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Didn’t roger that: Social media message complexity and situational awareness of emergency responders

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  • Pogrebnyakov, Nicolai
  • Maldonado, Edgar

Abstract

This study investigates the role of social media in situational awareness in the emergency response domain. It builds a theoretical model to that effect, the first such effort to the best of our knowledge, and empirically investigates one of the components of the model, text complexity. The empirical analysis was performed on a dataset of 999,243 messages from 997 Facebook pages of US police departments in 2009—2016. Messages were classified into four categories based on their utilitarian or hedonic nature: emergency preparedness, emergency response, post-emergency and user engagement. Three measures of complexity were used, each capturing different aspects of text. Contrary to the hypothesis formulated in the study, messages in the post-emergency and the emergency response categories were found to be the most complex. With text complexity on social media being an underexplored area, these results suggest a need for an explicit study of the link between social media messages and situational awareness, and indicate a need for practitioners to revisit social media practices.

Suggested Citation

  • Pogrebnyakov, Nicolai & Maldonado, Edgar, 2018. "Didn’t roger that: Social media message complexity and situational awareness of emergency responders," International Journal of Information Management, Elsevier, vol. 40(C), pages 166-174.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:ininma:v:40:y:2018:i:c:p:166-174
    DOI: 10.1016/j.ijinfomgt.2018.02.004
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Altay, Nezih & Green III, Walter G., 2006. "OR/MS research in disaster operations management," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 175(1), pages 475-493, November.
    2. Yates, Dave & Paquette, Scott, 2011. "Emergency knowledge management and social media technologies: A case study of the 2010 Haitian earthquake," International Journal of Information Management, Elsevier, vol. 31(1), pages 6-13.
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    1. Son, Jaebong & Lee, Hyung Koo & Jin, Sung & Lee, Jintae, 2019. "Content features of tweets for effective communication during disasters: A media synchronicity theory perspective," International Journal of Information Management, Elsevier, vol. 45(C), pages 56-68.
    2. Nicole Olynk Widmar & Kendra Rash & Courtney Bir & Benjamin Bir & Jinho Jung, 2022. "The anatomy of natural disasters on online media: hurricanes and wildfires," Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, Springer;International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, vol. 110(2), pages 961-998, January.
    3. Hamed Farahmand & Wanqiu Wang & Ali Mostafavi & Mikel Maron, 2022. "Anomalous human activity fluctuations from digital trace data signal flood inundation status," Environment and Planning B, , vol. 49(7), pages 1893-1911, September.
    4. Jamali, Mehdi & Nejat, Ali & Ghosh, Souparno & Jin, Fang & Cao, Guofeng, 2019. "Social media data and post-disaster recovery," International Journal of Information Management, Elsevier, vol. 44(C), pages 25-37.
    5. Acharya, Abhilash & Singh, Sanjay Kumar & Pereira, Vijay & Singh, Poonam, 2018. "Big data, knowledge co-creation and decision making in fashion industry," International Journal of Information Management, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 90-101.

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