Twitter data from the 2019–20 Australian bushfires reveals participatory and temporal variations in social media use for disaster recovery

Abstract

Social media platforms have proved to be vital sources of information to support disaster response and recovery. A key issue, though, is that social media conversation about disasters tends to tail off after the immediate disaster response phase, potentially limiting the extent to which social media can be relied on to support recovery. This situation motivates the present study of social media usage patterns, including who contributes to social media around disaster recovery, which recovery activities they contribute to, and how well that participation is sustained over time. Utilising Twitter data from the 2019–20 Australian bushfires, we statistically examined the participation of different groups (citizens, emergency agencies, politicians and others) across categories of disaster recovery activity such as donations & financial support or mental health & emotional support, and observed variations over time. The results showed that user groups differed in how much they contributed on Twitter around different recovery activities, and their levels of participation varied with time. Recovery-related topics also varied significantly with time. These findings are valuable because they increase our understanding of which aspects of disaster recovery currently benefit most from social media and which are relatively neglected, indicating where to focus resources and recovery effort.

Reducing Social Media Attention Inequality in Disasters: The Role of Official Media During Rainstorm Disasters in China

“…For example, in China, a centralized state, the government enjoys a high level of trust among the people (Zhong et al 2021). In federal or less centralized countries, official media functions be assumed by emergency agencies or politicians through online platforms (Ogie et al 2022). When they release information, they can promptly steer public opinion on social media toward paying attention to disaster-affected areas (Carley et al 2016).…”

“…Official media exhibit thematic selectivity when disseminating disaster information, and different thematic contents demonstrate varying abilities in disaster response mobilization (Roitman et al 2020;Ogie et al 2022). Whether originating from the government or emergency agencies, official media often provide information support with urgent disaster warnings, which are typically taken seriously by social media users and widely shared.…”

Pregnant women’s experiences of extreme exposure to bushfire associated smoke: a qualitative study

“…A key strategy was the use of peer support using social networks in both the response and recovery phases of bushfire emergency management. Peer support has been well-described in the aftermath of environmental disasters [25,26] mainly focusing on psychosocial support [27]. In our study, peer support was also sought through a community of mothers in the midst of the disaster-for example, on the timing of evacuation, or how to mitigate the impacts and intrusion of smoke.…”

Analyzing and Leveraging Social Media Disaster Communication of Natural Hazards: Community Sentiment and Messaging Regarding the Australian 2019/20 Bushfires

“…This study extends the risk communication governance agents proposed by [7], suggesting that there are six principal communication agents, including the public (community), disaster management agencies (government), politicians (government), scientific experts, broadcast media and the private sector (i.e., organizations that are not owned or operated by a government). It should be noted that Ogie et al [32] defined a category of "scientists and experts"; however, this study instead proposes to narrow the definition of this group to scientific experts and, therefore, categorize individuals without scientific qualifications outside of this category. This category includes self-proclaimed experts or citizen journalists [33,34] who used social media to build their reputation as an expert and network following, usually on a niche topic.…”