Social Networking, Social Media and Complex Emergencies: an ...

Bunce, S., Partridge, H. & Davis, K.
(2012) ‘Exploring information experience
using social media during the 2011
Queensland Floods: a pilot study’,
Australian Library Journal, vol. 61, no. 1,
pp. 34-45.
Keywords: Australia, floods, monitoring,
awareness.
This paper presents findings from a pilot study on the
information experiences of people using social media
during the Brisbane River flooding in 2010/11. Data
was collected through semi-structured interviews.
Results revealed four different categories describing
participant experiences:
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Category 1: Monitoring information – use of
social media networks for the purpose of
staying informed
Category 2: Community and communication
– communities were reached through
established social networking groups or
through traditional media, who sourced
information from response agency social
media platforms
Category 3: Affirmation – information
seeking for affirmation or assurance (e.g.
safety of family/friends/property) or use of
social media platforms to provide assurance
of own safety to family and friends
Category 4: Awareness – development or
expansion of awareness of an event (e.g.
to understand how flooding had affected
different areas or ability to attend work).
Results also indicated that the flooding event was
viewed by participants as having three distinct
phases: (i) pre-flooding – during this time Category
2 and 4 information was most useful; (ii) flooding –
Category 3 and 1 information most useful; and (3)
post-flooding – Category 2 and 3 information was
most useful.
Cameron, M.A., Power, R., Robinson, B.
& Yin, J. (2012) Emergency Situation
Awareness from Twitter for crisis
management, 21st Annual Conference
on World Wide Web Companion,
pp. 695-698.
Keywords: emergency, situation, awareness,
Twitter.
This paper explores ongoing work with the Australian
Government to detect, assess and summarise
messages of interest for crisis coordination
published on Twitter. The paper presents a
description of the Emergency Situation Awareness –
Automated Web Text Mining (ESA-AWTM) and how it
may be used in emergency management scenarios.
The paper explores the problem that while social
media provides a rich source of information about an
emergency, agency officers have a limited amount of
time to scan and assess if the information is worthy
of deeper analysis. As a result, tools are needed to
address the following issues (p. 696):
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Detect unexpected or unusual incidents,
possibly ahead of official communications
Condense and summarise messages about
an incident maintaining awareness of
aggregated content without having to read
individual messages
Classify and review high-value messages
during an incident (e.g. messages describing
infrastructure damage or cries for help);
understand the impact of an incident on
people and infrastructure
Social Networking, Social Media and Complex Emergencies:
an Annotated Bibliography
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