Louis Ngamassi, Thiagarajan Ramakrishnan, & Shahedur Rahman. (2016). Examining the Role of Social Media in Disaster Management from an Attribution Theory Perspective. 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: This paper is related to the use of social media for disaster management by humanitarian organizations. The past decade has seen a significant increase in the use of social media to manage humanitarian disasters. It seems, however, that it has still not been used to its full potential. In this paper, we examine the use of social media in disaster management through the lens of Attribution Theory. Attribution Theory posits that people look for the causes of events, especially unexpected and negative events. The two major characteristics of disasters are that they are unexpected and have negative outcomes/impacts. Thus, Attribution Theory may be a good fit for explaining social media adoption patterns by emergency managers. We propose a model, based on Attribution Theory, which is designed to understand the use of social media during the mitigation and preparedness phases of disaster management. We also discuss the theoretical contributions and some practical implications. This study is still in its nascent stage and is research in progress.
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Louis Ngamassi, Thiagarajan Ramakrishnan, & Shahedur Rahman. (2020). Investigating the Use of Social Media by Underserved Communities for Disaster Management. In Amanda Hughes, Fiona McNeill, & Christopher W. Zobel (Eds.), ISCRAM 2020 Conference Proceedings – 17th International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (pp. 490–496). Blacksburg, VA (USA): Virginia Tech.
Abstract: Social media is emerging as a communication tool for successfully managing disasters. However, studies have shown that not all individuals are equally predisposed towards effectively using social media for disaster management. There still exists a big digital divide when it comes to using social media for disaster management. Drawing on situational theory of problem solving, we develop a conceptual model that examines the motivating factors for the underserved communities to use social media for disaster management. We further develop and cross-validate a questionnaire instrument to acilitate empirical research. We thus offer an empirical context for motivating individuals from underserved communities to use social media effectively during disasters.
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Lucia Castro Herrera. (2021). Configuring Social Media Listening Practices in Crisis Management. 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. 640–654). Blacksburg, VA (USA): Virginia Tech.
Abstract: Social media listening practices are increasingly adopted in crisis management and have become an object of interest for researchers and practitioners alike. This article analyzes how these enactments have been studied in the academic literature. Through a systematic review of the available body of knowledge, features from studies involving depictions of practice were extracted, analyzed, and turned into a narrative using an inductive approach. Strategies of improvisation, overreliance on personal and professional networks, manual work, spontaneous coordination, and re-assigning tasks represent the main findings in the multidisciplinary literature. This article is a consolidated overview of experiences from social media listening in practice beyond listing the benefits of social media as a source of information. Moreover, the paper sets the basis for future studies on the range of possible configurations and institutionalization of disruptive crisis management practices.
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Lucia Castro Herrera, & Terje Gjøsæter. (2022). Community Segmentation and Inclusive Social Media Listening. In Rob Grace, & Hossein Baharmand (Eds.), ISCRAM 2022 Conference Proceedings – 19th International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (pp. 1012–1023). Tarbes, France.
Abstract: Social media analytics provide a generalized picture of situational awareness from the conversations happening among communities present in social media channels that are that are, or risk being affected by crises. The generalized nature of results from these analytics leaves underrepresented communities in the background. When considering social media analytics, concerns, sentiment, and needs are perceived as homogenous. However, offline, the community is diverse, often segmented by age group, occupation, or language, to name a few. Through our analysis of interviews from professionals using social media as a source of information in public service organizations, we argue that practitioners might not be perceiving this segmentation from the social media conversation. In addition, practitioners who are aware of this limitation, agree that there is room for improvement and resort to alternative mechanisms to understand, reach, and provide services to these communities in need. Thus, we analyze current perceptions and activities around segmentation and provide suggestions that could inform the design of social media analytics tools that support inclusive public services for all, including persons with disabilities and from other disadvantaged groups.
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Ma Ma, H. Zhang, & Yi Liu. (2014). Development of a joint official microblog platform to improve interactive communication with the public under a centralized system. In and P.C. Shih. L. Plotnick M. S. P. S.R. Hiltz (Ed.), ISCRAM 2014 Conference Proceedings – 11th International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (pp. 782–786). University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University.
Abstract: Social media bring both challenges and opportunities to crisis management. This paper summarizes the difficulties in crisis communication under a centralized jurisdiction system by looking into online collective behaviors in mainland China. The paper then introduces the development of an official microblog and proposes a joint official microblog platform to improve interactive communication in a centralized system. The functional design of this platform is introduced in detail and the future improvement of the platform is discussed.
