Understanding the Effectiveness of Social Media Based Crisis Communication During Hurricane Sandy

Rapid communication during extreme events is one of the critical aspects of successful crisis management strategies. Due to their ubiquitous nature, social media platforms offer a unique opportunity for crisis communication. In this study, about 52.5 million tweets related to hurricane Sandy are analyzed to assess the efficiency of social media communication during disasters and identify the contributing factors leading to effective crisis communication strategies. Efficiency of a social media user is defined as the ratio of attention gained over the number of tweets posted. A model is developed to explain efficient users based on several relevant features. Results indicate that during a crisis event few social media users are efficient in gaining attention. In addition, efficiency does not depend on the frequency of tweeting activity only; instead it depends on the number of followers and friends, user category, bot score (controlled by a human or a machine), and activity patterns (predictability of activity frequency). Since the proposed method is easy to implement, it can potentially detect effective social media users in real-time to communicate information and awareness to communities during a disaster.

• Supplemental Notes:
  • This paper was sponsored by TRB committee ABR20 Standing Committee on the Logistics of Disaster Response and Business Continuity.
• Authors:
  • Roy, Kamol Chandra
  • Hasan, Samiul
  • Sadri, Arif Mohaimin
  • Cebrian, Manuel
• Conference:
  • Transportation Research Board 97th Annual Meeting
  • Location: Washington DC, United States
  • Date: 2018-1-7 to 2018-1-11
• Date: 2018

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Digital/other
• Features: Figures; References; Tables;
• Pagination: 6p

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Communication; Crisis management; Disasters and emergency operations; Mathematical models; Real time information; Social media
• Identifier Terms: Hurricane Sandy, 2012; Twitter
• Subject Areas: Data and Information Technology; Security and Emergencies; Transportation (General);

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01662692
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: 18-03543
• Files: TRIS, TRB, ATRI
• Created Date: Mar 16 2018 9:50AM