Social media during multi-hazard disasters: lessons from the Kaikoura Earthquake 2016
Social media during multi-hazard disasters: lessons from the Kaikoura Earthquake 2016
Social media provides channels of communication during emergency events such as earthquakes. Such sites may be utilised for a range of emergency response strategies providing that data is processed rapidly and management strategies employed effectively. The processing of social media data presents many challenges for emergency responders: information overload, organisational communication and information reliability remain prevalent issues. Furthermore, there is a growing need to improve the management of multi-hazard disasters (sometimes referred to as ‘cascading disasters’) due to an increase in their frequency and severity, exacerbated by underlying global problems such as climate change. This is especially important to geographical regions that are prone to particular hazards – New Zealand for instance recorded nearly 33,000 earthquakes in 2016 alone. Similarly, there is an increasing need to evaluate developments in technology and social media sites themselves as they are progressively being relied upon during emergency events. In this study, we examine the crisis communications of the Kaikoura earthquake (New Zealand, 2016) using mainstream media content such as new stories, and online content such as Twitter data. A mixed method approach was employed, which combined content analysis with the application of a conceptual framework. The paper then presents (i) an analysis of crisis communications during the event, focusing on changes in media content and theme, (ii) the structure of online emergency response in the country and its affect on management and (iii) the barriers effecting emergency response in this case study.
313-323
Gray, Briony
b2dfca6f-f16b-45ba-bd84-9a6ca17faa1f
Weal, Mark J.
e8fd30a6-c060-41c5-b388-ca52c81032a4
Martin, David
e5c52473-e9f0-4f09-b64c-fa32194b162f
30 September 2017
Gray, Briony
b2dfca6f-f16b-45ba-bd84-9a6ca17faa1f
Weal, Mark J.
e8fd30a6-c060-41c5-b388-ca52c81032a4
Martin, David
e5c52473-e9f0-4f09-b64c-fa32194b162f
Gray, Briony, Weal, Mark J. and Martin, David
(2017)
Social media during multi-hazard disasters: lessons from the Kaikoura Earthquake 2016.
International Journal of Safety and Security Engineering, 7 (3), .
(doi:10.2495/SAFE-V7-N3-313-323).
Abstract
Social media provides channels of communication during emergency events such as earthquakes. Such sites may be utilised for a range of emergency response strategies providing that data is processed rapidly and management strategies employed effectively. The processing of social media data presents many challenges for emergency responders: information overload, organisational communication and information reliability remain prevalent issues. Furthermore, there is a growing need to improve the management of multi-hazard disasters (sometimes referred to as ‘cascading disasters’) due to an increase in their frequency and severity, exacerbated by underlying global problems such as climate change. This is especially important to geographical regions that are prone to particular hazards – New Zealand for instance recorded nearly 33,000 earthquakes in 2016 alone. Similarly, there is an increasing need to evaluate developments in technology and social media sites themselves as they are progressively being relied upon during emergency events. In this study, we examine the crisis communications of the Kaikoura earthquake (New Zealand, 2016) using mainstream media content such as new stories, and online content such as Twitter data. A mixed method approach was employed, which combined content analysis with the application of a conceptual framework. The paper then presents (i) an analysis of crisis communications during the event, focusing on changes in media content and theme, (ii) the structure of online emergency response in the country and its affect on management and (iii) the barriers effecting emergency response in this case study.
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Lessons from Kaikoura
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Accepted/In Press date: 9 June 2017
e-pub ahead of print date: 30 September 2017
Published date: 30 September 2017
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Local EPrints ID: 413732
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/413732
ISSN: 2041-9031
PURE UUID: c32813cd-2df7-46f9-95d4-20d00f4e3fda
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Date deposited: 01 Sep 2017 16:31
Last modified: 16 Mar 2024 02:45
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Author:
Briony Gray
Author:
Mark J. Weal
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