A comparative study of Twitter utilization in disaster management between public and private organizations

Abstract

Twitter has become a commonly used platform by both public and private organizations to assist with the dissemination of information related to disaster management. This research makes use of a mixed‐method approach in determining the extent and manner in which Twitter is used to disseminate disaster management information by both public and private organizations. This research found that public organizations are bound by strict regulations resulting in a lower volume and smaller variety of disaster‐related information being disseminated. The nature of an organization and the processes of decision making therein are suggested to influence the ability of an organization to successfully use Twitter as an effective tool for disaster management. Organizations in Thailand currently underutilize Twitter for disaster management, as neither public nor private organizations use Twitter as a multidirectional communication disaster management tool.

COVID-19 in the Twitterverse, from epidemic to pandemic: information-sharing behavior and Twitter as an information carrier

“…Including the 2009 H1N1 pandemic, Twitter has often been used for public health surveillance (PHS) (Jones 2011;Mandeville et al, 2014;Merchant et al, 2011;Rocklöv et al, 2019) and crisis management (Cho et al, 2013;Du et al, 2019;Gunawong et al, 2019;Jung & Park, 2014;Shan et al, 2019). Despite the frequent application of Twitter as PHS due to its popularity and accessibility, there is little research viewing Twitter as an information channel during a pandemic, despite its heavy use for information sharing in disaster settings.…”

The Making of #CovidTwitter: Who Were the Loudest “Covid Influencers” and What Did They Say About the COVID-19 Pandemic?

“…A considerable amount of research has explored the impacts of social media in the context of numerous crises, significant events, and societal concerns. Examples include research on social media use in relation to disasters (Gunawong et al, 2019), disease contact tracing (e.g., Masri et al, 2019), as well as for organizing social movement such as the youth climate movements (Boulianne et al, 2020). Social media such as Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube have also become vital-and possibly ubiquitous for many-in news and information ecosystems and this seems to have been exacerbated during the pandemic and in periods of lockdown.…”

Twitter, disasters and cultural heritage: A case study of the 2015 Nepal earthquake

“…Researchers have studied several aspects of Twitter during disasters such as crisis communication (Bruns & Burgess, 2014;Gunawong et al, 2019;Wang & Zhuang, 2017), situation awareness (Karami et al, 2020;Vieweg et al, 2010) and information credibility (Gupta & Kumaraguru, 2012;Mendoza et al, 2010;Setiawan et al, 2020) by focusing on case studies from different parts of the world. Murthy and Longwell (2013) use the case of 2010 Pakistan floods to understand the patterns of tweeting behaviour of the public based on their location.…”

“…As a result, the role of Twitter in disaster management has gained tremendous attention amongst researchers. Researchers have studied several aspects of Twitter during disasters such as crisis communication (Bruns & Burgess, 2014; Gunawong et al., 2019; Wang & Zhuang, 2017), situation awareness (Karami et al., 2020; Vieweg et al., 2010) and information credibility (Gupta & Kumaraguru, 2012; Mendoza et al., 2010; Setiawan et al., 2020) by focusing on case studies from different parts of the world.…”