Understanding the Role of Social Media in a National Weather Service Weather Forecast Office

The National Weather Service (NWS) is responsible for issuing and distributing weather hazard information, warnings, and advisories to help communities protect themselves from harm. One relatively new and important method used to fulfill this mission is the use of social media platforms, such as X (formerly known as Twitter) and Facebook; yet the public knows little about their policies, practices, and challenges in this space. While several studies have been conducted on general NWS practices before, many fail to address this social media usage. Social media studies surrounding weather disproportionately focus on public use rather than the experts themselves, and for a topic as important as hazard communication, there is merit to understanding both the sender’s and the receiver’s points-of-view to identify potential miscommunications. This study addresses this disparity by directly studying the staff employed within the NWS along with their use of and beliefs about social media. Specifically, I took an ethnographic approach by volunteering at the NWS in Lubbock, TX, and conducting participant observations to better understand their tools and practices, learn about their challenges, and elicit insights directly from the staff themselves via both formal and informal interviews. I seek to understand what the current role of social media is within the broader NWS, develop a comprehensive landscape-view of its current state of usage by forecasters, and what challenges NWS forecasters face when using social media as part of their mission to convey weather risks and information. This study is furthered by creating a case study around the June 21, 2023, Matador, TX tornado and the subsequent social media response around it. The end result of this study provides an overview of their current practices and challenges while also offering suggestions that might assist the NWS with future efforts communicating online.