Tweeting and Tornadoes (original) (raw)
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Tweet Type, Location and Popularity: Case Study Hurricane Sandy
Social media and network data have provided researchers with unprecedented opportunities to study human dynamics. One of the potentially most important uses of these data is the systematic study of human behavior during and after emergency events such as hurricanes or terrorist attacks. Our workshop will bring together researchers and policy makers to learn about and explore social and communication data to better understand and respond to these dangerous events.
Utilization of Real-Time Social Media Data in Severe Weather Events
According to a recent report by the Department of Homeland Security, “social media and collaborative technologies have become critical components of emergency preparedness, response, and recovery” (2013). These technologies are critical because they provide a centralized mechanism for two-way communication before, during, and after disasters that allows federal/state/local officials, emergency managers, the media, and affected communities to disseminate and receive information about a hazard in near real-time. Recognizing the potential utility of these technologies, the National Weather Service (NWS) recently began experimenting with the use of social media to educate the public and share critical information about weather, water, and climate issues as part of its effort to build a Weather-Ready Nation. As yet, however, we know relatively little about who participates in the exchange of weather, water, and climate information that occurs on social media platforms and how that exchan...
Communication Quarterly, 2015
ABSTRACT Little is known about the ways in which social media, such as Twitter, function as conduits for information related to crises and emergencies. The current study analyzed the content of over 1,500 Tweets that were sent in the days leading up to the landfall of Hurricane Sandy. Time-series analyses reveal that relevant information became less prevalent as the crisis moved from the prodromal to acute phase, and information concerning specific remedial behaviors was absent. Implications for government agencies and emergency responders are discussed.
Screaming into the Wind: Examining the Volume and Content of Tweets Associated with Hurricane Sandy
Communication Studies, 2014
ABSTRACT Social media have gained increased use as sources of information, including information related to risks and crises. The current study explores Twitter use in the days leading up to the landfall of Hurricane Sandy in October, 2012. It provides an overview of the type of content tweeted, along with an assessment of the utility of this content in mitigating similar emergencies in the future. Tweets were collected at multiple time points. Tweet rate increased during the storm, and specific keywords were not used extensively. Government and organizational responses were largely absent. Finally, Twitter was used more for emotional release than to provide information.
2010
We analyze microblog posts generated during two recent, concurrent emergency events in North America via Twitter, a popular microblogging service. We focus on communications broadcast by people who were "on the ground" during the Oklahoma Grassfires of April 2009 and the Red River Floods that occurred in March and April 2009, and identify information that may contribute to enhancing situational awareness (SA). This work aims to inform next steps for extracting useful, relevant information during emergencies using information extraction (IE) techniques.
Using Twitter to Analyze the Effect of Hurricanes on Human Mobility Patterns
Understanding human mobility patterns becomes essential in crisis management and response. This study analyzes the effect of two hurricanes in the United States on human mobility patterns, more specifically on trip distance (displacement), radius of gyration, and mean square displacement, using Twitter data. The study examines three geographical regions which include urbanized areas (Houston, Texas; Miami-Dade County, Florida) and both rural and urbanized areas (North and South Carolina) affected by hurricanes Matthew (2016) and Harvey (2017). Comparison of movement patterns before, during, and after each hurricane shows that displacement and activity space decreased during the events in the regions. Part of this decline can be potentially tied to observed lower tweet numbers around supply facilities during hurricanes, when many of them are closed, as well as to numerous flooded and blocked roads reported in the affected regions. Furthermore, it is shown that displacement patterns can be modeled through a truncated power-law before, during, and after the analyzed hurricanes, which demonstrates the resilience of human mobility behavior in this regard. Analysis of hashtag use in the three study areas indicates that Twitter contributors post about the events primarily during the hurricane landfall and to some extent also during hurricane preparation. This increase in hurricane-related Twitter topics and decrease in activity space provides a tie between changed travel behavior in affected areas and user perception of hurricanes in the Twitter community. Overall, this study adds to the body of knowledge that connects human mobility to natural crises at the local level. It suggests that governmental and rescue operations need to respond to and be prepared for reduced mobility of residents in affected regions during natural crisis events.
