Towards social resilience: A quantitative and qualitative survey on citizens' perception of social media in emergencies in Europe

Abstract

Social media is increasingly being used during emergencies. Most available studies are focused on how citizens and/or authorities use these technologies in concrete events. However, larger quantitative studies with significant results on attitudes, needs and future plans of citizens in such events are not available -especially such of a comparative nature related to emergency services. As part of the EU project 'EmerGent' this article presents the findings of a survey of 1034 citizens across 30 European countries conducted between February and June 2015 to explore citizens' attitudes towards the use of social media for private purposes and in emergency situations. The article briefly compares these findings with a second survey conducted with 761 emergency service staff across 32 European countries from September to December 2014. The aim of the overall study is to discuss citizens' attitudes towards social media in emergencies in order to derive challenges and opportunities for social resilience.

Avoiding chaotic use of social media before, during, and after emergencies: Design and evaluation of citizens’ guidelines

“…Despite the potentials of citizens’ use of social media before, during, or after emergencies, their activities potentially increase the complexity of tasks, uncertainty, and pressure for emergency services (Perng et al., ), for instance, by irrelevant and inconsistent information, information overload, and mistakes due to chaotic and disorganized work of volunteers (Kaewkitipong et al., ; Valecha et al., ). Thus, guidelines may motivate citizens to foster good practice and prevent misuse of social media during emergencies (Reuter & Spielhofer, ). Previous research indicates that a variety of general or emergency‐specific guidelines exist, but most of them focus on the authorities’ or organizations’ perspective of social media use.…”

“…However, one remaining issue is that citizens’ activities coordinated via social media have the potential to increase the complexity of tasks, uncertainty, and pressure for emergency services, for instance, if volunteers themselves are endangered (Perng et al., ). Given the risks of chaotic social media use (Kaewkitipong, Chen, & Ractham, ), guidelines may help authorities implement social media into their organizational culture (Reuter, Ludwig, Kaufhold, & Spielhofer, ) and encourage citizens to foster good practice and prevent misuse of social media during emergencies (Reuter & Spielhofer, ).…”

Ranking of Social Media Alerts with Workload Bounds in Emergency Operation Centers

“…In this context, PIOs of formal emergency management services have started using social media channels to communicate effectively with public and source relevant information for actionable intelligence. The recent reports and surveys of formal response organizations [16], [17] recognize social media as a novel information channel for improving operational response coordination. However, a research question of how and when to effectively monitor social media for finding relevant information remains open.…”

Keep Them Engaged: Romanian County Inspectorates for Emergency Situations’ Facebook Usage for Disaster Risk Communication and Beyond

“…Meanwhile, stakeholders were less likely to interact with messages about natural hazards, particularly if they incorporated educational content. These observations suggest that, while at the moment Romanian local emergency management agencies take advantage of Facebook to create and maintain relationships with their stakeholders, they bypass opportunities to implement communication strategies for effective disaster risk reduction.Emergency management agencies are encouraged to leverage SM in order to engage with their stakeholders, especially considering the citizens' growing demand for their permanent SM presence [9,10]. Recently, numerous recommendations have emerged from research and practice to guide emergency managers through the process of implementing and maintaining SM pages.…”

“…Emergency management agencies are encouraged to leverage SM in order to engage with their stakeholders, especially considering the citizens' growing demand for their permanent SM presence [9,10]. Recently, numerous recommendations have emerged from research and practice to guide emergency managers through the process of implementing and maintaining SM pages.…”