Social Media in Earthquake-Related Communication

Francesca Comunello, Simone Mulargia

• Publisher: Emerald Publishing Limited
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781787439351
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Communication Studies
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

This book presents a comprehensive framework for disaster communication, with a main focus on earthquake-related communication, building on a previously fragmented, single-case study approach to analysing the role of social media during natural disasters.
The authors consider both traditional communication patterns and a networked model. Following traditional command-and-control disaster management paradigms, disaster communication has historically been framed as a linear process, in which experts or authorities give instructions to a passive audience. In recent years growing attention has been devoted to bottom-up disaster communication processes, and scholars have begun to focus on activities performed by citizens through digital media. These activities include eyewitness information sharing, collective intelligence processes, and digital volunteering.
Each chapter identifies and addresses four different scenarios: top-down information sharing, citizen information gathering, institutional communication gathering, and bottom-up information sharing.

Chapter 1

Top-down Information Dissemination during Natural Disasters^*

The topic of the top-down dissemination of emergency information through social media is controversial, as we shall try to demonstrate in this chapter. On the one hand, we need to consider how institutions perceive and use social media as part of their tool box, given that, in emergency situations, the official and verified information they provide is crucial for finding coping strategies. Given the conversational nature of social media (Lenhart, 2007), on the other hand, the institutional attempt to provide citizens with timely and official information risks denying the horizontal structure of online communication networks by implicitly proposing a linear communication model.

Moreover, institutions are endowed with specific competencies and knowledge which can be potentially hard to communicate, particularly in a historical moment when their reputation is under threat.

Although we are aware that the complex overlapping between top-down and bottom-up communication practices cannot be reduced to binary classification, we shall, for the moment, leave aside this complexity simply for explanatory purposes.

In this chapter, we will analyse institutional communication practices during and in the aftermath of natural disasters, trying to address the more general issue of institutions’ top-down information dissemination strategies. More specifically, we will refer to the established tradition of studies devoted to the crafting of effective warning messages in order to highlight one of the fundamental dimensions of institutional communication. We will then turn to the analysis of institutions’ communicative practices in emergency situation, with a special focus on social media usage practices. In order to problematise top-down information dissemination practices, we will refer to literature regarding barriers to social media adoption, also considering local-level institutions, framing the discussion about institutional communication practices into the broader debate concerning scientific institutions’ communication strategies. In the concluding part of this chapter, we shall present and discuss four case studies. The first and the second deal with the analysis of Italian institutions’ social media usage practices at the local level and will offer some insights into the way institutions consider and use social media for disseminating information during and in the aftermath of an earthquake. The last two case studies will analyse web communication strategies, and the use of infographics by different geophysical agencies, considered as good example of institutions that deal with both emergency and scientific information.

1.1. Disseminating Effective Warning Messages

Although this chapter focuses on the use of social media by institutions, we cannot ignore the fact that institutional communication is more generally often considered in terms of warning messages.

In the light of the uncertainty generated by the sudden disruption of daily routine caused by emergencies, we expect institutions to provide expert guidance, along with the material and symbolic tools citizens can use to confront an unexpected situation. This special role can operate on at least two levels. First, by providing precise advice to the affected population regarding effective protective measures to be taken; second, by assuming a central role in the public debate (which involves both citizens and the media system).

When we look at the relationship between institutions and the affected population, the well-established tradition of studies on the crafting of effective warning messages has already implicitly framed institutions’ ‘role as a communicative actor’. More specifically, institutions have to give guidance to the affected population by communicating the most effective protective measures (Mileti & Sorensen, 1990).

More generally, an institutional communicative strategy has to help citizens overcome their initial bewilderment and a certain feeling of scepticism (Drabek & Stephenson, 1971) towards messages received and interpreted in an adverse situation. In this context, an effective warning message is one that tends to help people save precious time by positively influencing their behaviour and thereby reducing the time needed to put into place protective measures.

