Jeannette Sutton

Finding community through information and communication technology in disaster response

Disasters affect not only the welfare of individuals and family groups, but also the well-being of communities, and can serve as a catalyst for innovative uses of information and communication technology (ICT). In this paper, we present evidence of ICT use for re-orientation toward the community and for the production of public goods in the form of information dissemination during disasters. Results from this study of information seeking practices by members of the public during the October 2007 Southern California wildfires suggest that ICT use provides a means for communicating community-relevant information especially when members become geographically dispersed, leveraging and even building community resources in the process. In the presence of pervasive ICT, people are developing new practices for emergency response by using ICT to address problems that arise from information dearth and geographical dispersion. In doing so, they find community by reconnecting with others who share their concern for the locale threatened by the hazard.

Warning tweets: serial transmission of messages during the warning phase of a disaster event

Serial transmission – the passing on of information from one source to another – is a phenomenon of central interest in the study of informal communication in emergency settings. Microblogging services such as Twitter make it possible to study serial transmission on a large scale and to examine the factors that make retransmission of messages more or less likely. Here, we consider factors predicting serial transmission at the interface of formal and informal communication during disaster; specifically, we examine the retransmission by individuals of messages (tweets) issued by formal organizations on Twitter. Our central question is the following: How do message content, message style, and public attention to tweets relate to the behavioral activity of retransmitting (i.e. retweeting) a message in disaster? To answer this question, we collect all public tweets sent by a set of official government accounts during a 48-hour period of the Waldo Canyon wildfire. We manually code tweets for their thematic content and elements of message style. We then create predictive models to show how thematic content, message style, and changes in number of Followers affect retweeting behavior. From these predictive models, we identify the key elements that affect public retransmission of messages during the emergency phase of an unfolding disaster. Our findings suggest strategies for designing and disseminating messages through networked social media under periods of imminent threat.

Rumoring during extreme events: a case study of deepwater horizon 2010

Social scientists have proposed many different factors thought to influence rumoring behavior. Classical rumor theory points to the perceived importance, the level of uncertainty or ambiguity, and the potential to impact decision making as influential in determining the extent of rumoring. In this work, we test some of these proposed rumor determinants in the context of the the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, using data on communication dynamics from the popular microblogging service Twitter. Using a latent factor model, we measure rates of hazard-related conversation by exploiting joint variation in multiple conversation streams. Time series analysis of the resulting rates suggests that media coverage of the event is a major driver of rumoring behavior, supporting importance/saliency theories and disconfirming theories of information substitution for this event. Relevance of the event to decision making behavior also turns out to be an influential predictor in this case. Since information diffusion via serial transmission is a fundamental process by which rumors spread, we compare rates of serial transmission between control and hazard-related communication. Twitter posts are much more likely to be retweeted when they contain hazard-related keywords (versus control words). Implications of these findings for disaster response are discussed.

Social Media Monitoring and the Democratic National Convention: New Tasks and Emergent Processes

Public information officers and FEMA external affairs personnel routinely monitor online media reports in times of crises and disaster events. Online news sources now include citizen driven social media such as blogs, i-reports, photo and video sharing and networked information and communication technologies such as Facebook, MySpace, and the microblogging network, Twitter. While these communication mechanisms are increasing, little is known about the attention public officials devote to accessing, monitoring, and addressing public communication through social media. Utilizing data gathered through observations, interviews, and document analysis, this study concentrates on the new task of social media monitoring and the emergent processes used by public officials during the 2008 Democratic National Convention. Although some strategies were developed to monitor and utilize social media, there was a tendency to fall back upon standard operating procedures, limiting the emergence of new processes. Recommendations are provided for media monitoring activities in future crisis and disaster response.

Tweeting the Spill: Online Informal Communications, Social Networks, and Conversational Microstructures during the Deepwater Horizon Oilspill

Informal online communication channels are being utilized for official communications in disaster contexts. Channels such as networked microblogging enable public officials to broadcast messages as well as engage in direct communication exchange with individuals. Here the authors investigate online information exchange behaviors of a set of state and federal organizations during the Deepwater Horizon 2010 oil spill disaster. Using data from the popular microblogging service, Twitter, they analyze the roles individual organizations play in the dissemination of information to the general public online, and the conversational aspects of official posts. The authors discuss characteristics and features of the following networks including actor centrality and differential mixing, as well as how structural features may affect information exchange in disasters. This research provides insight into the use of networked communications during an event of heightened public concern, describes implications of conversational features, and suggests directions for future research. DOI: 10.4018/jiscrm.2013010104 International Journal of Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management, 5(1), 58-76, January-March 2013 59 Copyright

