Social media and crisis management: CERC, search strategies, and Twitter content

The current manuscript explores Twitter use and content in the precrisis stages of a major weather event in the northeast. A multi-level content analysis of tweets collected in the lead up to landfall suggests that emergency management agencies largely underutilized the medium, and that actionable i...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Computers in human behavior 2016-01, Vol.54, p.647-652
Main Authors: Lachlan, Kenneth A., Spence, Patric R., Lin, Xialing, Najarian, Kristy, Del Greco, Maria
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Crisis communication
Emergency management
Risk communication
Social media
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Summary:The current manuscript explores Twitter use and content in the precrisis stages of a major weather event in the northeast. A multi-level content analysis of tweets collected in the lead up to landfall suggests that emergency management agencies largely underutilized the medium, and that actionable information was easier to find when searching along localized hashtags. The findings are discussed in terms of the Crisis and Emergency Risk Communication (CERC) model of crisis management and implications for emergency management agencies. •We examined a large number of tweets in the days leading up to a major snowstorm.•Twitter content dealt more with affective orientation than actionable information.•Actionable information was easier to find using localized hashtags.•Emergency management agencies were largely absent from the conversation.
ISSN:0747-5632
1873-7692
DOI:10.1016/j.chb.2015.05.027