Tweet me home: Exploring information use on Twitter in crisis situations

Nirupama Dharmavaram Sreenivasan*, Chei Sian Lee, Dion Hoe Lian Goh

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

25 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Microblogs have received considerable attention in crisis communication due to its real-time nature. Despite this, research has not adequately addressed how users make use of information amongst the vast amount of real-time content available in a crisis. Hence, this study aims to understand information use in crisis situations by employing microblogs. Taylor's [4] information use environment (IUE) model provides theoretical background for this study. According to this model, there are eight classes of information use. We focus on the IUE surrounding the 2010 Icelandic volcano eruption. Our study uses Twitter to analyze users' postings related to this volcano. The types of postings were ascertained using content analysis. Our findings suggest enlightenment to be the largest category of information use. Other categories such as status messages, problem understanding and factual data were also reported. Further, humour not previously identified by Taylor [4] emerged as a substantial class of information use.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationOnline Communities and Social Computing - 4th International Conference, OCSC 2011, Held as Part of HCI International 2011, Proceedings
Pages120-129
Number of pages10
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2011
Externally publishedYes
Event4th International Conference on Online Communities and Social Computing, OCSC 2011, Held as Part of HCI International 2011 - Orlando, FL, United States
Duration: Jul 9 2011Jul 14 2011

Publication series

NameLecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
Volume6778 LNCS
ISSN (Print)0302-9743
ISSN (Electronic)1611-3349

Conference

Conference4th International Conference on Online Communities and Social Computing, OCSC 2011, Held as Part of HCI International 2011
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityOrlando, FL
Period7/9/117/14/11

ASJC Scopus Subject Areas

  • Theoretical Computer Science
  • General Computer Science

Keywords

  • crisis communication
  • information use
  • Microblogs
  • real-time communication
  • Twitter

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