Sense‐making in social media during extreme events

Stieglitz, Stefan; Bunker, Deborah; Mirbabaie, Milad; Ehnis, Christian

doi:10.1111/1468-5973.12193

Cited by 127 publications

(100 citation statements)

References 36 publications

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“…They replaced several omitted variables, such as the owner of the page, the number of followers, and differences in usage habits between countries, each of which could affect the outcome. Previous research has established that com-munication patterns differ considerably between crises [51]. Unsurprisingly, the dummy variables had large coefficients, which shows that they indeed had a strong influence on the results.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 80%

The Diffusion of Crisis-Related Communication on Social Media: An Empirical Analysis of Facebook Reactions

Roß

Potthoff

Majchrzak

et al. 2018

Proceedings of the Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences

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During a crisis, authorities need to effectively disseminate information. We address the problem of deciding how crisis-related information should be published on Facebook to reach as many people as possible. We examine three recent terrorist attacks in Berlin, London and Stockholm. Our specific focus lies with official Facebook pages by municipalities and emergency service agencies. We collected posts about the events, along with the number of shares, likes and emotional reactions to them. In a regression analysis, several variables were examined that capture decisions on which information to publish and how. Posts containing condolences were found to result in three times as many emotional reactions as other posts, all other variables held constant. Images and videos positively affected the number of reactions by factors of 2.2 and 3.9, respectively, while text length negatively affected the number of shares. These results will help in the development of effective guidelines.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 80%

The Diffusion of Crisis-Related Communication on Social Media: An Empirical Analysis of Facebook Reactions

Roß

Potthoff

Majchrzak

et al. 2018

Proceedings of the Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…Prior studies have shown that during crises and risk events, people engage in several forms of communication to learn about the specific situation, in order to gain control and reduce their personal uncertainties (Lachlan et al, 2016(Lachlan et al, , 2009). Social media platforms, such as Facebook or Twitter initially gained importance, as they became a highly utilized resource for communication and information seeking during crisis events (Stieglitz et al, 2017b). Acar and Muraki (2011) examined crisis communication on Twitter during the tsunami in Japan in 2011 and revealed that people who were directly involved, tweeted about their unsafe situation and survival related topics while people from indirectly related areas tweeted to inform others that they were safe.…”

Section: Crisis Communication In Social Mediamentioning

confidence: 99%

Threat or Opportunity? - Examining Social Bots in Social Media Crisis Communication

Brachten¹,

Mirbabaie²,

Stieglitz³

et al. 2018

Australasian Conference on Information Systems 2018

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Crisis situations are characterised by their sudden occurrence and an unclear information situation. In that context, social media platforms have become a highly utilised resource for collective information gathering to fill these gaps. However, there are indications that not only humans, but also social bots are active on these platforms during crisis situations. Although identifying the impact of social bots during extreme events seems to be a highly relevant topic, research remains sparse. To fill this research gap, we started a bigger project in analysing the influence of social bots during crisis situations. As a part of this project, we initially conducted a case study on the Manchester Bombing 2017 and analysed the social bot activity. Our results indicate that mainly benign bots are active during crisis situations. While the quantity of the bot accounts is rather low, their tweet activity indicates a high influence.

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“…People publish situationally relevant information in social media sites based on their personal perceptions, activities, and what they gather from other media sites [17]. This enables the public to get insights into the situation first-hand close to real-time [17,36]. Moreover, news and media agencies publish real-time updates and announcements on Twitter during crisis events.…”

Section: Crisis Communication In Social Mediamentioning

confidence: 99%

Crisis Communication on Twitter during a Global Crisis of Volkswagen - The Case of "Dieselgate"

Stieglitz¹,

Mirbabaie²,

Potthoff³

2018

Proceedings of the 51st Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences

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In this study, we investigate the communication behaviour in Twitter during the rise of a corporate crisis. In September 2015, the emission scandal of Volkswagen (also known as "Dieselgate") became public. We collected Twitter data and analysed approximately 400,000 tweets regarding the Volkswagen crisis. We take different perspectives on the data, by 1) separating the overall communication in peak and quiet phases, 2) analysing the sentiment in each phase, 3) looking at specific tweet contents, and 4) using statistical analyses to determine the significance of differences. Furthermore, we mapped the publishing behaviour of official Volkswagen accounts to the situational crisis communication theory (SCCT). The findings suggest that Volkswagen followed a strategy that is not covered by SCCT, i.e. keeping silent. Volkswagen's tweets were not able to reduce the emotionality and sentiment of the ongoing Twitter discussion. Instead, even during quiet phases, the communication remained rather negative. companies develop and adjust communication strategies for improving the company's image and diminishing the impact of a crisis situation [6]. For companies it is getting increasingly important to learn how to react on social media during crises, because it might affect their reputation and market position seriously and permanently [43]. Crises-related communication is often highly recognised and strongly discussed in social media, resulting in peaks, emotional expressions, and information sharing. While there is already some understanding of the general dynamics of social media crisis communication, there is little knowledge about how companies behave during a crisis and if they are able to affect the communication and users' attitudes [23,35]. Based on the possibility to easily and quickly share a message with a potentially large audience, people frequently use online social media to communicate about crisis events [40,44]. The emerging importance of social media and its utilisation is therefore affecting the way how companies need to behave during crises [34].In this paper, we investigate the Twitter communication that was generated during the rise of the "Dieselgate", which was a scandal of global scope and Volkswagen was threatened by litigation in many countries. The global scope of this scandal represented a threat to VW's performance. This case exemplifies the more general question of how emotionally charged discussions can diffuse through microblogging during scandals that can carry substantive performance implications. Even though some case studies on crisis communication in social media exist [38], there is still little understanding about how companies react in such situations. Therefore, in this case study, we provide and analyse empirical data to understand corporate behaviour during a global crisis situation. Our study is guided by the following research questions (RQ):RQ1a: How do Twitter users communicate in the rise of VW's "Dieselgate"? RQ1b: How can the Twitter communication behaviour of VW during a ri...

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Sense‐making in social media during extreme events

Cited by 127 publications

References 36 publications

The Diffusion of Crisis-Related Communication on Social Media: An Empirical Analysis of Facebook Reactions

The Diffusion of Crisis-Related Communication on Social Media: An Empirical Analysis of Facebook Reactions

Threat or Opportunity? - Examining Social Bots in Social Media Crisis Communication

Crisis Communication on Twitter during a Global Crisis of Volkswagen - The Case of "Dieselgate"

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