Paper presented at a Project EPIC symposium, Boulder, 23 Oct 2013.

1. Social Media in Times of Crisis:
The Australian Perspective
Associate Professor Axel Bruns
Queensland University of Technology
Brisbane, Australia
@snurb_dot_info | http://mappingonlinepublics.net/

2. CRISIS COMMUNICATION RESEARCH AT QUT
o ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative
Industries & Innovation (national,
based at QUT)
o Project: Media Ecologies &
Methodological Innovation
o New methods to understand the
changing media environment
o Role of social media, especially Twitter
http://mappingonlinepublics.net/
o Project: Social Media in Times of Crisis
o Focus on crisis communication
o Partnerships with Queensland
Department of Community Safety,
Eidos Institute
http://cci.edu.au/floodsreport.pdf

3. THE 2011 QUEENSLAND FLOODS
•
Chronology:
– December 2010 to January 2011: unprecedented rainfall
• Emergency declared for more than 50% of Queensland
• Wivenhoe dam reaches 180% capacity
– December 2010: Flooding in northern Queensland
– January 2011: Floods in southeast Queensland
•
•
•
•
10 January 2011: flash flooding in Toowoomba
10 January 2011: „inland tsunami‟ in the Lockyer Valley
11 January 2011: flooding begins in Ipswich
12-16 January 2011: major flooding in Brisbane
– January 2013: further minor flooding in parts of Brisbane

4. (ABC News)

5. (ABC News)

6. (news.com.au)

7. (ABC News)

8. (ABC News)

9. KEY CHALLENGES IN CRISIS COMMUNICATION
• Information dissemination:
– Crisis communication strategies of emergency services /
emergency media organisations
– Evaluating effectiveness and resonance
– Maintaining public visibility of social media accounts outside of
acute crisis situations
• Information discovery:
– (Early) detection of crisis events in social media feeds
– Identification and evaluation of crisis-relevant information
– Correlation of crowdsourced information with other crisis data

10. INFORMATION DISSEMINATION

11. THE QUEENSLAND FLOODS COMMUNITY
•
Self-organisation:
–
–
–
–
•
Rapid establishment of #qldfloods hashtag
Ad hoc development of community structures
Highlighting of leading accounts, vigilant against disruption
Suspension of petty squabbles (e.g. state politics)
Innovation and rapid prototyping:
–
–
–
–
Adjunct hashtags (#Mythbuster, #bakedrelief)
Sharing and gathering of online resources
Additional tools (Google Maps, Ushahidi Maps)
Emergency services rapidly adopting social media tools
(despite lack of established strategies)
 „Go where they are‟ rather than „build it and they will come‟
 See CCI Report: #qldfloods and @QPSMedia: Crisis Communication on Twitter
in the 2011 South East Queensland Floods (http://cci.edu.au/floodsreport.pdf)

12. #QLDFLOODS 2011: MOST VISIBLE USERS

13. #QLDFLOOD(S) 2013: MOST VISIBLE USERS

14. #EQNZ: VISIBILITY OF LEADING ACCOUNTS IN EACH EVENT

15. MESSAGE AMPLIFICATION ON TWITTER

16. JUST THE FACTS: SELECTIVE RETWEETING

17. WHAT LINKS ARE SHARED?

18. CRISIS EVENT COMPARISON
#qldfloods 2011
#qldfloods 2013
#eqnz 2011
#eqnz 2013

19. INFORMATION DISCOVERY

20. KEY CHALLENGES
• Identification:
– Unforeseen events: need to track more than keywords („big data‟)
– Potential to identify emerging events from overall activity patterns
• Evaluation:
– Real? Hoax? Metaphor (“the bank has collapsed”)?
– May need semantic analysis, user profiling, independent verification
• Incorporation:
– Correlation and integration with standard emergency data sources
– Timeframes: how long until crowdsourced information expires?

21. #QLDFLOODS FROM TOOWOOMBA TO BRISBANE
10 Jan 2011
11 Jan 2011
12 Jan 2011
13 Jan 2011
14 Jan 2011
15 Jan 2011

22. #EQNZ: KEY THEMES

23. #EQNZ: MENTIONS OF THE CTV BUILDING
Graph: Avijit Paul
(@cdtavijit); see
Paul & Bruns (2013)

24. SOCIAL MEDIA AND CRISIS COMMUNICATION
•
Social media research:
–
–
–
–
•
Develop better tools and metrics for evaluating social media communication
In-depth analysis of communication patterns reveals how social media are used
Real-time analytics: highlight key current issues, identify weak signals of crisis
Monitor and improve effectiveness of social media communication strategies by
emergency services
Social media uses:
– Inform, share, amplify, support, reassure, organise
– Need to track and work with user community: follow their conventions
(e.g. #eqnz hashtag)
– Two-way communication where feasible – more than broadcast messages
– Provide community with tools to self-organise for resilience

25. http://mappingonlinepublics.net/
@snurb_dot_info
@jeanburgess
@dpwoodford
@lena_sauter
@timhighfield
@cdtavijit
@socialmediaQUT – http://socialmedia.qut.edu.au/