Clayton Wukich

Reusing social media information in government

Abstract Across policy domains, government agencies evaluate social media content produced by third parties, identify valuable information, and at times reuse information to inform the public. This has the potential to permit a diversity of social media users to be heard in the resulting information networks, but to what extent are agencies relying on private citizens or others outside of the policy domain for message content? In order to examine that question, we analyze the online practices of state-level government agencies. Findings demonstrate that agencies emulate offline content reuse strategies by relying predominately on trusted institutional sources rather than new voices, such as private citizens. Those institutional sources predominantly include other government agencies and nonprofit organizations, and their messages focus mostly on informing and educating the public.

Social media use in emergency management.

OBJECTIVE To identify and illustrate the range of strategies and tactics available for emergency managers using social media. DESIGN This study uses content analysis of more than 80 related journal articles, research reports, and government documents as well as more than 120 newspaper articles, identified through LexisNexis search queries. RESULTS Three strategies, information dissemination, monitoring real-time data, and engaging the public in a conversation and/or crowdsourcing, are available to emergency managers to augment communication practices via face-to-face contact and through traditional media outlets. Academic research has identified several message types disseminated during response operations.(1,2) Message types during other emergency phases have received less attention; however, news reporting and government reports provide best practices and inform this study. This article provides the foundation for a more complete typology of emergency management messages. Relatedly, despite limited attention in the academic research, monitoring social media feeds to accrue situational awareness and interacting with others to generate a conversation and/or to coordinate collective action also take place in various forms and are discussed. CONCLUSIONS Findings integrate the fragmented body of knowledge into a more coherent whole and suggest that practitioners might maximize outcomes through a three-step process of information dissemination, data monitoring, and the direct engagement of diverse sets of actors to spur risk reduction efforts. However, these steps require time, personnel, and resources, which present obstacles for agencies operating under conditions of personnel and resource scarcity.

Developing Decision-Making Skills for Uncertain Conditions: The Challenge of Educating Effective Emergency Managers

Effective decision making under conditions of uncertainty involves the ability to recognize risk, formulate strategies for action, and coordinate with others in an effort to bring an incident under control quickly. Learning to make decisions effectively in urgent, uncertain conditions is not easily achieved in a classroom setting. Educators face a particular challenge in creating a learning environment in which students can develop this ability in preparation and/or support for careers in emergency management. The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) suggests that higher-level thinking skills facilitate the kind of problem-solving skills and subject mastery helpful to decision making under conditions of uncertainty. A content analysis of syllabi on emergency management demonstrates that instructors, in practice, focus disproportionately on lower-level thinking skills. We present a set of propositions informed by SoTL and the study of cognition to design curricula that facilitate the development of higher-order thinking skills that support decision making under conditions of uncertainty.

Government Social Media Messages across Disaster Phases

Social media platforms allow emergency managers to augment traditional approaches to crisis communication. Research on government messaging, however, disproportionately addresses large‐scale disaster response efforts, neglecting smaller‐scale incidents and activities across other disaster phases (e.g., prevention, mitigation, preparedness and recovery). This article offers a more complete analysis of messaging strategies by integrating existing typologies and analysing state‐level emergency management agencies in the United States over a one‐year period. Findings illustrate a range of messages, with response and preparedness being most prevalent. While all agencies disseminated protective action messages, situational information and preparedness guidance, fewer engaged in more interactive tactics that facilitate public participation and interagency collaboration. More work, therefore, is needed to pursue social medias full potential in promoting risk reduction.

LEADERSHIP STRATEGIES AT THE MESO LEVEL OF EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT NETWORKS

Leadership theory has focused on interpersonal dynamics (such as motivation) and broad social leadership (such as national leaders during crises). Analyzing data from emergency response incidents, we describe a role for leadership between these micro-social and macro-social contexts. At the meso level, emergency managers both design and react to interorganizational structures; a process we call meso-leadership. We explore these leadership strategies, including efforts to engage diverse actors (brokerage) and reinforce group norms (closure). The task of meso-leadership is to balance these strategies, which we illustrate using examples that suggest a pattern of shifting strategies at different phases of emergency events.

Social media adoption, message content, and reach: an examination of Red Cross and Red Crescent national societies

This paper examines how and to what extent national-level Red Cross and Red Crescent organisations (i.e. national societies) use the social media platform Twitter. Specifically, we assess (a) adoption rates and influential factors; (b) message types and frequency; and (c) the ability to reach large audiences. Findings demonstrate that while the digital divide (i.e. the disparity between country-level internet access rates) limits adoption, key exceptions signal the potential for further diffusion. This paper also illustrates disparate message types, points out the limits of organisational reach, and presents evidence-based suggestions to improve message amplification.

