The National Weather Service's Bilingual Weather and Climate Information Efforts: A Case Study of NWS San Juan's Twitter Use during Hurricane Irma

According to the Census Bureau, Hispanic people are now considered the largest minority in the United States. The 2017 American Community Survey results estimate that over 15 million people in this population can only speak English. However, the results of the same survey also suggest that millions more within this group would describe their ability to speak English as “not well” or “not at all.” This gap in English language proficiency has dire implications for effective communication of weather watches and warnings to vulnerable populations.

Previous research focused on exploring the role of Spanish-speaking TV media in providing emergency alerts to vulnerable populations has found that there has been great progress in this area over the last decades (Benavides, 2013). However, recent trends in the United States – such as the ever-shrinking local TV news audience – and the growing preference for obtaining news from social media platforms such as Facebook (Pew Research Center, 2018), call for the Weather Enterprise and emergency management agencies to reconsider the communication strategies used to reach vulnerable populations. Mobile devices and social media present a unique opportunity to bridge that gap. Indeed. a recent study conducted by Ogie and colleagues (2018) found that so long as issues such as trust, message tailoring and message translations are addressed, technology can be used to reach and connect with people from culturally and linguistically diverse communities during emergency events. More research is needed to identify effective practices, and better understand the role they may play in increasing awareness of imminent hazard risks.

The results from this study build on that call to further explore the intersection between innovative technology and message translation efforts. The purpose of this paper is to characterize the recent efforts that federal agencies tasked with providing weather forecasts and warnings have made in providing Spanish and English weather-related information to their publics through social media channels. It seeks to identify best practices and opportunities for future development in the Weather Enterprise’s mission to better meet the needs of its Spanish-speaking audiences.

Using Hurricane Irma as a case study, this project examined the National Weather Service San Juan’s Twitter use before and during the storm passed north of Puerto Rico in 2017. Thematic analysis was employed to characterize both the Twitter content shared by the @NWSSanJuan account as well as the ways in which other users in the social media platform chose to engage with the content.

By exploring the dual-language social media messaging strategy employed by the NWS San Juan during a period of adverse weather conditions, the results of this study further contribute to the understanding of how federal organizations tasked with weather-related risk communication innovate to meet the evolving needs of their audience. Further, building on these findings to outline future directions and opportunities, this project allows the weather, water and climate community to continue building on these nascent attempts to wield innovative technology to bridge the gap between federal agencies and the publics they serve.