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Mahshid Marbouti, Craig Anslow, & Frank Maurer. (2018). Evaluation results for a Social Media Analyst Responding Tool. In Kees Boersma, & Brian Tomaszeski (Eds.), ISCRAM 2018 Conference Proceedings – 15th International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (pp. 480–492). Rochester, NY (USA): Rochester Institute of Technology.
Abstract: We take a human-centered design approach to develop a fully functional prototype, SMART (“Social Media Analyst Responding Tool”), informed by emergency practitioners. The prototype incorporates machine learning techniques to identify relevant information during emergencies. In this paper, we report the result of a user study to gather qualitative feedback on SMART. The evaluation results offer recommendations into the design of Social Media analysis tools for emergencies. The evaluation findings show the interest of emergency practitioners into designing such solutions; it reflects their need to not only identify relevant information but also to further perceive the outcome of their actions in social media. We found out there is a notable emphasis on the sentiment from these practitioners and social media analysis tools need to do a better job of handling negative sentiment within the emergency concept.
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Mahshid Marbouti, Irene Mayor, Dianna Yim, & Frank Maurer. (2017). Social Media Analyst Responding Tool: A Visual Analytics Prototype to Identify Relevant Tweets in Emergency Events. 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. 572–582). Albi, France: Iscram.
Abstract: Public and humanitarian organizations monitor social media to extract useful information during emergencies. In this paper, we propose a new method for identifying situation awareness (SA) tweets for emergencies. We take a human centered design approach to developing a visual analytics prototype, SMA-RT (“Social Media Analyst Responding Tool”), informed by social media analysts and emergency practitioners. Our design offers insights into the main requirements of social media monitoring tools used for emergency purposes. It also highlights the role that human and technology can play together in such solutions. We embed a machine learning classifier to identify SA tweets in a visual interactive tool. Our classifier aggregates textual, social, location, and tone based features to increase precision and recall of SA tweets.
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Marc-André Kaufhold, & Christian Reuter. (2017). The Impact of Social Media for Emergency Services: A Case Study with the Fire Department Frankfurt. 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. 603–612). Albi, France: Iscram.
Abstract: The use of social media is not only part of everyday life but also of crises and emergencies. Many studies focus on the concrete use of social media during a specific emergency, but the prevalence of social media, data access and published research studies allows the examination in a broader and more integrated manner. This work-in-progress paper presents the results of a case study with the Fire Department Frankfurt, which is one of the biggest and most modern fire departments in Germany. The findings relate to social media technologies, organizational structure and roles, information validation, staff skills and resources, and the importance of volunteer communities. In the next step, the results will be integrated into the frame of a comparative case study with the overall aim of examining the impact of social media on how emergency services respond and react in an emergency.
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Marion Lara Tan, Sara Harrison, Julia S. Becker, Emma E.H. Doyle, & Raj Prasanna. (2020). Research Themes on Warnings in Information Systems Crisis Management Literature. In Amanda Hughes, Fiona McNeill, & Christopher W. Zobel (Eds.), ISCRAM 2020 Conference Proceedings – 17th International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (pp. 1085–1099). Blacksburg, VA (USA): Virginia Tech.
Abstract: Early Warning Systems (EWS) are crucial to mitigating and reducing disaster impacts. Furthermore, technology and information systems (IS) are key to the success of EWSs. This systematic literature review investigates the research topics and themes from the past six years of Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (ISCRAM) conference proceedings and seeks to identify the research developments and directions for EWSs to steer a discourse to advance the research in this field. Findings from a sample size of 60 papers show that there are technical, social, and topical considerations to using and advancing technology for EWSs. While technology has advanced EWSs to new levels, it is important to consider the influence of technology in the successful operation of EWSs. The results are based on the ISCRAM proceedings literature and may be broader or have different prioritization if a wider disciplinary body of literature was explored. This will be considered in the future.
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Marta Poblet Balcell, Stan Karanasios, & Vanessa Cooper. (2018). Look after Your Neighbours: Social Media and Vulnerable Groups during Extreme Weather Events. 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. 408–415). Albany, Auckland, New Zealand: Massey Univeristy.
Abstract: Emergency management organisations across the world routinely use social media to reach out populations for preparedness and response to extreme weather events. In this paper we present a preliminary analysis of social media strategies towards vulnerable populations in the State of Victoria (Australia). Using the notion of vulnerability in an emergency management context (e.g. older persons, socially/geographically isolated persons, people with disabilities, refugee/recent migrant communities) we explore whether and how organisations address vulnerable groups with targeted messages. Our initial findings suggest that organisations do not tend to interact directly with these groups. Rather, reliance on 'information brokers' (intermediary organisations and individuals with an expected duty of care) seems to be a preferred strategy.