According to Quarantelli (1991), a warning message must refer specifically to the threat; be targeted, as it must identify its recipients ex ante, using an appropriate language and style; be non-ambiguous in describing precisely the behaviour to be put in place; be redundant, as people tend to verify a specific message by turning to different channels. Relying on a system theory approach, Mileti (1975) proposes a model that brings together the specifics of the warning message and people’s capability of putting into place the best protective measures. In a recent contribution, Sutton and colleagues summarise the characteristics of an effective warning message in terms of content and style: a warning message has to provide exact guidance in order to maximise health and safety protection; it has to be precise in terms of time and location; it must contain a detailed and exhaustive description of the hazard and its consequences; it has to identify clearly the source of the information given (Sutton, Spiro, Johnson, et al., 2014, p. 769). As to style, Sutton and colleagues draw heavily from the aforementioned academic tradition in concluding that an effective warning message has to be clear, specific, accurate, certain and consistent (Sutton, Spiro, Johnson, et al., 2014, p. 769).

From these preliminary considerations, we can conclude that we have to move beyond the instrumental conception of communication, even in the context of emergencies. Communication is not something that can be used by institutions; it represents a constituent part of an institution’s mission within a broad context of bringing together institutions, citizens and the media system.

1.2. Institutions’ Communicative Practices in Emergency Situations

Literature has devoted attention to the behaviour and strategies of institutional communication when using social media during emergencies; this probably has also been helped by the relative ease of mapping the presence of institutions on social media. Compared to the complexity of informal actors contributing to social media conversations, the role played by institutions seems to be more structured and their social media presence (or absence) easier to map and analyse.

Several research projects have provided classifications about how institutions use social media in emergency situations. These exploratory studies focus on mapping institutions’ communicative practices as observed in emergency situations, and, taken together, offer us an extensive picture of what has been done with social media from the institutional standpoint.

In 2011, Bruce Lindsay, in a research report prepared for members and committees of the American Congress, highlighted that most of the institutions involved in using social media in an emergency passively spread information rather than establishing a two-way communication process with the audience. According to Lindsay, institutions use social media to share information directly related to the specific emergency, as in the case of the US Army Twitter account providing updates during the Fort Hood shootings in 2009 or to promote readiness and preparedness (Lindsay, 2011).

In a study inspired by the ‘Uses and Gratification’ approach (Katz, Blumler, & Gurevich, 1974), Houston et al. derive a social media usage framework from a consistent literature review, highlighting the principal social media usage patterns and related needs. Not surprisingly, the principal social media users identified in the study are: (1) individuals, (2) communities, (3) organisations, (4) governments and (5) news media (Houston et al., 2015, p. 7). The work by Houston et al. (2015) also offers a detailed list of social media uses derived from a review of the literature. Social media are used to provide and receive disaster preparedness information; provide and receive disaster warnings; signal and detect disasters; send and receive requests for help or assistance; inform others about one’s own condition and location and learn about a disaster-affected individual’s condition and location; document and learn what is happening in the disaster; deliver and consume news coverage of the disaster; provide and receive disaster response information; identify and list ways to assist in the disaster response; raise and develop awareness of an event; donate and receive donations; identify and list ways to help or volunteer; provide and receive disaster mental/behavioural health support; express emotions, concerns, well wishes; memorialise victims; provide and receive information about (and discuss) disaster response, recovery and rebuilding; tell and hear stories about the disaster; discuss socio-political and scientific causes and implications of and responsibility for events; (re)connect community members; implement traditional crisis communication activities (Houston et al., 2015). The framework provided by Houston and colleagues contains a full spectrum of social media usage practices already observed in literature, in which the two-way communication process is fully displayed, even if the actual social media usage by institutions seems to be still characterised by a top-down approach.

Another classification of social media use in emergency situations is provided by Takahashi et al. through the analysis of more than 10,000 tweets in November 2013 related to typhoon landfall and passage in the Philippines. The study highlights some recurring social media usage practices, such as reporting on the situation (second-hand reporting), expressing well wishes and memorialising and coordinating relief efforts, together with some secondary Tweet usage, such as discussing causes, (re)connecting community members, criticising the government, requesting help and providing mental counselling (Takahashi, Tandoc, & Carmichael, 2015). The institutional communication practices observed in the study tend to confirm that institutions rely heavily on a top-down approach to social media: they share their information, but, for instance, do not use social media to facilitate their rescue and relief operations (Takahashi et al., 2015).