Terse Messaging and Public Health in the Midst of Natural Disasters: The Case of the Boulder Floods

Social media are quickly becoming the channel of choice for disseminating emergency warning messages. However, relatively little data-driven research exists to inform effective message design when using these media. The present study addresses that void by examining terse health-related warning messages sent by public safety agencies over Twitter during the 2013 Boulder, CO, floods. An examination of 5,100 tweets from 52 Twitter accounts over the course of the 5-day flood period yielded several key conclusions and implications. First, public health messages posted by local emergency management leaders are most frequently retweeted by organizations in our study. Second, emergency public health messages focus primarily on drinking water in this event. Third, terse messages can be designed in ways that include imperative/instructional and declarative/explanatory styles of content, both of which are essential for promoting public health during crises. These findings demonstrate that even terse messages delivered via Twitter ought to provide information about the hazard event, its impact, and actionable instructions for self-protection.

The Study of Mobile Public Warning Messages: A Research Review and Agenda

In 2011, the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) began authorizing emergency management officials to broadcast Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEAs) to cellular phones and other mobile devices to help notify people of imminent hazards. WEAs are 90-characters long, geographically targeted emergency messages sent by government alerting authorities through the nations mobile telecommunications networks, which, for the first time, allow officials to directly notify at-risk publics where they live and work. The use of WEAs has outpaced investigation of their benefits, limitations, and actual and potential consequences. To address this critical gap in scholarship and public understanding, we integrate literature from the fields of public warning, instructional crisis communication, and mobile health communication. Combining these literatures, we outline a theoretical and applied communication research agenda for public warning messages delivered over mobile devices.

Environmental Hazards, Migration, and Race

This study contributes to our understanding of the association between internal migration patterns and environmentally hazardous facilities, with a focus upon race-specific outmigration at the county-level, nationwide. Among research suggesting inequalities with regard to the social distribution of environmental risk, selective migration is often implied to be a key dynamic leading to differential exposure to proximate environmental hazards. Nonetheless, the models presented here provide no evidence of differential migratory response by race to environmentally hazardous facilities, net of a wide array of socioeconomic controls for labor force opportunity, climate, and demographic structure. Future research should consider these associations at more precise geographies and/or at the individual level.

A cross-hazard analysis of terse message retransmission on Twitter

Significance Online social networks (OSNs) enable time-resolved measurement of communication behavior during disasters, making it possible to probe the mechanisms by which messages are amplified or suppressed with precision unattainable by traditional data sources. To our knowledge, this research provides the first systematic study of the factors predicting the social amplification of risk communication in OSNs by examining the retransmission of official messages across five hazards. Our findings demonstrate the respective impacts of sender characteristics, message content, and message style in determining whether an official message will be passed on during an emergency, as well whether these vary across hazards. These results contribute to the evidence base for policies guiding the delivery by emergency management organizations of lifesaving information to the public. For decades, public warning messages have been relayed via broadcast information channels, including radio and television; more recently, risk communication channels have expanded to include social media sites, where messages can be easily amplified by user retransmission. This research examines the factors that predict the extent of retransmission for official hazard communications disseminated via Twitter. Using data from events involving five different hazards, we identity three types of attributes—local network properties, message content, and message style—that jointly amplify and/or attenuate the retransmission of official communications under imminent threat. We find that the use of an agreed-upon hashtag and the number of users following an official account positively influence message retransmission, as does message content describing hazard impacts or emphasizing cohesion among users. By contrast, messages directed at individuals, expressing gratitude, or including a URL were less widely disseminated than similar messages without these features. Our findings suggest that some measures commonly taken to convey additional information to the public (e.g., URL inclusion) may come at a cost in terms of message amplification; on the other hand, some types of content not traditionally emphasized in guidance on hazard communication may enhance retransmission rates.

Disaster Warnings in Your Pocket: How Audiences Interpret Mobile Alerts for an Unfamiliar Hazard

This study investigates how people interpret Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEAs) and Twitter‐length messages (‘tweets’) delivered over mobile devices for an unfamiliar hazard. Specifically, through four (N = 31) focus groups and 31 think‐out‐loud interviews, participants’ understanding of, belief in and personalisation of WEAs and tweets were assessed for a mock improvised nuclear device detonation in a major U.S. metropolitan area. While participants offered a wide variety of interpretations, WEAs and tweets were often deemed confusing, difficult to believe and impersonal. Participants also consistently found WEAs and tweets to be fear inducing and uninformative. The findings compel improvements in the way that WEAs and tweets are currently written, as well as indicate future directions for applied risk and crisis communication theory development.