Advancing Methodologies for Hurricane Disaster Research Using Social Media Data

Published

May 29, 2024

Author(s)

Emina Herovic, Caerwyn Hartten, Emily Walpole, Katherine Johnson, Cameron Busser

Abstract

The National Institute of Standards and Technology's (NIST) investigations of disasters and failures that affect the United States including devastating hurricanes like Hurricane Maria (NIST, 2023), require the assessment of risk communication, especially through popular modes of communication like social media. A systematic review of the data collection and analysis methods utilized in 85 hurricane disaster research articles using social media data provides important insights that help to advance the state of knowledge for methodological approaches to disaster social media data. Findings indicate a need for further research on pre- and post-hurricane disaster periods, a diversification of the means and sources of data collected, and several common challenge areas including obtaining adequate data representation, addressing non-textual data, data access and privacy, and addressing non-English data. These insights provide communication researchers a better basis to approach social media data, identify knowledge gaps, minimize limitations and challenges to the research process, and leverage opportunities for future research.

Citation

Handbook of Risk, Crisis, and Disaster Communication

Publisher Info

Informa UK Limited , Milton,

Pub Type

Book Chapters

Download Paper

https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003363330-18

Local Download

Keywords

social media, risk communication, data collection, hurricanes, disaster communication

Citation

Herovic, E. , Hartten, C. , Walpole, E. , Johnson, K. and Busser, C. (2024), Advancing Methodologies for Hurricane Disaster Research Using Social Media Data, Handbook of Risk, Crisis, and Disaster Communication, Informa UK Limited , Milton, , [online], https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003363330-18, https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=936905 (Accessed December 30, 2024)