Social media platforms have gained significant interest among academic researchers and emergency practitioners in the domain of risk and crisis communication. Early research centered around social media found that individuals did not adequately utilize the platforms during natural disasters (Spence et al., 2005; Spence, Lachlan, & Burke, 2008), but in today’s technological society, social media has grown to be used by a large portion of the general public and public and government officials (Crowe, 2012). Aside from the capacity for providing information, social media has also provided a hub for users to post negative feelings and affective outputs as well (Spence et al., 2015).
More specifically, Twitter has emerged as a useful platform for individuals in seeking out content and information related to impending risks and ongoing crises (Armstrong & Gao, 2010; Sutton, Palen, & Shklovski, 2008; Westerman, Spence, & Van Der Heide, 2012). Sutton and colleagues (2008; 2014; 2015) found that when public officials did not provide the information that the general public desired and wanted, users turned to Twitter. This lapse in information between traditional release of information by public officials and the desire for more from the general public led to what the authors termed “backchannel news,” where individuals used the platform to acquire what they desired.
Previous work investigating landfalling hurricanes which occurred in the social media era has found “a rather unsettling pattern of available information during the prodromal stage” which is the leadup to an event. While the most useful and important information is available the two days prior to the storm, this information becomes buried by affective displays as the event becomes more real and closer to affecting the Tweeting population. Furthermore, during the latter portions of an event, informational content becomes hidden behind an increasing amount of affective displays and outpouring of emotions when attempting to search for information (Spence et al., 2015).
Hurricanes Florence and Michael
To investigate the content behind these two events, this study will rely on data collected from two of the 2018 Atlantic Hurricane seasons most impactful events (at the time of writing): Hurricane Florence and Hurricane Michael. Hurricane Florence was a long-duration storm which formed on August 31, 2018 and became a remnant low on September 17, impacting the southeastern United States. The storm dropped nearly three feet of rain in some locations of North Carolina, while also strongly affecting areas of South Carolina, Florida, Virginia, and the Mid-Atlantic. 53 fatalities (direct and indirect) were attributed to the storm, with over $13 billion in damage at present (only North Carolina has released a current damage estimate). Hurricane Michael formed in early October 2018, eventually becoming the third-most intense Atlantic Hurricane landfall (CBSNews.com, 2018). 48 people lost their lives to the storm (33 in the US) and – at present – damage estimates range from $6-10 billion. The storms presented here offer a unique perspective to investigate weather communication in the 21st century, as only a few storms have made U.S. landfall as major hurricane status since social media has become mainstream (arguably 2008 to present).
Methods and Discussion
Twitter data was harvested during Hurricane Florence and Hurricane Michael using TweetArchivist (www.tweetarchivist.com) and DiscoverText (discovertext.com), respectively. Using a series of hashtag search strategies, the data will be examined in terms of network analytics, in order to identify prominent individuals and twitter handles that became central to the conversation in the days leading up to landfall of each event. The data will also be subject to textual analysis using LIWC (Pennebaker, Francis, & Booth, 2001), to examine both overall trends in content and those most closely associated with key information sources. The findings will be discussed in terms of implications for emergency managers, and partnerships between EMAs and other social media resources that may prove advantageous in mitigating against impending storms.
References:
Armstrong, C. L., & Gao, F. (2010). Now tweet this: How news organizations use twitter. Electronic News, 4, 218–235.
Crowe, A. (2012). Disasters 2.0: The application of social media systems for modern emergency management. CRC press.
Florence gone but its flooding a crisis in parts of North Carolina -- live updates. (2018, September 19). Retrieved October 18, 2018, from https://www.cbsnews.com/live- news/hurricane-florence-aftermath-weather-flooding-power-outage-death-toll-fema-latest-forecast-live/
Hurricane Michael: Live Updates and News. (2018). Retrieved October 18, 2018, from https://www.nbcnews.com/news/hurricane-michael
Pennebaker, J.W., Francis, R.J., & Booth, R.J.. (2001). Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC): A computerized text analysis program. Mahwah, NJ: Earlbaum
Spence, P.R., Lachlan, K.A., & Burke, J. (2008). Crisis preparation, media use, and information seeking: Patterns across Katrina evacuees and lessons learned for crisis communication. Journal of Emergency Management, 6 (1), 11-23.
Spence, P. R., Lachlan, K. A., Lin, X., & del Greco, M. (2015). Variability in Twitter content across the stages of a natural disaster: Implications for crisis communication. Communication Quarterly, 63 (2), 171-186.
Sutton, J., League, C., Sellnow, T. L., & Sellnow, D. D. (2015). Terse messaging and public health in the midst of natural disasters: The case of the Boulder floods. Health communication, 30(2), 135-143.
Sutton, J. N., Palen, L., & Shklovski, I. (2008). Backchannels on the front lines: Emergency uses of social media in the 2007 Southern California Wildfires (pp. 624-632). University of Colorado.
Sutton, J., Spiro, E.S., Johnson, B., Fithigh, S., Gibson, B., & Butts, C. (2014). Warning tweets: Serial transmission of warning messages during a disaster event. Information,Communication, & Society, 17 (6), 765-787.
Spence, P. R., Westerman, D., Skalski, P. D., Seeger, M., Ulmer, R. R., Venette, S., & Sellnow, T. L. (2005). Proxemic effects on information seeking after the September 11 attacks. Communication Research Reports, 22(1), 39-46.
Westerman, D. W., Spence, P. R., & Van Der Heide, B. (2012) A social network as information: The effect of system generated reports of connectedness on credibility and health care
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