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Maryam Shahbazi, Christian Ehnis, Majid Shahbazi, & Deborah Bunker. (2018). Tweeting from the Shadows: Social Media Convergence Behaviour During the 2017 Iran-Iraq Earthquake. 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. 416–427). Albany, Auckland, New Zealand: Massey Univeristy.
Abstract: Official policies, socioeconomic and demographic factors influence how individuals cope with, and respond to natural disasters. Understanding the impact of these factors in social media crisis communications studies is difficult. This paper focuses on convergence behaviour during social media crisis communication in an environment where the access to commercial social media platforms is highly restricted. This study is designed as a case which analyses 41,745 Tweets communicated during an earthquake event and for the two weeks after. This research aims to understand how different communities use social media services for communication during extreme events. The content of the Tweets shows users' attitudes toward government policies as well as the social difficulties of ethnic groups reflecting on the use of social media in crises communication. The results indicate a “political effect” on this online crisis communication. This behaviour was not expected and has been underreported in the current body of knowledge.
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Susannah McClendon, & Anthony C. Robinson. (2012). Leveraging geospatially-oriented social media communications in disaster response. In Z.Franco J. R. L. Rothkrantz (Ed.), ISCRAM 2012 Conference Proceedings – 9th International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management. Vancouver, BC: Simon Fraser University.
Abstract: Geospatially-oriented social media communications have emerged as a common information resource to support crisis management. Our research compares the capabilities of two popular systems used to collect and visualize such information – Project Epic's Tweak the Tweet (TtT) and Ushahidi. Our research uses geospatially-oriented social media gathered by both projects during recent disasters to compare and contrast the frequency, content, and location components of contributed information to both systems. We compare how data was gathered and filtered, how spatial information was extracted and mapped, and the mechanisms by which the resulting synthesized information was shared with response and recovery organizations. In addition, we categorize the degree to which each platform in each disaster led to actions by first responders and emergency managers. Based on the results of our comparisons we identify key design considerations for future social media mapping tools to support crisis management. © 2012 ISCRAM.
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David F. Merrick, & Tom Duffy. (2013). Utilizing community volunteered information to enhance disaster situational awareness. In J. Geldermann and T. Müller S. Fortier F. F. T. Comes (Ed.), ISCRAM 2013 Conference Proceedings – 10th International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (pp. 858–862). KIT; Baden-Baden: Karlsruher Institut fur Technologie.
Abstract: Social media allows the public to engage in the disaster response and recovery process in new and exciting ways. Many emergency management agencies in the United States are embracing social media as a new channel for alerts, warnings, and public outreach, but very few are mining the massive amounts of data available for use in disaster response. The research reflected in this paper strives to help emergency management practitioners harness the power of community volunteered information in a way that is still novel in most parts of the country. Field verification and research combined with survey results attempts to identify and solve many of the barriers to adoption that currently exist. By helping practitioners understand the virtues and limitations of this type of data and information, this research will encourage the use of community volunteered information in the emergency operations center.
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Torbjørg Meum, & Bjørn Erik Munkvold. (2013). Information infrastructure for crisis response coordination: A study of local emergency management in norwegian municipalities. In J. Geldermann and T. Müller S. Fortier F. F. T. Comes (Ed.), ISCRAM 2013 Conference Proceedings – 10th International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (pp. 84–88). KIT; Baden-Baden: Karlsruher Institut fur Technologie.
Abstract: While great progress is made in terms of development and implementation on new ICT services for supporting crisis response coordination, the challenge remains on how to integrate these services within the ICT infrastructure in daily use by emergency responders. We report from an ongoing analysis of existing crisis response infrastructure in Norwegian municipalities, presenting an overview of current practice and related challenges. We argue for an information infrastructure perspective on the integration challenges, focusing on how new services based on geographic information systems and social media should be based on existing systems in use.
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Torbjørg Træland Meum. (2014). An action design research approach to developing emergency management systems. In and P.C. Shih. L. Plotnick M. S. P. S.R. Hiltz (Ed.), ISCRAM 2014 Conference Proceedings – 11th International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (pp. 175–179). University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University.
Abstract: We propose Action Design Research (ADR) as an approach to promote user participation and mutual learning in the design and development of systems for emergency management based on social media technologies. We outline some design challenges related to the dynamic and evolving nature of social media, and emphasize an iterative design process that is strongly oriented toward collaboration and change involving both the researcher and the user community. In particular, we emphasize the transformative power of social media and argue for design approaches that take into account the new dimension of e-participation throughout the design process.
