Warning tweets: serial transmission of messages during the warning phase of a disaster event

Serial transmission - the passing on of information from one source to another - is a phenomenon of central interest in the study of informal communication in emergency settings. Microblogging services such as Twitter make it possible to study serial transmission on a large scale and to examine the...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Information, communication & society communication & society, 2014-07, Vol.17 (6), p.765-787
Main Authors: Sutton, Jeannette, Spiro, Emma S., Johnson, Britta, Fitzhugh, Sean, Gibson, Ben, Butts, Carter T.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Communication
disaster
Disasters
Emergencies
Emergency warning programs
Fires
Government agencies
Information communication
Information sharing
Interests
Mathematical models
Messages
Networks
online communication
Organizations
Prediction
Programming (Broadcast)
Public Officials
Serials
Social media
Social networks
Strategic planning
Strategy
Threat
Twitter
warning
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Summary:Serial transmission - the passing on of information from one source to another - is a phenomenon of central interest in the study of informal communication in emergency settings. Microblogging services such as Twitter make it possible to study serial transmission on a large scale and to examine the factors that make retransmission of messages more or less likely. Here, we consider factors predicting serial transmission at the interface of formal and informal communication during disaster; specifically, we examine the retransmission by individuals of messages (tweets) issued by formal organizations on Twitter. Our central question is the following: How do message content, message style, and public attention to tweets relate to the behavioral activity of retransmitting (i.e. retweeting) a message in disaster? To answer this question, we collect all public tweets sent by a set of official government accounts during a 48-hour period of the Waldo Canyon wildfire. We manually code tweets for their thematic content and elements of message style. We then create predictive models to show how thematic content, message style, and changes in number of Followers affect retweeting behavior. From these predictive models, we identify the key elements that affect public retransmission of messages during the emergency phase of an unfolding disaster. Our findings suggest strategies for designing and disseminating messages through networked social media under periods of imminent threat.
ISSN:1369-118X
1468-4462
DOI:10.1080/1369118X.2013.862561