Evaluating elements of risk communication in risk messaging from officials on Twitter in the 2021 Marshall fire

The Marshall fire in Boulder County, Colorado sparked and spread into nearby urban areas in an unusually fast timeframe. Without a widely used warning system to alert the public, officials used social media as one warning information outlet to encourage rapid, large-scale evacuations. Tweets (N = 1316) published by 101 media and government Twitter (now X) accounts on the day of the fire were examined for risk messaging components and coded according to which components were included. The risk messaging components used were derived from the Protective Action Decision Model and the Extended Parallel Process Model. Tweets from the National Weather Service in Boulder were evaluated using recommendations from NOAA’s Hazard Risk Communication guide. The risk messaging components that improved engagement were dependent on the type of account doing the tweeting, typically falling into the expertise or “job” of the entity represented by that account. Overall, the inclusion of environmental cues in raw video from the scene of the fire proved to be powerful in boosting engagement across numerous different types of accounts. The National Weather Service fulfilled the eleven recommendations from NOAA’s HRC guide that was used in this research, and the use of lively language, vivid images, empathy, and the “all-clear” was noted among the well-performing tweets. This study provides helpful information to those posting on social media in an official capacity during a wildfire by examining how risk communication theory and recommendations performed in a real-world scenario.