Paper presented at Social Media Communication Strategies in Government 2013, Brisbane, 17 Sep. 2013.

1. From #qldfloods to #sandy:
Engaging with the Public
during Crisis Events
Assoc. Prof. Axel Bruns
ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation
Queensland University of Technology
Brisbane, Australia
a.bruns@qut.edu.au / @snurb_dot_info
http://mappingonlinepublics.net/ / http://socialmedia.qut.edu.au/

2. SOCIAL MEDIA DURING CRISES
• Various platforms:
– Facebook, Twitter – updates and information
– YouTube, Flickr, Twitpic – first-hand video and photos
– Google Maps, Ushahidi – map-based information mashups
 Different tools for different purposes
• Various levels of maturity:
– Uses and use practices still developing
– Different demographic reach
• Technological differences:
– e.g. Facebook: built around personal networks; semi-private; discussion threads
– e.g. Twitter: open, flat network; public #hashtag conversations; update stream

3. CRISIS COMMUNICATION RESEARCH AT QUT
• ARC Centre of Excellence for
Creative Industries & Innovation
(national, based at QUT)
– Project: Media Ecologies &
Methodological Innovation
• New methods to understand the
changing media environment
• Role of social media, especially
Twitter
http://mappingonlinepublics.net/
– Project: Social Media in Times of Crisis
• Focus on crisis communication
• Partnerships with Queensland
Department of Community Safety,
Eidos Institute
http://cci.edu.au/floodsreport.pdf

4. KEY CHALLENGES IN CRISIS COMMUNICATION
• Information dissemination:
– Crisis communication strategies of emergency services /
emergency media organisations
– Evaluating effectiveness and resonance
– Maintaining public visibility of social media accounts outside of
acute crisis situations
• Information discovery:
– (Early) detection of crisis events in social media feeds
– Identification and evaluation of crisis-relevant information
– Correlation of crowdsourced information with other crisis data

5. INFORMATION DISSEMINATION

6. THE QUEENSLAND FLOODS COMMUNITY
• Self-organisation:
– Rapid establishment of #qldfloods hashtag
– Ad hoc development of community structures
– Highlighting of leading accounts, vigilant against disruption
– Suspension of petty squabbles (e.g. state politics)
• Innovation and rapid prototyping:
– Adjunct hashtags (#Mythbuster, #bakedrelief)
– Sharing and gathering of online resources
– Additional tools (Google Maps, Ushahidi Maps)
– Emergency services rapidly adopting social media tools
(despite lack of established strategies)
 „Go where they are‟ rather than „build it and they will come‟
 See CCI Report: #qldfloods and @QPSMedia: Crisis Communication on Twitter
in the 2011 South East Queensland Floods (http://cci.edu.au/floodsreport.pdf)

7. #QLDFLOODS TWEETS
10 Jan 2011 11 Jan 2011 12 Jan 2011 13 Jan 2011 14 Jan 2011 15 Jan 2011

8. #QLDFLOODS @MENTIONS
mainstream
media
authorities

9. #EQNZ @MENTIONS (22 FEB. 2011)
mainstream media
authorities
utilities

10. RETWEETS: MESSAGE AMPLIFICATION

11. JUST THE FACTS: SELECTIVE RETWEETING

12. WHAT LINKS ARE SHARED?

13. #SANDY: URLS, PHOTOS, VIDEOS

14. #SANDY: RUMOURS, FAKES, MISINFORMATION?

15. MISINFORMATION ON SOCIAL MEDIA
• Concerns over misinformation:
– Rumours and fakes do circulate
– But: community addresses and counters misinformation
(unless obviously fake, and humorous)
– Majority of the most-shared #sandy images were legitimate (cf. The Guardian)
• Addressing misinformation:
– Monitor, engage, and counteract – e.g. #mythbuster
– Enlist community in fighting misinformation
– Encourage and acknowledge constructive behaviour
• Rumours:
– Not all rumours are detrimental
– Rumours keep a community together, sensitise it for bad news to come
– Rumours can help encourage people to make preparations “just in case”

16. INFORMATION DISCOVERY

17. KEY CHALLENGES
• Identification:
– Unforeseen events: need to track more than keywords („big data‟)
– Potential to identify emerging events from overall activity patterns
• Evaluation:
– Real? Hoax? Metaphor (“the bank has collapsed”)?
– May need semantic analysis, user profiling, independent verification
• Incorporation:
– Correlation and integration with standard emergency data sources
– Timeframes: how long until crowdsourced information expires?

18. 10 Jan 2011 11 Jan 2011 12 Jan 2011 13 Jan 2011 14 Jan 2011 15 Jan 2011
#QLDFLOODS FROM TOOWOOMBA TO BRISBANE

19. #EQNZ: KEY THEMES

20. #EQNZ: MENTIONS OF THE CTV BUILDING
Graph: Avijit Paul
(@cdtavijit); see
Paul & Bruns (2013)

21. COMMONPATTERNS
(Bruns & Stieglitz, 2012)

22. SOCIAL MEDIA AND CRISIS COMMUNICATION
• Social media research:
– Develop better tools and metrics for evaluating social media communication
– In-depth analysis of communication patterns reveals how social media are used
– Real-time analytics: highlight key current issues, identify weak signals of crisis
– Monitor and improve effectiveness of social media communication strategies by
emergency services
• Social media uses:
– Inform, share, amplify, support, reassure, organise
– Need to track and work with user community: follow their conventions
(e.g. #eqnz hashtag)
– Two-way communication where feasible – more than broadcast messages
– Provide community with tools to self-organise for resilience

23. MAINTAINING MOMENTUM
• Crisis communication across multiple events:
– What happens to accounts once the acute crisis phase is over?
– Which social media platforms are best for immediate dissemination, which for community organisation and
resilience?
– How do different events compare in their social media patterns and needs?
• Formalisation of social media practices:
– Where / how are social media units positioned within emergency management organisations?
– How can experiences be shared across the emergency management sector?
– Is there a need for standardisation of structures, policies, tools?
– How can innovation be fostered, evaluated, mainstreamed?
• Further research:
– Need to document experiences, share knowledge, develop new initiatives
– E.g. ARC Linkage project “Social Media in Times of Crisis” (QUT / DCS / Eidos Institute)
– E.g. QUT Centre for Emergency and Disaster Management
– How else can we help?

24. #EQNZ: VISIBILITY OF LEADING ACCOUNTS IN EACH EVENT

25. http://mappingonlinepublics.net/
@snurb_dot_info
@jeanburgess
@dpwoodford
@lena_sauter
@timhighfield
@cdtavijit
@socialmediaQUT