Social Networking Sites in the Aftermath of a Crisis - the Enabling Role for Self-organization

During crisis circumstances, people increasingly rely on social networking sites (SNS). SNS offer new ways for people to participate and communicate, including seeking local and timely information and activating their social networks quickly, which in turn supports self-organization during crisis events. However, little is known about the motives that influence people’s different SNS usage behavior for the goal of self-organization and the underlying mechanisms of this behavior. Based on uses and gratifications theory and the literature on crisis communication and crisis informatics, this conceptual paper argues that during crisis circumstances, particular needs influence people’s SNS usage for the goal of self-organization. In addition, the paper investigates the conceptual underpinnings of self-organization via SNS. This paper, therefore, contributes to theory by developing a conceptual model for the analysis of self-organization via SNS during crisis circumstances

One Year Later: September 11 and the Internet

Presents findings from a survey that looks at how the terror attacks affected Americans' views about access to online information, Internet use, and the Web after September 11. Contains scholarly studies built around analysis of hundreds of Web sites

State of the art 2015: a literature review of social media intelligence capabilities for counter-terrorism

Overview This paper is a review of how information and insight can be drawn from open social media sources. It focuses on the specific research techniques that have emerged, the capabilities they provide, the possible insights they offer, and the ethical and legal questions they raise. These techniques are considered relevant and valuable in so far as they can help to maintain public safety by preventing terrorism, preparing for it, protecting the public from it and pursuing its perpetrators. The report also considers how far this can be achieved against the backdrop of radically changing technology and public attitudes towards surveillance. This is an updated version of a 2013 report paper on the same subject, State of the Art. Since 2013, there have been significant changes in social media, how it is used by terrorist groups, and the methods being developed to make sense of it.  The paper is structured as follows: Part 1 is an overview of social media use, focused on how it is used by groups of interest to those involved in counter-terrorism. This includes new sections on trends of social media platforms; and a new section on Islamic State (IS). Part 2 provides an introduction to the key approaches of social media intelligence (henceforth ‘SOCMINT’) for counter-terrorism. Part 3 sets out a series of SOCMINT techniques. For each technique a series of capabilities and insights are considered, the validity and reliability of the method is considered, and how they might be applied to counter-terrorism work explored. Part 4 outlines a number of important legal, ethical and practical considerations when undertaking SOCMINT work

Fear and loathing in Boston: The roles of different emotions in information sharing on social media following a terror attack

Emotions are essential to how we communicate, and online discussions are no exception. As most of the analysis on emotion so far has looked at polarity rather than specific emotions, we do not yet have a full understanding of how different emotions spark different behaviours. This study examines how five different emotions are associated with information sharing in the context of a terror attack both on a large scale and when including geolocation information in the analysis. Contrary to what previous findings suggest, increased fear and contempt levels have a negative relation with increased levels of retweeting. Positive emotion in tweets meant a decrease in retweet rates in the geolocation specific data, but an increase when all tweets were considered

Whom to Listen to? Trusted Source and Retweet Behavior of the NYC Marathon and Hawaii False Alarm

Terror attacks disturb social order, and impact the communications between stakeholders. Responsible organizations seek to learn the rules of public information dissemination, thus better manage the crisis communication during terror attack. Guided by social capital theory, this study took the 2017 NYC marathon attack and Hawaii false missile alarm as examples and examined which sources the public trusts most during varying phases of terror threats. The study also explored the content of the most retweeted crisis communication information, in an aim to facilitate better communications between emergency responders and the public, which would help the organizations actively accumulate social capital in the long term. Keywords: Terrorism Attack, Crisis Communication, Social Capital, Social Network, Social Medi

Anxiety and the creation of the scapegoated other

This article examines how anxiety saturates the neo-Orientalist driven thesis of new terrorism, especially in how both anxiety and new terrorism are related to the unknown. Of particular importance is the description of al Qaeda as an amorphous and thus unknowable threat by Western academics and the media, which reifies the discursive neo-Orientalist binary of the West versus Islam. Scholars of International Relations are increasingly engaging with emotions and their impact on binary and hierarchical structures. Emotions operate relationally as they are the articulation of affect. The emotions discursively constitute identity and community structures, helping to inform ideas of self and other. The more specific study of anxiety reveals similarities, but anxiety also operates differently from other emotions as it is focused on future potentialities. Thus, terrorism and anxiety are co-constitutive in their conceptual dependency on futurity and uncertainty that sustain the neo-Orientalist binary.PostprintPeer reviewe

The Chilling Effect of Government Surveillance Programs on the Use of the Internet by Muslim-Americans

This article demonstrates that the effect of the post-9/l1 climate facing Muslim-Americans pervades even ordinary aspects of contemporary life. Part II of the article discusses the legal paradigm of when discrimination has legal implications and merits government action. Part III explores al-Qaeda\u27s sophisticated use of the Internet and summarizes the government\u27s post-9/l1 online surveillance efforts. Part IV discusses OUPOLL\u27s survey results

Gradients of Fear and Anger in the Social Media Response to Terrorism

Research suggests that public fear and anger in wake of a terror attack can each uniquely contribute to policy attitudes and risk-avoidance behaviors. Given the importance of these negative-valanced emotions, there is value in studying how terror events can incite fear and anger at various times and locations relative to an attack. We analyze 36,259 Twitter posts authored in response to the 2016 Orlando nightclub shooting and examined how fear- and anger-related language varied with time and distance from the attack. Fear-related words sharply decreased over time, though the trend was strongest at locations near the attack, while anger-related words slightly decreased over time and increased with distance from Orlando. Comparing these results to users’ pre-attack emotional language suggested that distant users remained both angry and fearful after the shooting, while users close to the attack remained angry but quickly reduced expressions of fear to pre-attack levels