Frances Shaw Univers i ty o f New South Wales

& Univers i ty o f Sydneyfrances .shaw@sydney.edu .au

 Jean Burgess , Axe l Bruns

ARC Centre o f Exce l lence for Creat i ve Industr ies and Innovat ion

Queens land Univers i ty o f Technologyje .burgess@qut .edu .au | a .bruns@qut .edu .au

Http : / /Mappingonl inepubl ics .Net /

Patterns of talk on Twitter during the Queensland floods

Crisis Communication Research at the CCI

o ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries & Innovation

o Project: Media Ecologies & Methodological Innovation

o New methods to understand the changing media environment;

o Role of social media, especially Twitter

o Focus on Crisis Communication e.g. #qldfloods

o Partnerships with government, media orgs

http://cci.edu.au/floodsreport.pdf

Image source: ABC News

#qldfloods study

Data sets

#Qldfl oodsAnalysed every 20 t h tweet from the

overal l sample

@QPSMediaQueensland pol ice service media

divis ion twitter account

Captured tweets directed to, retweeted from or referring to @QPSMedia

Twitter and the Queensland Floods: #qldfloods tweets

10 Jan. 2011 11 Jan. 2011 12 Jan. 2011 13 Jan. 201114 Jan. 2011 15 Jan. 2011

Categories and the coding process

Information Advice / Instructions Situational Information Requests for information (Crowd-sourcing)

Media Sharing News media updates Multimedia

Help & Fundraising Help Fundraising

Direct Experience Personal narrative and eyewitness reports

Reactions & Discussion Adjunctive discussion Personal reaction Thanks / praise and gratitude Support Meta-analysis

Content Patterns: #qldfloods vs. @QPSMedia

What Do Users Tweet About during a Crisis? @QPSMedia

What Do Users Tweet About during a Crisis? #qldfloods

Discussion and Reaction

Reactions & Discussion Adjunctive

discussion Personal reaction Thanks / praise and

gratitude Support Meta-analysis

Evaluating politicians Framing the flood levy

um... how about we deal with the crisis at hand... and the budget later... #qldfloods #gillardpresser

I have a feeling Kevin Rudd would be more human in face of the #qldfloods than Gillard is

Abbott's on the scene. NOW it's a disaster. #qldfloods

RT @julieposetti: Dear Labor Party: groom Qld Premier Anna Bligh for a Canberra career. Stat.

watching @KRuddMP walk around his electorate on #ABCNews24 helping out is brilliant. "No stuffing around." #QldFloods

Happy to pay a levy for flood victims and the reconstruction. That's what tax is for - supporting fellow Australians. #qldfloods #vicfloods

Julia Gillard's Flood Levy will be for Government Costs NOT private individuals flood losses !! #qldfloods #vicfloods

I'm an Australian and I support a levy for #qldfloods and #vicfloods. No budget cuts! Don't turn Australia into the UK!

Appalling selfish. @Correllio: “We've already paid a flood levy. It's called charity” #auspol #qldfloods #vicfloods

Adjunctive Discussion

Thanks and gratitude

Twitter Crisis management

This sounds stupid but it kind of feels important to be on Twitter today. #qldfloods

the twitter feed #qldfloods is almost as fast as the rising waters #twitterstorm

I feel like a RT bot today but please understand it's for the #QldFloods.

#qldfloods = Twitter at its best

Noticing social media sites are doing a much better job of dispersing info in a crisis than traditional media outlets #qldfloods

If you want to get the real info about #qldfloods check in with @QPSmedia. Pls don't RT something unless you've checked it's true.

Twitter and facebook are making such a difference during the #qldfloods

Meta-analysis – social media in a crisis

Messages of support and concern

Thoughts and prayers going out to all affected by #qldfloods. Please stay safe.

72 missing in #Qldfloods #PRAY for those families

hope everyone who is making their way home stays safe #qldfloods #thebigwet

The rain has stopped here for now. Let's hope it stops for the people of Queensland #qldfloods

#qldfloods Our hearts go out to those waiting on news of loved ones & our deepest condolences for families where tragedy has already struck

Support

Support

Narrating the crisis Clean up and recovery

Maybe I ought to have something in my pantry. #qldfloods #theroad #apocalypseOMG #stockthelarder

Considering whether I should panic buy bottles of water crosswords and baked beans? #Qldfloods

Tonight I will wear pj's to bed just incase I get a knock on the door and have to evacuate! #notetoself #mustwearpants #qldfloods

Just got a phone call from friends. They are going down to the RNA Showgrounds to volunteer. We are going to help out as well #qldfloods

Saw houses affected by the floods today. Ppl's furniture covered in sludge. #qldfloods #sad

Goodnight twitterverse this is one tired chicken its been hard work helping #qldfloods today need sleep so I can do it all again tomorrow!

Personal Narrative and Experience

Personal safety reporting

@truenorthyoga Thanks!! I'm home and dry. House is quite high but my suburb is already flooding #brisfloods #qldfloods

Thanks for all the thoughts guys! I think we'll be ok! Our house will be ok I believe as we are a fair way from the back fence! #qldfloods

Personal Narrative and Experience

Social media as crisis platform

Sense-making and negotiating the crisis

Ad-hoc crisis communities

Chaotic strategies (Goolsby 2010)

Distributed conversation

Collective response (Hermida 2010)

Sense-making practices (Liu 2009)

Collective memory negotiation (Liu 2009; Robinson 2009)

Key concepts

Digital convergence Amplification

Relates to the concept of “convergence behaviour” from crisis informatics – extended to social media.

Retweeting situational information

Sense of involvement and participation

Key concepts

Intersections?

http://mappingonlinepublics.net/

@snurb_dot_info@jeanburgess@_stephenh@drtnit ins

@timhighfi eld@cdtavij it