social media in times of crisis: the australian perspective

Social Media in Times of Crisis: The Australian PerspectiveAssociate Professor Axel BrunsQueensland University of TechnologyBrisbane, Australia

@snurb_dot_info | http://mappingonlinepublics.net/

CRISIS COMMUNICATION RESEARCH AT QUT

o ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries & Innovation (national, based at QUT)

o Project: Media Ecologies & Methodological Innovation

o New methods to understand the changing media environment

o Role of social media, especially Twitter

http://mappingonlinepublics.net/

o Project: Social Media in Times of Crisis

o Focus on crisis communication

o Partnerships with Queensland Department of Community Safety, Eidos Institute

http://cci.edu.au/floodsreport.pdf

THE 2011 QUEENSLAND FLOODS

• Chronology:– December 2010 to January 2011: unprecedented rainfall

• Emergency declared for more than 50% of Queensland• Wivenhoe dam reaches 180% capacity

– December 2010: Flooding in northern Queensland

– January 2011: Floods in southeast Queensland• 10 January 2011: flash flooding in Toowoomba• 10 January 2011: ‘inland tsunami’ in the Lockyer Valley• 11 January 2011: flooding begins in Ipswich• 12-16 January 2011: major flooding in Brisbane

– January 2013: further minor flooding in parts of Brisbane

(ABC News)

(ABC News)

(news.com.au)

(ABC News)

(ABC News)

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

INFORMATION DISSEMINATION

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)

#QLDFLOODS 2011: MOST VISIBLE USERS

#QLDFLOOD(S) 2013: MOST VISIBLE USERS

#EQNZ: VISIBILITY OF LEADING ACCOUNTS IN EACH EVENT

MESSAGE AMPLIFICATION ON TWITTER

JUST THE FACTS: SELECTIVE RETWEETING

WHAT LINKS ARE SHARED?

CRISIS EVENT COMPARISON

● #qldfloods 2011

● #qldfloods 2013

● #eqnz 2011

● #eqnz 2013

INFORMATION DISCOVERY

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?

10 Jan 2011 11 Jan 2011 12 Jan 2011 13 Jan 2011 14 Jan 2011 15 Jan 2011

#QLDFLOODS FROM TOOWOOMBA TO BRISBANE

#EQNZ: KEY THEMES

#EQNZ: MENTIONS OF THE CTV BUILDING

Graph: Avijit Paul(@cdtavijit); see Paul & Bruns (2013)

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

http://mappingonlinepublics.net/@snurb_dot_info

@jeanburgess

@dpwoodford

@lena_sauter

@timhighfield

@cdtavijit

@socialmediaQUT – http://socialmedia.qut.edu.au/