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Twitter in the 2011 Queensland Floods (and Beyond)

Assoc. Prof. Axel BrunsARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and InnovationQueensland University of TechnologyBrisbane, Australia

a.bruns@qut.edu.auhttp://mappingonlinepublics.net/

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The Queensland Floods Community

o Self-organisation:o Rapid establishment of #qldfloods hashtago Ad hoc development of community structureso Highlighting of leading accounts, vigilant against disruptiono Suspension of petty squabbles (e.g. state politics)

o Innovation and rapid prototyping:o Adjunct hashtags (#Mythbuster, #bakedrelief)o Sharing and gathering of online resourceso Additional tools (Google Maps, Ushahidi Maps)o 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)

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Major Information Sources Remain Important

@abcnews

@612brisbane

@couriermail

@sunriseon7

@QPSMedia

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Crises on Twitter: Find, Share, Retweet

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Just the Facts: Selective Retweeting

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What Links Are Shared?

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What Do Users Tweet About during a Crisis?

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Content Patterns: #qldfloods vs. @QPSMedia

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Retweet Rates in @QPSMedia Conversations

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Beyond the Queensland Floods

o Further outlook:o Need to build on #qldfloods experienceo Maintain momentum of @QPSMedia and other lead accountso Review what did/didn’t work, improve communication

strategieso Analyse and work with community communication patterns

o Cultivate potential lead users:o Who (institutions / individuals) was most active / influential?o How can they be identified as crises unfold?o Are they the usual suspects (e.g. community leaders), or not?o How stable are such communication structures?

Will social media use look similar next time around?

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#eqnz: Number of Unique Users Discussing the 2010/11 Earthquakes

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#eqnz: Contribution by Different User Groups (22 Feb.-7 Mar.)

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#eqnz: Contribution by Different User Groups in Each Event

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#eqnz: Visibility of Leading Accounts in Each Event

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Twitter and the Christchurch Earthquake

o Towards better strategies for social media in disasters:o February 2011 earthquake building on lessons learnt in

September 2010o #eqnz and key Twitter accounts already establishedo Several key accounts sharing the load and dividing responsibilities

o More sophisticated use of Twitter by residents and authorities

o Clear shift in attention after the immediate rescue phase:o Marked differences in list of most @replied/retweeted accountso Some tracking of current problems / issues / fears may be

possibleo Decline in overall tweet volume / diversification of #hashtags?

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Where to from Here?

o #hashtags:o Useful coordinating mechanism for core communicationo Relatively easy to track and analyseo Important for message dissemination by key authoritieso Crowdsourcing situational information from the community?o Fails to capture non-hashtagged tweets about the topico Need more comparative data – how do hashtags work in different

crisis situations?

o Twitter (and social media) as additional communication channels:o Tracking Twitter activities to identify weak crisis signals early on?o Use of Twitter by emergency organisations outside of crisis

situations?o Twitter use for long-term preparedness, resilience, and recovery?o Institutional resourcing, positioning, training and evaluation?

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@snurb_dot_info@jeanburgess@_StephenH@DrTNitins@timhighfield@cdtavijit