstract: This paper describes the use of a previously established qualitative coding scheme developed through a design workshop with public safety professionals, and applied the schema to social media data collecting during crises. The intention of applying this scheme to existing crisis datasets was to acquire training data for machine learning. Applying the coding scheme to social media data revealed that additional subcategories of the coding scheme are necessary to satisfy information requirements necessary to dispatch first responders to an incident. The coding scheme was refined and adapted into a set of instructions for qualitative coders on Amazon Mechanical Turk. The contribution of this work is a coding scheme that is more directly related to the information needs of public safety professionals. Implications of early results using the refined coding scheme are discussed in terms of proposed automated methods to identify actionable information for dispatch of first responders during emergency incidents.
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Nathan Elrod, Pranav Mahajan, Monica Katragadda, Shane Halse, & Jess Kropczynski. (2021). An Exploration of Methods Using Social Media to Examine Local Attitudes Towards Mask-Wearing During a Pandemic. In Anouck Adrot, Rob Grace, Kathleen Moore, & Christopher W. Zobel (Eds.), ISCRAM 2021 Conference Proceedings – 18th International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (pp. 345–358). Blacksburg, VA (USA): Virginia Tech.
Abstract: During the COVID-19 health crisis, local public offcials expend considerable energy encouraging citizens to comply with prevention measures in order to reduce the spread of infection. During the pandemic, mask-wearing has been accepted among health offcials as a simple preventative measure; however, some local areas have been more likely to comply than others. This paper explores methods to better understand local attitudes towards mask-wearing as a tool for public health offcials' situational awareness when preparing public messaging campaigns. This exploration compares three methods to explore local attitudes: sentiment analysis, n-grams, and hashtags. We also explore hashtag co-occurrence networks as a starting point to begin the filtering process. The results show that while sentiment analysis is quick and easy to employ, the results oer little insight into specific local attitudes towards mask-wearing, while examining hashtags and hashtag co-occurrence networks may be used a tool for a more robust understanding of local areas when attempting to gain situational awareness.
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Rob Grace, Jess Kropczynski, Scott Pezanowski, Shane Halse, Prasanna Umar, & Andrea Tapia. (2017). Social Triangulation: A new method to identify local citizens using social media and their local information curation behaviors. In eds Aurélie Montarnal Matthieu Lauras Chihab Hanachi F. B. Tina Comes (Ed.), Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response And Management (pp. 902–915). Albi, France: Iscram.
Abstract: Local citizens can use social media such as Twitter to share and receive critical information before, during, and after emergencies. However, standard methods of identifying local citizens on Twitter discover only a small proportion of local users in a geographic area. To better identify local citizens and their social media sources for local information, we explore the information infrastructure of a local community that is constituted prior to emergencies through the everyday social network curation of local citizens. We hypothesize that investigating social network ties among local organizations and their followers may be key to identifying local citizens and understanding their local information seeking behaviors. We describe Social Triangulation as a method to identify local citizens vis-à-vis the local organizations they follow on Twitter, and evaluate our hypothesis by analyzing users' profile location information. Lastly, we discuss how Social Triangulation might support community preparedness by informing emergency communications planning.
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Rob Grace, Shane Halse, Jess Kropczynski, Andrea Tapia, & Fred Fonseca. (2019). Integrating Social Media in Emergency Dispatch via Distributed Sensemaking. In Z. Franco, J. J. González, & J. H. Canós (Eds.), Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response And Management. Valencia, Spain: Iscram.
Abstract: Emergency dispatchers typically answer 911 calls and relay information to first responders; however, new workflows arise when social media analysts are included in emergency dispatch work. In this study we examine emergency dispatch workflows as distributed sensemaking processes performed among 911 call takers, dispatchers, and social media analysts during simulated emergency dispatch operations. In active shooter and water rescue scenarios, emergency dispatch teams including call takers, dispatchers, and social media analysts make sense of unfolding events by analyzing, aggregating, and synthesizing information provided by 911 callers and social media users during each scenario. Findings from the simulations inform design requirements for social media analysis tools that can help analysts detect, seek, and analyze information posted on social media during a crisis, and protocols for coordinating analysts? sensemaking activities with those of 911 call takers and dispatchers in reconfigured emergency dispatch workflows.
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Shane Halse, Jess Kropczynski, & Andrea Tapia. (2018). Using Metrics of Stability to Identify Points of Failure and Support in Online Information Distribution during a Disaster. In Kees Boersma, & Brian Tomaszeski (Eds.), ISCRAM 2018 Conference Proceedings – 15th International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (p. 1121). Rochester, NY (USA): Rochester Institute of Technology.
Abstract: We utilize the 2012 Hurricane Sandy dataset to investigate methods to measure network stability during a crisis. While previous research on information distribution has focused on individuals that are most connected, or most willing to share information, we examined this dataset for indicators of network stability. The value of this measure is to identify the points of failure within the network. The findings in this paper provide support for the use of social network analysis within the realm of crisis response to identify the points of failure within the network.
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Shane Halse, Jomara Binda, & Samantha Weirman. (2018). It's what's outside that counts: Finding credibility metrics through non-message related Twitter features. In Kees Boersma, & Brian Tomaszeski (Eds.), ISCRAM 2018 Conference Proceedings – 15th International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (pp. 516–528). Rochester, NY (USA): Rochester Institute of Technology.
Abstract: Social media data, such as Twitter, enables crisis response personnel and civilians to share information during a crisis situation. However, a lack of information gatekeeping processes also translates into concerns about both content and source credibility. This research aims to identify Twitter metrics which could assist with the latter. A 2 (average number of hashtags used) x 2 (ratio of tweets/retweets posted) x 2 (ratio of follower/followee) between-subjects experiment was conducted to evaluate the level of influence of Twitter broker metrics on behavioral intention and the perception of source credibility. The findings indicate that follower/followee ratio in conjunction with hashtag usage approached a significant effect on perceived source credibility. In addition, both Twitter awareness metrics and dispositional trust played an important role in determining behavioral intentions and perceived source credibility. Implications and limitations are also discussed.
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Venkata Kishore Neppalli, Murilo Cerqueira Medeiros, Cornelia Caragea, Doina Caragea, Andrea Tapia, & Shane Halse. (2016). Retweetability Analysis and Prediction during Hurricane Sandy. In A. Tapia, P. Antunes, V.A. Bañuls, K. Moore, & J. Porto (Eds.), ISCRAM 2016 Conference Proceedings ? 13th International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management. Rio de Janeiro, Brasil: Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.
Abstract: Twitter is a very important source for obtaining information, especially during events such as natural disasters. Users can spread information in Twitter either by crafting new posts, which are called ?tweets,? or by using retweet mechanism to re-post the previously created tweets. During natural disasters, identifying how likely a tweet is to be highly retweeted is very important since it can help promote the spread of good information in a network such as Twitter, as well as it can help stop the spread of misinformation, when corroborated with approaches that identify trustworthy information or misinformation, respectively. In this paper, we present an analysis on retweeted tweets to determine several aspects affecting retweetability. We then extract features from tweets? content and user account information and perform experiments to develop models that automatically predict the retweetability of a tweet in the context of the Hurricane Sandy.
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