Rapid collaborative knowledge building via Twitter after significant geohazard events

Abstract

Abstract. Twitter is an established social media platform valued by scholars as an open way to disseminate scientific information and to publicly discuss research results. Scientific discussions on Twitter are viewed by the media, who can then pass on information to the wider public. Social media is used widely by geoscientists, but there is little documentation currently available regarding the benefits or limitations of this for the scientist or the public. Here, we use the example of two 2018 earthquake-related events that were widely commented on by geoscientists on Twitter: the Palu Mw 7.5 earthquake and related tsunami in Indonesia and the long-duration Mayotte island seismovolcanic crisis in the Indian Ocean. We built our study on a content and contextual analysis of selected Twitter threads about the geophysical characteristics of these events. From the analysis of these two examples, we show that Twitter promotes a very rapid building of knowledge in the minutes to hours and days following an event via an efficient exchange of information and active discussion between the scientists themselves and the public. We discuss the advantages and potential pitfalls of this relatively novel way of making scientific information accessible to scholarly peers and lay people. We argue that scientific discussion on Twitter breaks down the traditional “ivory tower” of academia, contributes to the growing trend towards open science, and may help people to understand how science is developed and, in turn, to better understand the risks related to natural/environmental hazards.

The 2018-2019 seismo-volcanic crisis east of Mayotte, Comoros islands: seismicity and ground deformation markers of an exceptional submarine eruption

“…The largest one, on November 11 th , 2018, well recorded worldwide, awoke the interest of the seismological community and the media (e.g. Wei-Haas, 2018;Lacassin et al, 2020). This long lasting monochromatic VLP event was not preceded by a strong earthquake, but there are earthquakes embedded in the signal, during the occurrence of the VLP event, especially at the beginning of the signal (Fig.…”

Editorial: Geoscience communication – Planning to make it publishable

“…Vicari et al, 2019), social media (e.g. Lacassin et al, 2020), and videogames (e.g. McGowan and Scarlett, 2020) and then went on to analyse data from these sources using new https://doi.org/10.5194/gc-2021-13 Preprint.…”

“…Illingworth, 2020b), descriptive coding or the analysis of text within secondary data (e.g. Lacassin et al, 2020), these approaches can offer insight and highlight patterns and themes within the written data. In conjunction, quantitative linguistics, whereby the number of times a theme is alluded to within the text, can be a useful method of pattern identification (e.g.…”

Earthquakes Reconnaissance Data Sources, a Literature Review

“…[26] SAR [12], [40] InSAR [41], [42], [43], [ [53], [54], [55] Closed-circuit television videos (CCTV) [56], [57] Missions deployed, or missions that have had their results published during the period covered by this literature review are Albania [47,58], Puerto Rico [45,46], Mayotte [52], Mexico [28][29][30], Palu -North Sulawesi (Indonesia) [53,56,59], Hualien (China) [51], Central Italy [32,33,35,60], Muisne (Ecuador) [35], Nepal [1,40,49], and Napa -California (USA) [54,55], Haiti [12] and L'Aquila (Italy) [14,37]. The location of major earthquakes epicentres from 2014 -2019 included as case studies in this literature review is depicted in Figure 3.…”

“…In-situ structural observations sometimes include records not limited to the mechanism of structural failure and observations of undamaged structures and the extend and scale of damage to structures at a global and component level [35]. To develop a detailed building damage map, it is necessary to identify the damage for building-by-building [12,53] after an earthquake or hurricanes; most building damage assessment relied on a foot-on-ground approach [61]. This detailed inspection is the most reliable [22] and generates invaluable information on the seismic performance of the affected building stock [31].…”