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Thursday, November 10
0 9 : 0 0 – 1 0 : 3 0
CRC01
Assessing Social Media Use in Crises and Risks
K. Hornmoen
1
1
Oslo and Akershus University College of Applied Sciences, Oslo, Norway
This session presents research on social media use related to different crisis and risk cases: terrorist attacks and threats, natural disasters and pandemics.
The session also presents ongoing work with developing a social media monitoring and workflow tool based on user-centered design and usability testing.
The rationale for the research is an existing mismatch between dominant communication strategies employed by crisis communication authorities during
crises (top-down, emphasis on traditional media) and the increasingly critical communicational role that members of the public are playing by using social
media to communicate about the situation in different phases of a crisis (Sutton et.al., 2008). This discrepancy may result in poor situational awareness
and management of crises. Crisis management authorities, key crisis communicators like journalists and information officers, and members of the public
at large need to develop their ability to prepare for, respond to and cope with crisis situations. Such improvements require better understandings of social
media communication in crises, based on thorough research of different cases: How do different social actors in different types of crisis and risk situations
use and interact through social media, and how do they evaluate social media information? When do social media enhance situational awareness related
to an ongoing crisis and when do they contribute to false situational awareness? What are the needs of key communicators if they are to make better use
of social media content during crises and risks? The different session papers address these questions by presenting research that provides new knowledge
on social media use during different crisis and risks situations in different cultural contexts: the terrorist attacks in Norway on the 22 July 2011; terror threats
in Norway considered by authorities to be caused by extremists; the central European floods in 2013; and the Ebola-outbreak in 2014. By addressing such
different cases, the panel will move the field of crisis communication in social media beyond the single studies to provide knowledge valid across cases. Fur‑
thermore, a paper in the session offers insights into how user-centered design and usability testing are vital components in developing new technological
tools for occupational groups who work with monitoring, assessing, identifying and sharing important social media content during crisis situations. New
tools to monitor and assess social media content are constantly being developed, but few of them are actually put to use by key communicators during crisis
and risk situations. This is partly due to a lack of usability-testing and cooperation with potential end-users in the design phase of the tool development.
The session will offer insights into how such usability-testing and cooperation can be implemented in processes of tool development, and also on how
research and technological innovation may go hand-in-hand in the design of new tools. Reference: Sutton, J., Palen, L. & Shklovski I. (2008)“Backchannels
on the Front Lines: Emergent Uses of Social Media in the 2007 Southern CaliforniaWildfires,”in F. Fiedrich and B.Van deWalle B. (eds.): Proceedings of the 5
th
International ISCRAM Conference –Washington, DC, USA, May.
PN 019
Face-Ing Terror, Tweeting Danger. The Role of Social Media for Victims During and Immediately After the 2011 Terrorist Attack
in Norway
E. Frey
1
, S. Steensen
1
1
Oslo and Akershus University College of Applied Sciences, Oslo, Norway
This paper takes the terrorist attacks in Norway in 2011 as its point of departure and analyzes what role social media played for youngsters who were
attacked on the island of Utøya. On 22 July Anders Behring Breivik exploded a bomb in the governmental quarter of Oslo before he started a massacre on
Utøya, where members of the Norwegian social democratic party’s youth organization had their summer camp. The terrorist killed 69 youngsters at Utøya,
in addition to the eight that were killed in the bomb blast. The paper focuses specifically on the Utøya massacre and the role social media played for those
directly involved. 564 people were present on the island when the terrorist started the massacre, which lasted for about one and a half hour until the police
apprehended the terrorist. Previous reports and research has shown that during the massacre, and in the hours following, many at Utøya used smartphones
to connect to the outside world. As the report from The Commission on 22 July states: “Never before did ministers personally get information by text
messages, phone and on social media directly from the victims, while at the same time handling a national crisis” (NOU 2012: 14:454). However, little is
known about what role social media played for the youngsters during and immediately after the attack. How did they respond to the attack by using social
media? How did social media messages affect them? To what extent did the use of social media in the situation enhance the affected youngsters’situational
awareness? We provide answers through a triangulation of methods, including qualitative interviews with youngsters who were at Utøya, and qualitative
text analysis of Facebook andTwitter activity during and after the attack. In addition, the analysis will be based on findings from a content analysis of tweets
published in the NorwegianTwitter sphere between 14.00 p.m. 22 July and 02.00 a.m. 23 July.This material of approximately 60.000 tweets is part of larger
data set acquired through Twitter’s API platform Gnip. The content analysis of the tweets will identify what the youth at Utøya tweeted, who they were in
contact with on Twitter, and how their tweets diffused in the social network. This analysis provides valuable information on the general use of Twitter by
the youngsters present at Utøya, and it will serve as a backdrop for the qualitative data analysis. Our analysis sheds light on how Facebook and Twitter were
conceived of and used as tools by victims to communicate and acquire information. Some informants believed the perpetrator could trace their phones, so
they threw them away. As soon as they were safe on the mainland, they connected to social media. Others tell how social media played a role in creating
their situational awareness while still on the island. In addition, social media enabled resilience behavior and some got solace and strength from being in
the loops online. Reference: Service Centre of Departments (2012) NOU 2012: 14 Report from 22 July Commission. Oslo
Crisis Communication
(CRC01–CRC07)