Disaster communicationTwitter and natural disasters: lessons from Japan
Researchers from Kobe City University of Foreign Studies surveyed and questioned Twitter users and tracked updates from people in the disaster-struck area on the social media site two weeks after the Tohoku earthquake and devastating tsunami of 11 March; Twitter was the only functioning communication tool immediately after the earthquake; the researchers found that there benefits for using Twitter, such as bringing information to people involved in a disaster and to those hoping to hear news; there was a downside, though: Twitter helped spread unverified rumors and misinformation, causing people to panic in areas where there was no reason to panic, thus making the work of rescuers and service authorities more difficult; one solution: have the government itself use Twitter to offer reliable information to all involved
Researchers from Kobe City University of Foreign Studies found that people in directly affected areas tended to tweet about their unsafe and uncertain situation while people in remote areas posted messages to let their followers know that they are safe. Worryingly, they also found numerous unreliable “retweets” (RTs), in which users of the service repeated inaccurate information and that this was one of the biggest information-related problems facing those involved. The subjects in the study recommended that Twitter communication could be improved if official hashtags were announced during disasters and the number of retweets for a given hashtag could be limited to avoid the wider spread of disinformation.
The 9.0-scale earthquake that hit Japan on 11 March at 2:45 p.m. (local time) was the biggest quake in Japan’s history and the fifth biggest recorded across the globe. The subsequent tsunamis caused by the tremors caused additional devastation across three coastal prefectures, wiped two towns off the map, and claimed thousands of lives and displaced more than half a million people. At the time, members of the media reported that Twitter was the only functioning communication tool immediately after the earthquake.
Writing in the International Journal of Web Based Communities (forthcoming, the journal is published by Inderscience Publishers), the team explains how recently there has been growing interest in the use of social media during disasters as a communications and news dissemination tool. “A wide range of studies suggest that information sharing networks, such as twitter, can be very useful in times of crisis by quickly and effectively disseminating relevant news,” the team points out. There is often confusion among the public, however, about the reliability of twitter user updates after, disasters, such as the great Tohoku earthquake, the team adds. They have now sought to quantify the problems experienced by users and to find potential solutions that will provide actionable insights for future use of social networking tools during disasters.
Twitter is an instantly updated social media site that provides “a real-time information network that connects you (users) to the latest information about what you (they) find interesting.” It can be access via the World Wide Web, the mobile phone text messaging system (SMS), or any of a number of third-party tools used with smart phones, tablet, and desktop computers. Once a user posts a message, that message (update) becomes public and can be viewed by anyone.
Estimates put the number of academic
