The anatomy of natural disasters on online media: hurricanes and wildfires

Abstract

Increasing prevalence and scale of natural disasters fuel the need for new approaches to evaluating, and eventually mitigating, their impact. This analysis quantifies and compares online and social media attention to hurricanes and wildfires over time and geographic space. Hurricanes studied included: Michael, Maria, Irma, Harvey, and Florence. Fires studied included: Woolsey, Mendocino, Carr, and Camp. It was hypothesized that total volume of online media content, measured in posts and mentions, varied measurably over the phases of the disasters. Furthermore, it was hypothesized that the anatomy of the disaster, specifically the number and timing/dates, of posts and mentions varied inside versus outside impacted zones/geographies. Social media content, in sheer volume, related to hurricanes was larger than that devoted to fires. A mismatch between the time periods that people post about natural disasters on social media and the times when aid is needed to rebuild was found. Mentions fell rapidly after landfall for hurricanes, and long before fires were officially contained or extinguished. This rapid fall in media attention may leave directly impacted populations without help and support during the rebuilding process. Greater understanding of volume of posts over time, or the anatomy of disasters in online media space, may help government agencies, private industry, and relief organizations understand public attentiveness before, during, and after various types of natural disasters.

On the prevalence of Forest Fires in Spain

“…Unsurprisingly, the mass media give extended exposure to the awful sight of burning trees when wildfires strike (cf. Olynk Widmar et al (2022)) but, as Doerr and Santín (2016) observe, the social perception of wildfires, as an utter bad, further becoming increasingly frequent and devastating, is rather mistaken.…”

Fusing Social Media, Remote Sensing, and Fire Dynamics to Track Wildland-Urban Interface Fire

“…Such standardization will lead to the extension of analyses and their compatibility with other disasters [34,35]. In WUI fire areas, few studies have been performed on fusing geospatial and RS data [36][37][38], internet posts [39][40][41], and fire spread dynamics [42][43][44][45]. Such a fusion is necessary in order to acquire situational awareness and execute decision analysis more effectively and efficiently.…”

Assessing community response to wildfire smoke: A multimethod study using social media

“…Social media is a dynamic tool for studying disaster responses over time (Wang & Ye, 2018; Olynk et al. 2022), detecting wildfires (Boulton et al., 2016), predicting air pollution associated with wildfires (Ford et al., 2017; Sachdeva et al., 2018) and communicating associated risks (Kent & Capello, 2013; Slavkovikj et al., 2014; Steelman et al., 2015; Sugerman et al., 2012). Numerous studies have been conducted using Sina Wiebo, a Chinese social media platform, as a proxy method for inferring chronically poor AQ in lieu of direct measures from AQ monitors (Tao et al., 2016; Wang et al., 2015; Wang et al., 2017).…”