Emergency communication networks on Twitter during Hurricane Irma: information flow, influential actors, and top messages.

This study combined network analysis with message-level content analysis to investigate patterns of information flow and to examine messages widely distributed on social media during Hurricane Irma of 2017. The results show that while organisational users and media professionals dominated the top 100 information sources, individual citizens played a critical role in information dissemination. Public agencies should increase their retweeting activities and share the information posted by other trustworthy sources; doing so will contribute to the timely exchange of vital information during a disaster. This study also identified the active involvement of nonprofit organisations as information brokers during the post-event stage, indicating the potential for emergency management organisations to integrate their communication efforts into those of nonprofit entities. These findings will inform emergency management practices regarding implementation of communication plans and policies, facilitate the embracement of new partner organisations, and help with establishing and sustaining effective communication ties with a wide range of stakeholders.

Dynamics of interorganisational emergency communication on Twitter: the case of Hurricane Irma.

This study examines how county-level emergency management offices (EMOs) used Twitter to communicate with other public agencies and non-profit and for-profit organisations before, during, and after Hurricane Irma in 2017. It assesses the strategies that EMOs and other stakeholders employed to communicate risks on Twitter, concluding that its potential has not been fully exploited. EMOs only frequently interacted with a few non-profit and for-profit organisations, despite their involvement in emergency communication. While EMOs and other public agencies emphasised information dissemination and called on citizens to act and be prepared for the hurricane, non-profits tended to stress service and resource-related information, encouraged others to assist with disaster response, and provided emotional support. For-profits, meanwhile, actively addressed customers' concerns through direct two-way communication. Our findings indicate that EMOs should integrate non-profit and for-profit organisations' communication efforts, engaging them in important conversations on Twitter and advocating the use of highly relevant hashtags at different disaster management stages.