Keynote presented at the Social Media in Times of Crisis conference, Brisbane, 4 April 2013.

1. Researching Social
Media in Times of Crisis
Associate Professor Axel Bruns
Queensland University of Technology
Brisbane, Australia
@snurb_dot_info | http://mappingonlinepublics.net/

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
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

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 @MENTIONS
mainstream
media
authorities

8. MESSAGE AMPLIFICATION ON TWITTER

9. JUST THE FACTS: SELECTIVE RETWEETING

10. WHAT LINKS ARE SHARED?

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

12. INFORMATION DISCOVERY

13. 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?

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

15. #EQNZ: KEY THEMES

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

17. COMMONPATTERNS
(Bruns & Stieglitz, 2012)

18. 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

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