Rapid collaborative knowledge building via Twitter after significant geohazard events

Abstract

Abstract. Twitter is an established social media platform valued by scholars as an open way to disseminate scientific information and to publicly discuss research results. Scientific discussions are widely viewed by the media who can then pass on information to the wider public. Here, we take the example of two 2018 earthquake-related events which were widely commented on Twitter by geoscientists: the Palu Mw 7.5 earthquake and tsunami in Indonesia and the long-duration Mayotte island seismo-volcanic crisis. We build our study on a content and contextual analysis of selected Twitter threads about the geophysical characteristics of these events. From the analysis of these two examples, we show that Twitter promotes very rapid building of knowledge – in the minutes to hours and days following an event – via an efficient exchange of information and active discussion between the scientists themselves and with the public. We discuss the advantages and potential pitfalls of this relatively novel way to make scientific information accessible to scholarly peers and to lay people. We argue that scientific discussion on Twitter breaks down the traditional ivory towers of academia, following growing trends towards open science, and may help people to understand how science is developed, and, in the case of natural/environmental hazards, to better understand their risks.

Citizen Seismology Without Seismologists? Lessons Learned From Mayotte Leading to Improved Collaboration

“…On the one hand the STTM members had strong expectations on scientists, and on the other hand they showed a lack of trust toward them. While citizens were debating on Facebook, scientists were gathering on Twitter, another social media, to discuss explanations for this seismic phenomenon (Lacassin et al, 2019). Both citizen and researcher communities were thus discussing about the same topic, but on different social media.…”

Earthquakes Reconnaissance Data Sources, a Literature Review

“…[25] SAR [10], [39] InSAR [40], [41], [42], [43 [52], [53], [54] Closed-circuit television videos (CCTV) [55], [56] Missions deployed, or missions that have had their results published during the period covered by this literature review are Albania [46,57], Puerto Rico [44,45], Mayotte [51], Mexico [27][28][29], Palu -North Sulawesi (Indonesia) [52,55,58], Hualien (China) [50],…”

“…In-situ structural observations sometimes include records not limited to the mechanism of structural failure and observations of undamaged structures and the extend and scale of damage to structures at a global and component level [34]. To develop a detailed building damage map after an earthquake or a hurricane, it is necessary to identify the damage using a building-bybuilding approach [10,52]; most building damage assessments reviewed relied on a footon-ground approach [60]. This detailed inspection is the most reliable [21] and generates invaluable information on the seismic performance of the affected building stock [30].…”

Citizen Participation in Responding to Natural Disasters Through Twitter Messages

“…We also want to provide facts about citizen contributions in helping to build an understanding of events that occur with data obtained from citizen science. This is because the understanding and information about natural disasters in the past few decades happened very slowly and in a long process, this process is usually carried out by researchers in the scope of activities that are closed and in months to find out the characteristics of the events that occurred [14]. followed by another large earthquake that occurred on August 5 and August 19, 2018, which caused severe damage in various places on the island of Lombok.…”