Network Features and Processes as Determinants of Organizational Interaction during Extreme Events

Despite the widely acknowledged importance of collaboration among participants in governance networks, a limited number of studies have attempted to statistically model the processes by which those networks form. In this article, we explore a range of network features and processes and measure their influence on network formation. We examine the case of Hurricane Katrina and employ exponential random graph models to identify the drivers of network formation in extreme events. We find that both the attributes of individual organizations and endogenous network processes affect organizational collaboration. Understanding these factors is important because the structure of the response network influences information flow, resource exchange, and performance.

The Formation of Transnational Knowledge Networks on Social Media

ABSTRACT Transnational knowledge networks provide organizations with information useful in addressing shared problems. Social media may enable the formation of those networks, yet their role in the process has received little attention. This article examines the structure and antecedents of two networks facilitated by the microblogging platform Twitter operating in the policy domain of emergency management. One network includes national-level government agencies responsible for disaster response and recovery operations; the other includes nongovernmental organizations in the form of Red Cross and Red Crescent national societies. We use a logistic regression quadratic assignment procedure to test hypotheses derived from related literature. While findings indicate that shared language and geographic proximity shaped network formation, both networks exhibit boundary spanning behavior in which organizations sought out information from high-profile, resource-rich organizations. Those organizations helped to connect otherwise regionally bound clusters and demonstrate the nascent potential of social media to create global transnational knowledge networks.

Network Formation During Disasters: Exploring Micro-Level Interorganizational Processes and the Role of National Capacity

ABSTRACT Despite common assumptions about the processes associated with interorganizational network formation, the resulting structures and relevant factors often vary. This variation suggests that there are likely contextual or meta-network variables that moderate the influence of well-established micro-level mechanisms. Because much of the existing research on disaster response networks relies on single case studies, the role of meta-network variables in shaping network formation remains unexplored. We look to fill this gap by comparing network formation patterns in multiple countries that vary in their disaster management capacity. This article uses social network analysis to analyze the formation of response networks after earthquakes in Indonesia, Haiti, and Japan. This study contributes to existing literature by examining how transitivity, homophily, and brokerage vary in their salience under different macro-level constraints. The results suggest that national response capacity may influence the jurisdictional level at which bridging and bonding strategies take place.

Designing Public Policies: Principles and Instruments

The growing complexity of governance modes across sectors and levels of government complicates the task of researchers and practitioners alike in exploring the formulation and implementation of various policy choices. Two factors, globalization and the world’s more integrated set of information systems, change how governments address policies that increasingly span political boundaries. In his text, Designing Public Policies: Principles and Instruments, Michael Howlett incorporates several literature streams to model complexity in the policy design process more aptly. He creates a new ‘‘statecraft-resource model’’ to identify the available stock of policy tools and to describe the systems in which policymakers operate and make decisions. This model spans jurisdictions and sectors, accounting for increasingly interdependent policy domains. Howlett essentially addresses how various policy systems handle what Dunn (2008) labels as ‘‘illstructured problems’’ in network situations, where multiple decision-makers choose from a number of alternatives while working through conflicting values and priorities. The task is a critical one to policy studies. Howlett’s book goes beyond the current body of knowledge in globalization and network management literature, which is indeed unclear in terms of analyzing how available tools and various interorganizational arrangements created for formulation and implementation influence the adoption of specific policies. Significant to the field of public policy and administration is Howlett’s integration of network management and policy design literature to explore the role that context plays in the policymaking process. Other researchers have argued that context and culture influence policy design (Bobrow andDryzek 1987). Multiple frames of reference are seen to influence the intensity of values and priorities exhibited by relevant actors. Specific values can drive policy preferences. Also influencing policy is the availability of policy tools or implementation instruments and the capacity of organizations or systems to implement these options. Howlett adds a dimension of complexity to policy design studies by modeling decision spaces as essentially nested sets of actors, resources, and values similar to some extent to Ostrom’s (2005) institutional analysis and development framework. Instead of focusing on the rules of the action situation as Ostrom does, however, Howlett creates his ‘‘statecraft-resource model’’ to account for the roles played by the values and beliefs of policymakers and target populations, various modes of governance, and the availability of specific policy instruments (both substantive and procedural). Howlett’s taxonomy of policy instruments is derived from Hood’s (1986) tools approach in which information, regulation, financial, and other organizational resources represent the key categories of available strategies. These strategies enable collective action (Salamon 2002). While Hood (1986), Salamon (2002), and others focus on substantive tools, Howlett explores procedural implementation tools as well, such as interest group co-option, specialized investigatory commissions, information release tools, and government reorganization campaigns. These procedural tools facilitate the creation and maintenance of policy networks and are increasingly prevalent in networked arrangements. The mere availability of a tool, however, does not account for its adoption. The target group’s beliefs, expectations, and trust in government should align with the strategy for action in order Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis, Vol. 14, No. 2, 195–197, April 2012