European emergency managers on social media: institutional arrangements and guidelines

Abstract

PurposeThis paper offers an empirical overview of European emergency managers' institutional arrangements and guidelines for using social media in risk and crisis communication.Design/methodology/approachThe authors collected and analysed material including publicly accessible relevant legal acts, policy documents, official guidelines, and press reports in eight European countries – Germany, Italy, Belgium, Sweden, Hungary, Finland, Norway, and Estonia. Additionally, the authors carried out 95 interviews with emergency managers in the eight countries between September 2019 and February 2020.FindingsThe authors found that emergency management institutions' social media usage is rarely centrally controlled and social media crisis communication was regulated with the same guidelines as crisis communication on traditional media. Considering this study's findings against the backdrop of existing research and practice, the authors find support for a “mixed arrangement” model by which centralised policies work in tandem with decentralised practices on an ad hoc basis.Practical implicationsComparative insights about institutional arrangements and procedural guidelines on social media crisis communication in the studied countries could inform the future policies concerning social media use in other emergency management systems.Originality/valueThis study includes novel, cross-national comparative data on the institutional arrangements and guidelines for using social media in emergency management in the context of Europe.

Mitigating vulnerabilities with social media: A cross‐national study of European disaster managers' practices

“…To advance the field of disaster research, it is necessary to look beyond single cases and find common patterns across events (Tierney, 2013; Wolbers et al, 2021). While overviews of disaster managers' social media usage exist (e.g., Flizikowski et al, 2014; Reuter et al, 2016; Singla & Agrawal, 2022; Torpan et al, 2023; Wukich, 2019; Zhang et al, 2019), cross‐national data on how disaster management institutions use social media is limited, especially from the perspective of how they may affect social vulnerability (see Orru et al, 2022). We contribute to this line of research by analysing official documents and 95 expert interviews in eight European countries—Germany, Italy, Belgium, Sweden, Hungary, Finland, Norway, and Estonia—and looking for institutional social media practices that may concern pre‐determined vulnerable groups as well as situations stemming from dynamic, contextual factors where potentially anyone may become more vulnerable (see Morsut et al, 2022).…”