Examining the Impact of Emojis on Disaster Communication: A Perspective from the Uncertainty Reduction Theory

Communication is a purposeful process, especially during disasters, when emergency management officials and citizen journalists attempt to disseminate relevant information to as many affected people as possible. X (previously Twitter), a popular computer-mediated communication (CMC) platform, has become an essential resource for disaster information given its ability to facilitate real-time communication. Past studies on disasters have mainly concentrated on the verbal-linguistic conventions of words and hashtags as the means to convey disaster-related information. Little attention has been given to non-verbal linguistic cues, such as emojis. In this study, we investigate the use of emojis in disaster communication on X by using uncertainty reduction theory as the theoretical framework. We measured information uncertainty in individual tweets and assessed whether information conveyed in external URLs mitigated such uncertainty. We also examined how emojis affect information uncertainty and information dissemination. The statistical results from analyzing tweets related to the 2018 California Camp Fire disaster show that information uncertainty has a negative impact on information dissemination, and the negative impact was amplified when emojis depicted items and objects instead of facial expressions. Conversely, external URLs reduced the negative impact. This study sheds light on the influence of emojis on the dissemination of disaster information on X and provides insights for both academia and emergency management practitioners in using CMC platforms

Choice and the composition of general practice patient registers

Choice of general practice (GP) in the National Health Service (NHS), the UKs universal healthcare service, is a core element in the current trajectory of NHS policy. This paper uses an accessibility-based approach to investigate the pattern of patient choice that exists for GPs in the London Borough of Southwark. Using a spatial model of GP accessibility it is shown that particular population groups make non-accessibility based decisions when choosing a GP. These patterns are assessed by considering differences in the composition of GP patient registers between the current patient register, and a modelled patient register configured for optimal access to GPs. The patient population is classified in two ways for the purpose of this analysis: by geodemographic group, and by ethnicity. The paper considers choice in healthcare for intra-urban areas, focusing on the role of accessibility and equity

An analysis of UK Policing Engagement via Social Media

Police forces in the UK make use of social media to communicate and engage with the public. However, while guidance reports claim that social media can enhance the accessibility of policing organisations, research studies have shown that exchanges between the citizens and the police tend to be infrequent. Social media usually act as an extra channel for delivering messages, but not as a mean for enabling a deeper engagement with the public. This has led to a phenomena where police officers and staff started to use social media in a personal capacity in the aim of getting closer to the public. In this paper, we aim to understand what attracts citizens to engage with social media policing content, from corporate as well as from non-corporate accounts. Our approach combines learnings from existing theories and studies on user engagement as well as from the analysis of 1.5 Million posts from 48 corporate and 2,450 non-corporate Twitter police accounts. Our results provide police-specific guidelines on how to improve communication to increase public engagement and participation

Game Analysis of Government\u27s Response to Network Public Opinion

The network public opinion has brought certain challenges to the authority of the government and the control of social order. Based on the evolutionary game theory, this paper establishes the network public opinion game model of government, netizens, Internet celebrity, network media, and uses the replication dynamic equation to analyze the game process of participants. Finally, according to the evolutionary stabilization strategy, put forward relevant countermeasures to the government in dealing with network public opinion of emergencies

INRISCO: INcident monitoRing in Smart COmmunities

Major advances in information and communication technologies (ICTs) make citizens to be considered as sensors in motion. Carrying their mobile devices, moving in their connected vehicles or actively participating in social networks, citizens provide a wealth of information that, after properly processing, can support numerous applications for the benefit of the community. In the context of smart communities, the INRISCO [1] proposal intends for (i) the early detection of abnormal situations in cities (i.e., incidents), (ii) the analysis of whether, according to their impact, those incidents are really adverse for the community; and (iii) the automatic actuation by dissemination of appropriate information to citizens and authorities. Thus, INRISCO will identify and report on incidents in traffic (jam, accident) or public infrastructure (e.g., works, street cut), the occurrence of specific events that affect other citizens' life (e.g., demonstrations, concerts), or environmental problems (e.g., pollution, bad weather). It is of particular interest to this proposal the identification of incidents with a social and economic impact, which affects the quality of life of citizens.This work was supported in part by the Spanish Government through the projects INRISCO under Grant TEC2014-54335-C4-1-R, Grant TEC2014-54335-C4-2-R, Grant TEC2014-54335-C4-3-R, and Grant TEC2014-54335-C4-4-R, in part by the MAGOS under Grant TEC2017-84197-C4-1-R, Grant TEC2017-84197-C4-2-R, and Grant TEC2017-84197-C4-3-R, in part by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), and in part by the Galician Regional Government under agreement for funding the Atlantic Research Center for Information and Communication Technologies (AtlantTIC)