The Use of Social Media in Disasters

Speaker: Mel Taylor

Affiliation: University of Western Sydney

Time: Monday 22/08/2011 from 14:00 to 15:00

Venue: Access Grid UWS. Presented from Parramatta (EB.1.32), accessible from Campbelltown (26.1.50) and Penrith (Y239).

Abstract:

This presentation will provide an overview of a project funded by Emergency Media and Public Affairs (EMPA) to investigate the use of social media in emergencies and disasters. The research was conducted in two stages: face-to-face interviews and an online survey.

Interviews were conducted with people involved actively in administering and using community-based Facebook sites during recent natural disaster events in Queensland; flash flooding in Toowoomba, floods in Brisbane and Ipswich, and Cyclone Yasi. These interviews were conducted in early February 2011 and investigated the motivation and circumstances around social media involvement, what people did, how they used information and administered/monitored Facebook sites. Information from these interviews was used to inform the content of the online survey.

The online survey was conducted from 11th-25th March 2011, data were collected from 1146 respondents. The aims of the survey were to:

• explore and characterise social media use in disasters generally, e.g. what people are doing,
• where they are going, how they are finding sites/information, their trust in the information they get, how they might access social media to get help (latter aspect informed by data from a study by the American Red Cross in August 2010),
• investigate specific use of social media in relation to a recent disaster event (main focus on events in Australia and New Zealand in Jan/Feb 2011),
• investigate use of 'official' online information sources- councils, government, first responder agencies, etc, including websites and social media in relation to a specific emergency, and
• investigate the psychosocial aspects of social media use in the disaster context.

Initial data analyses were presented at the EMPA annual conference in April and further analysis, reporting, and dissemination are ongoing. The presentation will include an overview of the interview findings and survey data, and will lead to broader discussion around the differential use of social media channels, harnessing the information used in social media, and challenges for organisations.

Biography:

Mel is an Occupational Psychologist and Senior Research Fellow working in the Disaster Response and Resilience Research Group at the University of Western Sydney. She works in the area of protective behaviour and emerging threats. She has a specific interest in risk perception, protection motivation, and preparedness and response to low probability/high consequence events; such as chemical, biological or radiological (CBR) terrorism and emerging infectious diseases and zoonoses, such as Hendra virus. She has studied population compliance with health protective behaviours in the context of pandemic influenza, horse owner and sheep producer biosecurity practices, and public preparedness for all hazard events. Her current research is investigating anticipated public response to terrorist incidents and how the public is likely to respond to risk communication messaging. She is also working on the use of social media and disasters, investigating the integration of social media and official sources of information, as well as the role of social media as psychological first aid and as a tool for community resilience-building.

Mel came to Australia, from the UK, in 2006. Her previous employment was with the UK Ministry of Defence where she worked in human factors research; optimising human performance in complex systems, and in occupational psychology; running military survey programs.