Nonprofit and Public Sector Participation in Self‐Organizing Information Networks: Twitter Hashtag and Trending Topic Use During Disasters

Abstract

Twitter's hashtag categorizations and trending topics offer accessible tools through which people communicate and self-organize during disasters. This article examines Twitter communication networks, specifically the roles played by nonprofit and government agencies, that were engaged during four disasters: (1) The Boston Marathon bombing, (2) The West, Texas fertilizer plant explosion, (3) The Midwest spring flooding in Peoria, Illinois, and (4) The Moore, Oklahoma tornado. NodeXL and UCINET were used to collect and analyze data and determine network composition and structure. Nonprofit and government Twitter pages provided additional data. Findings indicate varied levels of engagement. While several state-level public agencies and regional nonprofits used Twitter with some regularity, many failed to participate in hashtag networks that penetrated disparate user groups. The article concludes with a discussion on how organizations might more effectively promote response efforts through this medium.

Closing the Citizen-Government Communication Gap: Content, Audience, and Network Analysis of Government Tweets

“…We assigned each user appearing in the network one of the following actor types: government, private citizen, news media representative, nonprofit organization, or for-profit organization. This taxonomy conforms to previous research (see Wukich and Steinberg 2014). Twitter user descriptions and websites provided necessary information to determine actor affiliation.…”

“…Government organizations have the opportunity to use social media channels to move timely, unique, and unfiltered information into the networks where citizens are talking about issues and inform them about actual risk and not just the perceived risk assessed by laymen or the community as a whole (Bruns et al 2012;Bruns 2014;Wukich and Steinberg 2014). Otherwise, false rumors can spread or people remain uninformed, and as a result, citizens may either fail to act or develop ad-hoc community structures that might even hinder official response activities.…”

“…Then it is possible to converge on the right information, reach the right audiences when they need it, and move people and organizations toward or away from response operations as needed. Past research, however, indicates limited government participation in these online conversations which was discussed by Sutton (2010) and Wukich and Steinberg (2014) for example.…”

“…In the United States, Twitter has 62.3 million users including not only millions of private citizens, but also representatives from government agencies, the news media, for-profit companies, and nonprofit organizations. Because of its diverse and extensive membership, Twitter as a platform can serve as a basis to close information gaps and support coordinated efforts to reduce risk (Bruns 2014;Wukich and Steinberg 2014). The state is an appropriate level of analysis because agencies have more available personnel and resources to develop and implement social media policy than local governments.…”

“…Previous studies have focused only on the disaster response and recovery phases of operations (Heverin and Zach 2012;Sutton et al 2013a,b;Wukich and Steinberg 2014). Our sample includes other phases of emergency management including prevention, mitigation, and preparedness in addition to general governance activities.…”