Enhancing Disaster Management Through Social Media Analytics To Develop Situation Awareness: What Can Be Learned From Twitter Messages About Hurricane Sandy?

Twitter became an important channel to contribute and consume all kinds of information, especially in times of disasters, when people feel the need for fast, real-time flows of information. Given the wealth of information Twitter provides, that information can be used by practitioners and researchers alike to study what people affected by a disaster talk about, e.g., to develop a situation awareness and to coordinate disaster management accordingly. In our research, we analyze 11 million tweets that deal with hurricane Sandy, one of the strongest hurricanes that ever hit the US east coast in 2012. First, we extract the tweets by narrowing down the hurricane affected path along the US east coast, based on geo-spatial information. Further, drawing on the situation awareness literature and previous coding schemes, we analyze the nature and characteristics of the tweets. Our research reveals that there are significantly more tweets from original sources than from secondary sources and that individuals tend to share valuable personal experiences and observations at the time of disasters. In analyzing those individual level perceptions, we illustrate how one can generate situation awareness at the collective level. This situation awareness will enhance the decision-making of disaster management agencies at the time of uncertain and volatile situations

EXPLORING MULTIPLEXITY IN TWITTER – THE 2013 BOSTON MARATHON BOMBING CASE

This paper presents an exploratory study of Twitter communications in the context of the 2013 Boston marathon bombings. The primary focus of the study is to explore the concept of multiplexity in Twitter characterized by mentions, retweets and reply mechanisms. The study reveals that there is a significant impact of multiplexed relationships on the retweet influence of users. A comparison of the three multiplexed networks namely mentions, retweets and reply networks was performed and insights on structural differences among their graphs are provided. This study also investigates the effects of centralities in each of the three networks and arrives at a conceptual model for multiplexed Retweet Influence

Building online communities after crises: Two case studies

Building community in a crisis situation offers individuals a chance to not just survive, but potentially thrive through a disaster. Communities offer a unique benefit in a crisis by expanding beyond the geographic to include virtual spaces, particularly when other media are not available for survivors. This project applies theoretical frameworks from both complexity theory and the community of practice model to explore how individuals form online communities after crises, how those communities impact crisis recovery, and how the model can be used to understand communities' crisis communication. This project used a qualitative case study method, including content analysis of two communities that formed online after two crises, and interviews with nine members, including the founder, of one of the communities. The first case is the Jersey Shore Hurricane News Facebook page, formed during Hurricane Sandy in October 2012. The second case looks at a hashtag-based (#batman and #shooting) community on Twitter after the shooting at a Colorado movie theater in July 2012. The results show that instead of a typical one-to-many communication model and organizational focus, utilizing a community of practice allows for both a one-to-one model and a consequent focus on affected individuals. The community of practice model accommodates findings which suggest that location is important in building community, a need for adapting information needs to the community, and the acceptance of multiple relationship types. A new, alternate final dimension of communities of practice, continuation, is suggested and exemplified. This project argues for developing these online communities prior to a crisis. There are also specific suggestions for tools within technology that would be most useful to crisis-based communities of practice, and both benefits and drawbacks to the platforms studied. Practically, social media platform designers need to spend time thinking through how people connect during a crisis, and to make it easier for them to get the information they need quickly. In showcasing how to integrate social media, crisis communication, and a community-based model, this dissertation offers theoretical and practical suggestions for altering and improving current understandings of the best way to aid individual crisis response and recovery

Emergent Forms of Online Sociality in Disasters Arising from Natural Hazards

Disasters arising from natural hazards are associated with breakdown of existing structures, but they also result in creation of new social ties in the process of self-organization and problem solving by those affected. This dissertation focuses on emergent forms of sociality that arise in the context of crisis. Specifically, it considers collaborative work practices, social network structures, and organizational forms that emerge on social media during disasters arising from natural hazards. Social media platforms support highly-distributed social environments, and the forms of sociality that emerge in these contexts are affected by the affordances of their technical features, especially those that more or less successfully facilitate the creation of a shared information space. Thus, this dissertation is organized around two important aspects of social media spaces: the availability of an explicitly-shared site of work and the availability of a visible, legible record of activity.This dissertation investigates the forms of sociality that emerge during disasters in three social media activities: retweeting, crisis mapping in OpenStreetMap (OSM), and Twitter reply conversations. These three social media activities highlight various availability of an explicitly-shared site of work and visible record of activity. The studies of retweeting and reply conversations investigate the Twitter activity in response to the 2012 Hurricane Sandy—the second costliest hurricane in US history and the most tweeted about event to date at the time. Analysis of crisis mapping in OpenStreetMap—an open, editable, volunteer-based map of the world—focuses on the OSM activity after the 2010 Haiti earthquake, which was the first major disaster event supported by OpenStreetMap. For these investigations, the dissertation elaborates and develops human-centered data science methods—a set of methodological approaches that both harness the power of computational techniques and account for the highly-situated nature of the social activity in crisis. Finally, the dissertation positions the findings from the three studies within the larger context of high-tempo, high-volume social media activity and highlights how the framework of the two intersecting dimensions of the shared information space reveals larger patterns within the emergent forms of sociality across contexts

An informal Facebook group for English language interaction : a study of Malaysian university students' perceptions, experiences and behaviours

This study looks at a group of Malaysian university students’ perceptions, experiences and behaviours when presented with an informal, participatory Facebook interaction group for English language practice. Three methods of data collection, namely questionnaire, LMT100 Facebook interaction group, and semi-structured interview were employed in stages. The findings show a discrepancy between the participants’ perceptions of using Facebook for English language learning (ELL), and their experiences and behaviours when presented with the interaction group. Only a quarter of the participants used the group actively by initiating interaction threads, and communicating with each other. A huge majority acted passively by making their participation visible just once or repeatedly through the means of likes and short comments. The rest of the members were silent readers who never made their involvement visible over the period of six weeks. The students showed higher participation rate when presented with three topics; entertainment-based, grammar quizzes, and university-related inquiries. This was discussed as students’ selective interests and preferences in learning. The types of online content suitable for English language learning was also addressed. More passive interviewees reported small improvements in their communicative competence from the interaction activity. The active interviewees however only felt a boost in their confidence to use English publicly rather than experience enhanced English language ability. The discrepancy between the students’ perceptions and behaviours are discussed from three levels of sociocultural influences which are personal, institutional, and societal. The students’ prior English language learning experience within an education system that privileges examinations may have influenced their (non)participation in the LMT100 group. The interviewees also indicated the existence of sentiments in racial, political, and religious issues, which may have influenced their learning experience at the university. The findings indicate that the informal, unstructured English language interaction platform on Facebook as having great potentials, although not tremendously successful in this study. Several implications are presented as strategies that may assist the integration of Facebook for English language learning in the future