Engage and Mobilize! Understanding Evolving Patterns of Social Media Usage in Emergency Management

TL;DR

This study shows that social media has transitioned from a supplementary tool to a mainstream, cross-phase resource in Emergency Management across local and non-local agencies in the U.S. and Europe. Using a mixed-method design (surveys of about 150 practitioners and 11 in-depth interviews), the authors reveal four core social-media processes—dissemination, collection, engagement/mobilization, and cooperation—and document evolving practices, including interactive public communication, reliance on volunteer networks (e.g., VOST, CERT), and cross-organizational credibility building. Key contributions include a four-channel communication model, insights into the benefits and challenges of multimodal data, platform fragmentation, and policy/technological needs for future analytics and AI-enabled tools. The findings have practical implications for policy design, cross-platform analytics, multilingual and transnational engagement, and socio-technical system design to better support EM decision-making and public communication during all phases of disasters.

Abstract

The work of Emergency Management (EM) agencies requires timely collection of relevant data to inform decision-making for operations and public communication before, during, and after a disaster. However, the limited human resources available to deploy for field data collection is a persistent problem for EM agencies. Thus, many of these agencies have started leveraging social media as a supplemental data source and a new venue to engage with the public. While prior research has analyzed the potential benefits and attitudes of practitioners and the public when leveraging social media during disasters, a gap exists in the critical analysis of the actual practices and uses of social media among EM agencies, across both geographical regions and phases of the EM lifecycle - typically mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery. In this paper, we conduct a mixed-method analysis to update and fill this gap on how EM practitioners in the U.S. and Europe use social media, building on a survey study of about 150 professionals and a follow-up interview study with 11 participants. The results indicate that using social media is no longer a non-traditional practice in operational and informational processes for the decision-making of EM agencies working at both the local level (e.g., county or town) and non-local level (e.g., state/province, federal/national) for emergency management. Especially, the practitioners affiliated with agencies working at the local level have a very high perceived value of social media for situational awareness (e.g., analyzing disaster extent and impact) and public communication (e.g., disseminating timely information and correcting errors in crisis coverage). We conclude with the policy, technological, and socio-technical needs to design future social media analytics systems to support the work of EM agencies in such communication including the applications of AI.

Figures (6)

• Figure 1: Frequency of social media use in professional and personal capacity. (Reactively implies the use only when an incident occurs.)
• Figure 2: Perceived value of social media by survey participants in EM profession.
• Figure 3: Perceived value of social media for situational awareness by survey participants across agency levels.
• Figure 4: Perceived value of social media for public communication by survey participants across agency levels.
• Figure 5: Extended model of the communication processes among diverse practitioners and the public. Interviews reveal new methods, challenges, and approaches across these processes, especially with respect to cooperation and engagement/mobilization, where the crisis informatics literature has relatively little focus.