01662692

Component

Rapid communication during extreme events is one of the critical aspects of successful crisis management strategies. Due to their ubiquitous nature, social media platforms offer a unique opportunity for crisis communication. In this study, about 52.5 million tweets related to hurricane Sandy are analyzed to assess the efficiency of social media communication during disasters and identify the contributing factors leading to effective crisis communication strategies. Efficiency of a social media user is defined as the ratio of attention gained over the number of tweets posted. A model is developed to explain efficient users based on several relevant features. Results indicate that during a crisis event few social media users are efficient in gaining attention. In addition, efficiency does not depend on the frequency of tweeting activity only; instead it depends on the number of followers and friends, user category, bot score (controlled by a human or a machine), and activity patterns (predictability of activity frequency). Since the proposed method is easy to implement, it can potentially detect effective social media users in real-time to communicate information and awareness to communities during a disaster.

This paper was sponsored by TRB committee ABR20 Standing Committee on the Logistics of Disaster Response and Business Continuity.

18-03543

English

6p

2018

Transportation Research Board 97th Annual Meeting

Digital/other

Figures; References; Tables

Communication; Crisis management; Disasters and emergency operations; Mathematical models; Real time information; Social media

Hurricane Sandy, 2012; Twitter

Data and Information Technology; Security and Emergencies; Transportation (General)

Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2018 Paper #18-03543

TRIS, TRB, ATRI

Jan 8 2018 10:52AM