In view of the above, content is not the only key factor in characterising the social media usage strategies of institutions rather it is a more nuanced mixture of content and interaction style with citizens, as the comparison between the Twitter accounts of the London Metropolitan Police and the Greater Manchester Police during the riots in August 2011 carried out by Denef et al. demonstrate (Denef, Bayerl, & Kaptein, 2013). While the London Metropolitan Police Twitter communication style was characterised by an instrumental approach, Greater Manchester Police opted for an expressive approach (Denef et al., 2013). We can see, in this contrast between an institution trying to maintain its prerogative as the official source of top-down information (if not directives) and the conversational style adopted by the Greater Manchester Police, that social media usage by institutions is the moment of truth for a long-awaited change in the culture of institutions.

A systematic analysis of the different elements characterising an institution’s presence on social media is provided by Sutton and colleagues in a study focused on Twitter’s official government accounts during the Waldo Canyon wildfire in Colorado Springs in June–July 2012. In order to investigate which characteristics of the communication strategy adopted by different accounts would increase the likelihood of receiving retweets by citizens, researchers analysed institutional tweets in terms of content, style and public attention (Sutton, Spiro, Johnson, et al., 2014). The thematic analysis carried out in order to classify different types of tweets provides us with an extensive spectrum of the activities actually put in place by different institutions’ accounts. More specifically, the following types of tweet have been identified: (1) off-topic, (2) advisory, (3) closures, (4) correction, (5) evacuation, (6) hazard impact and (7) information (Sutton, Spiro, Johnson, et al., 2014, p. 775). Tweets have been also analysed in terms of style, highlighting their functions (distinguishing between declarative, imperative, exclamatory and interrogative tweets), the presence (and function) of words or sentences written in capital letters, and what has been addressed as conversational microstructure elements (mentions, retweets, hashtags and tweets containing links) (Sutton, Spiro, Johnson, et al., 2014, p. 767). The third key feature identified by researchers, public attention, refers to the connection between numbers of followers of a specific account and the likelihood of receiving a retweet. In general terms, the study contains several indications about specific tweets’ characteristics which increase the likelihood of receiving a retweet, thereby offering interesting insights into effective communication strategies that can potentially be exploited by institutions. More specifically, on-topic tweets produce more retweets than off-topic ones (regardless of content), while advisory tweets and those containing information about the hazard impact are more likely to be retweeted than those containing information about protective measures (Sutton, Spiro, Johnson, et al., 2014, p. 783). Some other findings appear somewhat controversial or contradict the general idea that the dialogic approach is what is really missing in institutional communication strategy. In particular, the fact that sentences with imperatives augment the effectiveness of the tweets (in terms of retweets) and that the presence of links does not increase the number of retweets (Sutton, Spiro, Johnson, et al., 2014). However, the number of followers of an institutional account is vital in augmenting the serial transmission of messages (i.e. the retweet), thus suggesting that institutions’ communication strategies have to focus (also) on networking activities (generally achieved through dialogue with citizens and stakeholders) in order to bolster their communicative effectiveness. In the context of the Boston marathon bombing in 2013, Sutton and colleagues analysed terse messages (e.g. text messages and tweets) written by responding organisations and highlighted some differences from the study mentioned above. They found that an important role was played by local actors, and a meaningful prevalence (in terms of ability to grab an audience’s attention) of messages were oriented towards a more specific terrorism communication. This emphasises the even greater importance of the social context of the emergency situation over content and style in influencing the information spread by terse messages (Sutton, Spiro, Fitzhugh, et al., 2014).

In a recent study based on a quali-quantitative approach, Reuters et al. investigate social media usage practices by European institutions, both at a personal (looking at the socio-demographic characteristics of social staff members) and on an organisational level. As to the former, the age and sex of emergency staff influence their social media use; women are more likely to use social media than men and younger staff members than older colleagues (Reuter, Ludwig, Kaufhold, & Spielhofer, 2016). On the organisational level, European institutions use social media to: (1) provide warnings, advice and guidance to citizens on how to cope with or prevent emergencies or disasters; (2) disseminate hints and advice on how to behave during an emergency, as well as coordinating the help of volunteers and (3) share summary information or reports with citizens after the emergency and coordinate clean-up activities (Reuter et al., 2016, p. 103).

Alth...