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exploring information use on twitter in crisis situations

Nirupama Dharmavaram Sreenivasan

Chei Sian Lee

Dion Hoe-Lian Goh

pp. 120-129

in: A. Ant Ozok, Panayiotis Zaphiris (eds), Online communities and social computing, Berlin, Springer, 2011

Abstract

Microblogs have received considerable attention in crisis communication due to its real-time nature. Despite this, research has not adequately addressed how users make use of information amongst the vast amount of real-time content available in a crisis. Hence, this study aims to understand information use in crisis situations by employing microblogs. Taylor's [4] information use environment (IUE) model provides theoretical background for this study. According to this model, there are eight classes of information use. We focus on the IUE surrounding the 2010 Icelandic volcano eruption. Our study uses Twitter to analyze users' postings related to this volcano. The types of postings were ascertained using content analysis. Our findings suggest enlightenment to be the largest category of information use. Other categories such as status messages, problem understanding and factual data were also reported. Further, humour not previously identified by Taylor [4] emerged as a substantial class of information use.