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Michael Aupetit, & Muhammad Imran. (2017). Interactive Monitoring of Critical Situational Information on Social Media. 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. 673–683). Albi, France: Iscram.
Abstract: According to many existing studies, the data available on social media platforms such as Twitter at the onset of a crisis situation could be useful for disaster response and management. However, making sense of this huge data coming at high-rate is still a challenging task for crisis managers. In this work, we present an interactive social media monitoring tool that uses a supervised classification engine and natural language processing techniques to provide a detailed view of an on-going situation. The tool allows users to apply various filtering options using interactive timelines, critical entities, and other logical operators to get quick access to situational information. The evaluation of the tool conducted with crisis managers shows its significance for situational awareness and other crisis management related tasks.
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Muhammad Imran, Firoj Alam, Umair Qazi, Steve Peterson, & Ferda Ofli. (2020). Rapid Damage Assessment Using Social Media Images by Combining Human and Machine Intelligence. In Amanda Hughes, Fiona McNeill, & Christopher W. Zobel (Eds.), ISCRAM 2020 Conference Proceedings – 17th International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (pp. 761–773). Blacksburg, VA (USA): Virginia Tech.
Abstract: Rapid damage assessment is one of the core tasks that response organizations perform at the onset of a disaster to understand the scale of damage to infrastructures such as roads, bridges, and buildings. This work analyzes the usefulness of social media imagery content to perform rapid damage assessment during a real-world disaster. An automatic image processing system, which was activated in collaboration with a volunteer response organization, processed ~280K images to understand the extent of damage caused by the disaster. The system achieved an accuracy of 76% computed based on the feedback received from the domain experts who analyzed ~29K system-processed images during the disaster. An extensive error analysis reveals several insights and challenges faced by the system, which are vital for the research community to advance this line of research.
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Muhammad Imran, Prasenjit Mitra, & Jaideep Srivastava. (2016). Cross-Language Domain Adaptation for Classifying Crisis-Related Short Messages. 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: Rapid crisis response requires real-time analysis of messages. After a disaster happens, volunteers attempt to classify tweets to determine needs, e.g., supplies, infrastructure damage, etc. Given labeled data, supervised machine learning can help classify these messages. Scarcity of labeled data causes poor performance in machine training. Can we reuse old tweets to train classifiers? How can we choose labeled tweets for training? Specifically, we study the usefulness of labeled data of past events. Do labeled tweets in different language help? We observe the performance of our classifiers trained using different combinations of training sets obtained from past disasters. We perform extensive experimentation on real crisis datasets and show that the past labels are useful when both source and target events are of the same type (e.g. both earthquakes). For similar languages (e.g., Italian and Spanish), cross-language domain adaptation was useful, however, when for different languages (e.g., Italian and English), the performance decreased.
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Nada Matta, Thomas Godard, Guillaume Delatour, Ludovic Blay, Franck Pouzet, & Audrey Senator. (2021). Analyzing Social Media in Crisis Management Using Expertise Feedback Modelling. 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. 17–27). Blacksburg, VA (USA): Virginia Tech.
Abstract: Currently social media are largely used in interactions, especially in crisis situations. We note a big volume of interactions around events. Observing these interactions give information even to alert the existence of an incident, event, or to understand the expansion of a problem. Crisis management actors observe social media to be aware about this type of information in order to consider them in their decisions. Specific organizations are founded in order to observe social media interactions and send their analysis to rescue and crisis management actors. In our work, an experience feedback of this type of organizations (VISOV, a crisis social media analysis association) is capitalized in order to emphasize from one side, main dimensions of this analysis and from another side, to simulate some aspects using TextMining that help to explore big volume of data.
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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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Neda Mohammadi, John E. Taylor, & Ryan Pollyea. (2017). Spatiotemporal Dynamics of Public Response to Human-Induced Seismic Perturbations. 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. 666–672). Albi, France: Iscram.
Abstract: There is general consensus that subsurface wastewater injections associated with unconventional oil and gas operations are responsible for the rapid increase of earthquake activity in the mid-U.S. Understanding the public response to these earthquakes is crucial for policy decisions that govern developing situational awareness and addressing perceived risks. However, we lack sufficient information on the reactive and recovery response behavior of the public tending to occur in the spatiotemporal vicinity of these events. Here, we review the spatiotemporal distribution of public response to the September 3, 2016, M5.8 earthquake in Pawnee, Oklahoma, USA, via a social media network (Twitter). Our findings highlight a statistically significant correlation between the spatial and temporal distribution of public response; and suggest the possible presence of a spatial distance decay, as well as a temporal far-field eect. Understanding the underlying structure of these correlations is fundamental to establishing deliberate policy decisions and targeted response actions.
