Twittering the Little India Riot: Audience responses, information behavior and the use of emotive cues

Pang, Natalie; Ng, Joshua

doi:10.1016/j.chb.2015.08.047

Cited by 26 publications

(21 citation statements)

References 38 publications

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“…Because SNS enable users to interact, collaborate, and upload user-generated content in real time from devices with internet access such as smartphones, the platforms can be of tremendous use during highly dynamic crisis situations (Mendoza, Poblete, & Castillo, 2010). In addition, these real-time, two-way communication and many-to-many information broadcasting tools allow active public participation during crisis events by making it possible to browse others' published information, post, and leave public comments (e.g., Palen, Vieweg, Liu, & Hughes, 2009;Pang & Ng, 2016). Thus, even people who are not at the crisis scene can make sense of events by accessing information posted in SNS.…”

Section: Social Networking Sites Twitter and Sense-makingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Collective sense-making in times of crisis: Connecting terror management theory with Twitter user reactions to the Berlin terrorist attack

Fischer-Preßler

Schwemmer

Fischbach

2019

Computers in Human Behavior

106

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Recent terrorist attacks have increased the need to examine the public's response to such threats. This study focuses on the content of Twitter messages related to the 2016 terrorist attack on the Berlin Christmas market. We complement the collective sense-making perspective with the terror management theory (TMT) perspective to understand why people used Twitter in the aftermath of the attack. We use structural topic modeling to analyze our dataset of 51,000 tweets. Our results indicate that people used Twitter to make sense of the events and as part of typical reactions in TMT, that is, to validate their own worldviews and maintain their self-esteem. In accordance with TMT, we found that people used Twitter to search for meaning and value, show sympathy for victims and their families, or call for tolerance, but also to express nationalistic sentiment and greater hostility toward values and views other than their own. We further show that topics varied over the course of the attack and in the days that followed. Whereas in the first two days there were many emotion-related tweets and operational updates, subsequent days saw more opinionrelated tweets. Our findings contribute to the literature on collective behavior in the aftermath of terrorist attacks.

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Section: Social Networking Sites Twitter and Sense-makingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Collective sense-making in times of crisis: Connecting terror management theory with Twitter user reactions to the Berlin terrorist attack

Fischer-Preßler

Schwemmer

Fischbach

2019

Computers in Human Behavior

106

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“…Numerous studies have therefore aimed to understand how crises responders do and should communicate with affected citizens (e.g., Mergel, 2014;Takahashia, et al, 2015;Wukich & Mergel, 2015). The opposite view -crisis communication by citizens with and about crises responders -has received considerably less attention (Pang & Ng, 2016). This one-sided view is problematic, as the ways crisis communication is accomplished is shifting, primarily due to the growing role of social media during crisis events.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

What do citizens communicate about during crises? Analyzing twitter use during the 2011 UK riots

Gascó

Bayerl

Denef

et al. 2017

Government Information Quarterly

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The use of social media during crises has been explored in a variety of natural and man-made crisis situations. Yet, most of these studies have focused exclusively on the communication strategies and messages sent by crisis responders. Surprisingly little research has been done on how crisis publics (i.e., those people interested in or affected by the crisis) use social media during such events. Our article addresses this gap in the context of citizens' Twitter use during the 2011 riots in the UK. Focusing on communications with and about police forces in two cities, we analyzed 5,984 citizen tweets collected during the event for content and sentiment. Comparing the two cases, our findings suggest that citizens' Twitter communication follows a general logic of concerns, but can also be influenced very easily by single, non-crisis related events such as perceived missteps in a police force's Twitter communication. Our study provides insights into citizens' concerns and communication patterns during crises adding to our knowledge about the dynamics of citizens' use of social media in such times. It further highlights the fragmentation in Twitter audiences especially in later stages of the crisis. These observations can be utilized by police forces to help determine the appropriate organizational responses that facilitate coping across various stages of crisis events. In addition, they illustrate limitations in current theoretical understandings of crisis response strategies, adding the requirement for adaptivity, flexibility and ambiguity in organizational responses to address the observed plurivocality of crisis audiences.

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“…While the police and emergency personnel were attempting to extricate the body, the crowd of onlookers, comprising mostly other migrant workers, turned aggressive, hurling abuses and physical objects at the personnel. The story about Singapore's 'Little India Riot' broke on Twitter at 9:57 pm (Pang and Ng, 2016).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The riot incident, which has received attention widely from regional as well as international communities, triggered criticism of immigrant workers and debates about the country's heavy reliance on foreign labor (Shen and Armstrong, 2013). Pang and Ng (2016), the only other study on the incident thus far, has looked at Twitter's role in crisis communication during and after the Little India riot. No study has yet investigated how the incident was discussed in news media and social networking sites.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Framing social conflicts in news coverage and social media: A multicountry comparative study

Ahmed

Cho

Jaidka

2018

International Communication Gazette

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This study attempts to understand how geopolitical proximity influences framing of social conflicts in news coverage and social media discussions. Within the context of 2013 Little India riot in Singapore, a manual content and automated linguistic analyses are conducted on 227 news articles and 4,495 tweets. A multinational comparison suggests that news media follow the traditional hypothesis of geopolitical proximity and international news coverage. However, Twitter seems less constrained by geopolitical boundaries of news making allowing citizens to bypass press censorship in an alternate information system. The reasons for framing differences across mediums and between countries are explored. Implications of these findings and limitations of the study are discussed.

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Twittering the Little India Riot: Audience responses, information behavior and the use of emotive cues

Cited by 26 publications

References 38 publications

Collective sense-making in times of crisis: Connecting terror management theory with Twitter user reactions to the Berlin terrorist attack

Collective sense-making in times of crisis: Connecting terror management theory with Twitter user reactions to the Berlin terrorist attack

What do citizens communicate about during crises? Analyzing twitter use during the 2011 UK riots

Framing social conflicts in news coverage and social media: A multicountry comparative study

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