A social bot in support of crisis communication: 10-years of @LastQuake experience on Twitter

Abstract

Social media such as Facebook or Twitter are at present considered part of the communication systems of many seismological institutes, including the European–Mediterranean Seismological Center (EMSC). Since 2012, the EMSC has been operating a hybrid Twitter system named @LastQuake comprising a bot for rapid information on global felt earthquakes and their effects, which is complemented by manual moderation that provides quasi-systematic and rapid answers to users' questions, especially after damaging earthquakes and earthquake sequences. The 2022 release of @LastQuake transcends a mere alert service and possessess additional capabilities, including fighting against misinformation and enhancing earthquake risk awareness and preparedness by exploiting the teachable moments opened by widely felt but non-damaging earthquakes. @LastQuake significantly increases the visibility and audience of the European–Mediterranean Seismological Center services, even in regions where its smartphone application (app) and websites are well known. It also contributes to increasing the volume of crowdsourced eyewitness observations that are collected, notably through the publication of rapid non-seismic-wave-based detections, as well as by reaching out to Twitter users who post about felt experiences through individual invitation messages. Although its impact, especially in raising awareness and preparedness is difficult to evaluate, @LastQuake efficiently supports crisis communication after large earthquakes and receives positive feedback from users for satisfying identified information needs of eyewitnesses automatically and in a timely manner. This study shares the experience gained over the last 10 years of operating the bot, presents the impact of users' feedback on empirically driving its evolution, and discusses the ways by which we can move toward a more data-driven assessment of its impact.

Mapping automatic social media information disorder. The role of bots and AI in spreading misleading information in society

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History and activities of the European-Mediterranean Seismological Centre

“…LastQuake is a multi-component information and crowdsourcing system consisting of a smartphone application, a website for mobile devices and a Twitter bot (Bossu et al, 2018a(Bossu et al, , 2023. The eyewitness engagement strategy is based on crowdsourced detection, where felt earthquakes are detected not by seismic data, but by the online behavior of eyewitnesses immediately after they feel the shaking.…”

“…The refactoring of the systems is the first of its kind and was long overdue. It started with a new mobile website in 2020, followed by a new version of the Twitter bot (Twitter is now called X) in February 2022 (Bossu et al, 2023). The new version of the smartphone app is currently being tested and a new desktop website was launched at the end of June 2023.…”

Prebunking earthquake predictions on social media

“…Indeed, after a significant earthquake timely information is critical in order to fill the information void and prevent false information from circulating (Fallou et al, 2020). Social media bots such as the @LastQuake initiative developed by the Euro-Mediterranean Seismological Center (EMSC) on Twitter enables the center to respond to the need for information within a few tens of seconds (Bossu et al, 2018(Bossu et al, , 2023(Bossu et al, , 2024Steed et al, 2019). By freeing itself from the constraints of human writing speed or working hours, automating the publication of part of the information guarantees fast, global and uninterrupted information.…”

“…The EMSC is one of the world's leading institutions for public seismic information offering information on earthquakes and their effects (Bossu et al, 2024). Over the years, it has developed an innovative and multi-channel earthquake information system comprising a mobile application, a desktop and mobile website, a Twitter bot, named @LastQuake, and recently a Telegram bot with the same name (Bossu et al, 2018(Bossu et al, , 2023. @LastQuake is a hybrid system comprising both automatic and manual tweets (the messages published on Twitter) about earthquakes felt around the world.…”