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Nicolas LaLone, & Andrea Tapia. (2016). Three Lessons from Aurorasaurus about Public Facing Information System Design. 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: Response-focused information systems have the same data processing needs as citizen science initiatives. We present three lessons learned over a three-year period with a public facing information system devoted to early warning and event detection that will benefit designers of similar systems. First, we urge those creating information systems inside of crisis response to look for proxy events that will serve as an inexpensive means through which to pursue proof-of-concept or to explore pre-existing fully tested products. Second, we urge information system designers to engage the communities and gatekeepers of enthusiast communities surrounding the event that information system is meant to serve. It will not only help development, but also increase the chances of that system?s success. Finally, aiming for self-interest rather than event-interest will allow users to feel involved; ultimately aiding participation and retention.
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Nils Bourgon, Benamara Farah, Alda Mari, Véronique Moriceau, Gaetan Chevalier, Laurent Leygue, et al. (2022). Are Sudden Crises Making me Collapse? Measuring Transfer Learning Performances on Urgency Detection. In Rob Grace, & Hossein Baharmand (Eds.), ISCRAM 2022 Conference Proceedings – 19th International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (pp. 701–709). Tarbes, France.
Abstract: This paper aims at measuring transfer learning performances across different types of crises related to sudden or unexpected events (like earthquakes, terror attacks, explosions, technological incidents) that cannot be foreseen by emergency services and on the occurrence of which they have virtually no control. Although sudden crises are present in most existing crisis datasets, as far as we are aware, no one studied their impact on classifiers performances when evaluated in an out-of-type scenario in which models are tested on a particular type of crisis unseen during training. Our contribution is threefold: (1) A new dataset of about 3,800 French tweets related to four sudden events that occurred in France annotated for both relatedness (i.e., useful vs. not useful for emergency responders) and urgency (i.e., not useful vs. urgent vs. not urgent), (2) A set of monotask and multitask zero-shot learning experiments to transfer knowledge across events and types, and finally, (3) Experiments involving few-shot learning to measure the amount of sudden events instances needed during training to guarantee good performances. When compared to a cross-event setting, our preliminary results are encouraging and show that transfer from predictable ecological crisis to sudden events is feasible and constitutes a first step towards real-time crisis management systems from social media content.
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Susanna Nilsson, Joel Brynielsson, Magdalena Granasen, Charlotte Hellgren, Sinna Lindquist, Mikael Lundin, et al. (2012). Making use of new media for pan-European crisis communication. In Z.Franco J. R. L. Rothkrantz (Ed.), ISCRAM 2012 Conference Proceedings – 9th International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management. Vancouver, BC: Simon Fraser University.
Abstract: Social or new media have over the past years become an integrated part of human communication, both as a means to establish and maintain social relationships, but also as a means of sharing and co-creating information. New media comes with an array of possibilities for individuals as well as organisations, corporations and authorities. Within the field of crisis communication new media possibilities, such as online sharing and social networking, has had an impact on the way crisis information is disseminated and updated. This paper addresses the issues related to using new media as a means of communicating crisis information and broadcasting alerting messages to the general population, and also discusses the role of new media in future pan-European alerting. It focuses on current and on-going research on social media for crisis communication. An extensive systematic literature review was done to identify factors that affect the use of social media for alerting and warning. These factors were mirrored in experiences, collected through interviews, in crisis communication organisations in three European regions (Sweden, Czech Republic and Spain). The factors finally form the basis for suggestions regarding the design of technological tools for both communication and information collection as part of a pan-European alerting system. © 2012 ISCRAM.
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Ntalla Athanasia, & Ponis T. Stavros. (2015). Twitter as an instrument for crisis response: The Typhoon Haiyan case study. In L. Palen, M. Buscher, T. Comes, & A. Hughes (Eds.), ISCRAM 2015 Conference Proceedings ? 12th International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management. Kristiansand, Norway: University of Agder (UiA).
Abstract: The research presented in this paper attempts an initial evaluation of Twitter as an instrument for emergency response in the context of a recent crisis event. The case of the 2013 disaster, when typhoon Haiyan hit Philippines is examined by analyzing nine consecutive days of Twitter messages and comparing them to the actual events. The results indicate that during disasters, Twitter users tend to post messages to enhance situation awareness and to motivate people to act. Furthermore, tweets were found reliable and provided valuable information content, supporting the argument that Twitter presents a very good potential to become a useful tool in situations where rapid emergency response is essential.
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