Digitally enabled disaster response: the emergence of social media as boundary objects in a flooding disaster

Abstract

In recent times, social media has been increasingly playing a critical role in response actions following natural catastrophes. From facilitating the recruitment of volunteers during an earthquake to supporting emotional recovery after a hurricane, social media has demonstrated its power in serving as an effective disaster response platform. Based on a case study of Thailand flooding in 2011 – one of the worst flooding disasters in more than 50 years that left the country severely impaired – this paper provides an in‐depth understanding on the emergent roles of social media in disaster response. Employing the perspective of boundary object, we shed light on how different boundary spanning competences of social media emerged in practice to facilitate cross‐boundary response actions during a disaster, with an aim to promote further research in this area. We conclude this paper with guidelines for response agencies and impacted communities to deploy social media for future disaster response.

The use of prototypes to bridge knowledge boundaries in agile software development

“…Empirical research has explored the role of many different objects, including software specifications and project management tools (Barrett & Oborn, 2010), architectures (Bergman, Lyytinen, & Mark, 2007), drawings and models (Yoo, Boland, & Lyytinen, 2006), work products such as graphical presentations or documents (Kellogg, Orlikowski, & Yates, 2006;Newell & Edelman, 2008), timelines (Yakura, 2002), and social media (Tim, Pan, Ractham, & Kaewkitipong, 2017). While early research had a strong focus on objects and their properties (Bergman et al, 2007;Carlile, 2002), other studies have shifted attention towards what people do with objects, ie, use practices (e.g., Ewenstein & Whyte, 2009;Levina & Vaast, 2005;Nicolini, Mengis, & Swan, 2012).…”

Social Networking Sites in the Aftermath of a Crisis - the Enabling Role for Self-organization

“…In particular, SNS offer new ways for people to participate during crisis events, including seeking local and timely information, quickly activating their social networks, and making these efforts more visible. These features enable a new form of citizen journalism and active public participation during various crisis events [38], such as earthquakes (e.g., [43,70,88]), floods (e.g., [5,77,79]), terrorist attacks (e.g., [10,14,51]), hurricanes (e.g., [20,44,58]), and campus shootings (e.g., [27,46,79]). Different SNS are used in crisis-related communication, such as popular SNS like Facebook and Twitter but also more specific crisis-related platforms like Ushahidi [72].…”

“…There is evidence that people can collaborate effectively online without a central control mechanism during crisis circumstances [67]. These activities, which often happen simultaneously, depend on or should at least not interfere with each other [77]. Activities can take place both online (e.g., referencing other important content) and offline (e.g., delivering food and other crisis relief efforts).…”

Spontaneous emergence of Community OR: Self-initiating, self-organising problem structuring mediated by social media

“…Using social media data from a real situation, we analyse how individual actors framed their circumstances in communication with one another and how this affected their subsequent interpretation and decisions as the disaster unfolded. In particular, we aim to observe patterns of altruistic reinforcing behaviours in conjunction with the emergent problem solving approach of the online communities as a response to the disaster (Bui, 2016;Kaufhold & Reuter, 2016;Sebastian & Bui, 2009;Tim, Pan, Ractham, & Kaewkitipong, 2017).…”