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‘Breaking’ news: uncovering sense-breaking patterns in social media crisis communication during the 2017 Manchester bombing

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  • Milad Mirbabaie
  • Julian Marx

Abstract

Individuals, (media-) organisations, and crisis responders who are involved in ad hoc crisis communication steadily deploy social media to contribute to collective sense-making as an endeavour to create meaning in highly uncertain situations. Exerting sense-giving in order to shape others’ conceptions is causally preceded by an initial breakup of existing understanding. This study aims to explore patterns of sense-breaking in social media crisis communication and its impact on collective sense-making and sense-giving. To this end, we conducted a case study of the Manchester bombing in 2017, including a social network analysis of 708,147 Twitter postings and a content analysis of 2006 original tweets. We found individual role types to be initiators of sense-breaking in early crisis stages when uncertainty is at its height. Exerting successive sense-giving becomes more challenging if the collective sense-making has progressed along with the sequence of events. This understanding aims to encourage emergency management organisations to move their sense-giving actions closer to the point in time when sense-breaking occurs.

Suggested Citation

  • Milad Mirbabaie & Julian Marx, 2020. "‘Breaking’ news: uncovering sense-breaking patterns in social media crisis communication during the 2017 Manchester bombing," Behaviour and Information Technology, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 39(3), pages 252-266, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:tbitxx:v:39:y:2020:i:3:p:252-266
    DOI: 10.1080/0144929X.2019.1611924
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