Analysis of Twitter Users’ Sharing of Official New York Storm Response Messages
Med 2.0, 2014
Background: Twitter is a social network where users read, send, and share snippets of text ("tweets"). Tweets can be disseminated through multiple means; on desktop computers, laptops, and mobile devices, over ethernet, Wi-Fi or cellular networks. This redundancy positions Twitter as a useful tool for disseminating information to the public during emergencies or disasters. Previous research on dissemination of information using Twitter has mostly investigated the characteristics of tweets that are most effective in raising consumer awareness about a new product or event. In particular, they describe characteristics that increase the chance the messages will be shared ("retweeted") by users. In comparison, little has been published on how information from municipal or state government agencies spreads on Twitter during emergency situations. Retweeting these messages is a way to enhance public awareness of potentially important instructions from public officials in a disaster. Objective: The aim of this study is to (1) describe the tweets of select New York State and New York City agencies by public officials surrounding two notable recent winter storms that required a large-scale emergency response, and (2) identify the characteristics of the tweets of public officials that were most disseminated (retweeted). Methods: For one week surrounding Superstorm Sandy (October 2012) and the winter blizzard Nemo (February 2013), we collected (1) tweets from the official accounts for six New York governmental agencies, and (2) all tweets containing the hashtags #sandy (or #nemo) and #nyc. From these data we calculated how many times a tweet was retweeted, controlling for differences in baseline activity in each account. We observed how many hashtags and links each tweet contained. We also calculated the lexical diversity of each tweet, a measure of the range of vocabulary used. Results: During the Sandy storm, 3242 shared (retweeted) messages from public officials were collected. The lexical diversity of official tweets was similar (2.25-2.49) and well below the average for non-official tweets mentioning #sandy and #nyc (3.82). Most official tweets were with substantial retweets including a link for further reading. Of the 448 tweets analyzed from six official city and state Twitter accounts from the Nemo blizzard, 271 were related to the storm, and 174 had actionable information for the public. Actionable storm messages were retweeted approximately 24x per message, compared to 31x per message for general storm information. Conclusions: During two weather emergencies, New York public officials were able to convey storm-related information that was shared widely beyond existing follower bases, potentially improving situational awareness and disaster response. Official Sandy tweets, characterized by a lower lexical diversity score than other city-and Sandy-related tweets, were likely easier to understand, and often linked to further information and resources. Actionable information in the Nemo blizzard, such as specific instructions and cancellation notices, was not shared as often as more general warnings and "fun facts," suggesting agencies mix important instructions with more general news and trivia, as a way of reaching the broadest audience during a disaster.
Emergency information diffusion on online social media during storm Cindy in U.S
International Journal of Information Management, 2018
Social media plays a critical role in propagating emergency information during disasters. Governmental agencies have opened social media accounts for emergency communication channels. To understand the underlying mechanism of user behaviors and engagement, this study employs social network analysis to investigate information network and diffusion across news, weather agencies, governmental agencies, organizations and the public during the 2017 Storm Cindy in the U.S. This study identified certain types of Twitter users (news and weather agencies) were dominant as information sources and information diffusers (the public and organizations). However, the information flow in the network was controlled by numerous types of users including news, agency, weather agencies and the public. The results highlighted the importance of understanding the unique characteristics of social media and networks for better emergency communication system.
Microblogging during two natural hazards events
Proceedings of the 28th international conference on Human factors in computing systems - CHI '10, 2010
We analyze microblog posts generated during two recent, concurrent emergency events in North America via Twitter, a popular microblogging service. We focus on communications broadcast by people who were "on the ground" during the Oklahoma Grassfires of April 2009 and the Red River Floods that occurred in March and April 2009, and identify information that may contribute to enhancing situational awareness (SA). This work aims to inform next steps for extracting useful, relevant information during emergencies using information extraction (IE) techniques.
Crisis Communication Patterns in Social Media during Hurricane Sandy
Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board
Hurricane Sandy was one of the deadliest and costliest of hurricanes of the past few decades. Many states experienced significant power outage; however, many people used social media to communicate while having limited or no access to traditional information sources. Using machine learning techniques, this study explored the evolution of various communication patterns and determined user concerns that emerged over the course of Hurricane Sandy. The original data included ∼52M tweets coming from ∼13M users between October 14, 2012 and November 12, 2012. A topic model was run on ∼763K tweets from the top 4,029 most frequent users who tweeted about Sandy at least 100 times. Some 250 well-defined communication patterns based on perplexity were identified. Conversations of the most frequent and relevant users indicate the evolution of numerous storm-phase (warning, response, and recovery) specific topics. People were also concerned about storm location and time, media coverage, and activ...