Investigating the aftermath of the Türkiye 2023 earthquake: exploring post-disaster uncertainty among Syrian migrants using social network analysis with public health approach

Abstract

ObjectivesOn February 6th, 2023, a doublet earthquake struck Türkiye, impacting more than 15 million people including migrants, and resulting in over 50,000 deaths. The Syrian migrants experience multiple uncertainties in their daily lives which are further compounded by multifaceted challenges of the post-disaster environment. Social media was used intensively and with impunity in this environment and thereby provides a window into the explicit and implicit dynamics of daily life after a disaster. We aimed to explore how a post-disaster environment potentially generates new uncertainties or exacerbating pre-existing ones for migrants through social media analysis with an indirect perspective, in the context of 2023-Earthquake in Türkiye and Syrian migrants.MethodsSocial network analysis was used to analyze Twitter-data with the hashtags ‘Syrian’ and ‘earthquake’ during a 10-day period beginning on March 22nd, 2023. We calculated network metrics, including degree-values and betweenness-centrality and clustered the network to understand groups. We analyzed a combination of 27 tweets with summative content analysis using a text analysis tool, to identify the most frequently used words. We identified the main points of each tweet and assessed these as possible contributors to post-disaster uncertainty among migrants by using inductive reasoning.ResultsThere were 1918 Twitter users, 274 tweets, 124 replies and 1726 mentions. Discussions about Syrian migrants and earthquakes were established across various groups (ngroups(edges > 15) = 16). Certain users had a greater influence on the overall network. The nine most frequently used words were included under uncertainty-related category (nmost_frequently_used_words = 20); ‘aid, vote, house, citizen, Afghan, illegal, children, border, and leave’. Nine main points were identified as possible post-disaster uncertainties among migrants.ConclusionThe post-disaster environment has the potential to exacerbate existing uncertainties, such as being an undocumented migrant, concerns about deportation and housing, being or having a child, inequality of rights between being a citizen and non-citizen, being in minority within minority, political climate of the host nation and access to education or to generate new ones such equitable distribution of aid, which can lead to poor health outcomes. Recognizing the possible post-disaster uncertainties among migrants and addressing probable underlying factors might help to build more resilient and healthy communities.

Deprem Sonrasi Ri̇skleri̇ Anlamak: Olasi Marmara Depremi̇ne Yöneli̇k Bi̇r Anali̇z

“…Bir diğer çalışma ise Türkiye'de göçmen statüsünde yer alan Suriyelilerin, deprem felaketi sonrasında karşı karşıya kaldığı olumsuz etmenlerin değerlendirilerek halk sağlığı üzerinde nasıl bir çıktı sunduğunun incelenmesini amaçlanmaktadır (Aktuna & Bahar-Özvarış, 2023). Afet nedeniyle karşı karşıya kalınan negatif durumdan hareketle acil durum toplanma alanlarının incelenmesi, uygunluk durumunun değerlendirilmesi de literatürde incelenen bir başka konu olarak 6 Şubat depremi sonrası gözlemlenmektedir (Atmaca vd., 2023) (Karakas vd., 2023).…”

Mapping cooperation: insights into Colombia's humanitarian response to migration from Venezuela

“…Although SNA is not a new method (Zhang, 2010), it is considered a relatively underexplored area in migration studies (Bilecen et al, 2018;Adcox, 2021). Recently, SNA has been applied in various ways: to understand how migrants build relationships in host communities (Bilecen et al, 2018;Adcox, 2021), to facilitate content analysis of migration-related sentiments (Aktuna and Bahar-Özvaiş, 2023;Subay and Gökalp, 2023); to examine how migrant networks have evolved (Ryan and D'Angelo, 2018); and in migrant community integration (Snel et al, 2021).…”