Social Media and Disasters: the Case of Hurricane Sandy and Twitter
Dhiraj Murthy
CAMRI Seminar
University of Westminster
Wed, Nov 12, 14:00
Harrow Campus
Room A7.1
http://www.westminster.ac.uk/camri/research-seminars/social-media-and-disasters-the-case-of-hurricane-sandy-and-twitter
Registration is possible per e-mail to [log in to unmask], at latest
until Nov 10
Sociological understandings of social media and disasters remain an
emergent field. Despite major disasters in which victims and others have
engaged over social media, we have limited understandings of the
function of social media during disasters as well as the ad-hoc
communities formed.
This presentation seeks to extend current scholarship on Twitter use
during natural disasters through the exploration of tweets related to
Hurricane Sandy. The storm caused over $65 billion in damage, making it
the second costliest storm in U.S. history. We examine the behaviour of
Twitter users over from October 22, 2012 to November 3, 2012, using
mentions, links and hashtags for data analysis. All tweets relating to
the storm during this period were collected.
Certain Twitter functionalities rose to prominence depending on the
stage of the storm. For instance, in the days following Hurricane
Sandy’s initial landfall, users became more interested in relief
efforts. The conclusion is that behaviour in an anticipated natural
disaster can be distilled into a framework of micro-events that take
place within the larger context of the disaster and can be studied using
comparative temporal methods.
Dhiraj Murthy is a Senior Lecturer of Sociology at Goldsmiths,
University of London. His current research explores social media,
virtual organizations, and big data quantitative analysis. His work on
social networking technologies in virtual breeding grounds was funded by
the National Science Foundation, Office of CyberInfrastructure. Dhiraj
also has a book about Twitter published by Polity Press. He founded and
directed the Social Network Innovation Lab, an interdisciplinary
research group investigating social networks and virtual organizations.
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