Social Media Use in Crisis and Risk Communication : Emergencies, Concerns and Awareness

The ebook edition of this title is Open Access and is freely available to read online.

Crises pose an immediate risk to life, health, and the environment and require urgent action. The public’s use of social media has important implications for contingency policies and practices. Social media have the potential for risk reduction and preventive interaction with the public. 

This book is about how different communicators - whether crisis managers, first responders, journalists, or private citizens and disaster victims - have used social media to communicate about risks and crises. It is also about how these very different actors can play a crucial role in mitigating or preventing crises. How can they use social media to strengthen their own and the public’s awareness and understanding of crises when they unfold? How can they use social media to promote resilience during crises and the ability to deal with the after-effects? 

Chapters address such questions by presenting new research-based knowledge on social media use during different crises: the terrorist attacks in Norway on 22 July 2011; the central European floods in Austria in 2013; and the West African Ebola-outbreak in 2014. The collection also presents research on the development of a tool for gathering social media information, based on a user-centered design. 

Social Media use in Crisis and Risk Communication presents cutting-edge research on the use of social media in crisis communication and reporting. It gives recommendations about how different crisis communicators (information officers, crisis managers, journalists) can improve their ability to gather information, communicate and raise people’s crisis awareness by using social media.

Harald Hornmoen is Professor of Journalism at the Department of Journalism and Media Studies, Oslo Metropolitan University, Norway. He has coordinated the research project on which this book is based: Researching Social Media and Collaborative Software Use in Emergency Situations (RESCUE). His research interests include risk and environmental communication, science journalism and literary journalism. Hornmoen’s recent publications include Environmentally Friendly Oil and Gas Production: Analyzing Governmental Argumentation and Press Deliberation on Oil Policy, Environmental Communication, Issue 2, (2018), and the co-edited book Putting a Face on It. Individual Exposure and Subjectivity in Journalism, (2017).;

Klas Backholm is the Coordinator of the Mass Communication Programme at Åbo Akademi University, Finland. His research areas include usability-testing of technical innovations for journalism, and the psychological wellbeing of journalists after work-related crisis exposure. Backholm’s recent publications include Crises, Rumours and Reposts: Journalists’ Social Media Content Gathering and Verification Practices in Breaking News Situations in the Media and Communication journal (2017), and Distress Among Journalists Working the Incidents in the Handbook of the Psychology of Mass Shootings (2016).