Social Media within Emergency Management Organisations - A case study exploring Social Media utilisation for Emergency and Disaster Management

Abstract

Over the last decade, we have seen that social media services have been widely adopted to communicate with friends or family members, and to generate and consume information. It is not a surprise, therefore, that social media services are also used as powerful communication platforms during disasters and other emergency extreme events. This thesis explores the utilisation and integration of social media services into emergency management organisations (EMOs) for the purpose of day-to-day as well as emergency and disaster management operational modes. EMOs such as fire services, use social media to provide information to, and engage with, the general public and as a source of relevant information to support their situational awareness during an extreme event. Social media services have been adopted by EMOs as an important additional communication channel during times of emergency and disaster management, where EMOs are central and trusted participants within emerging and dynamic social communication networks. Still, for EMOs, social media is a newly adopted technology which is not yet fully understood for this purpose. While some research has analysed social media data to learn how EMOs are communicating with the general public and non-government institutions through their social media channels, little is known as to how EMOs embed social media services into their organisational structures and processes. This research contributes to closing this research gap through an explorative and interpretive case study which highlights how EMOs utilise and integrate social media services into their day-to-day operations, processes and structures as well as into their operational mode during emergencies and disasters. This study analyses five different EMOs, in two different jurisdictions that have adopted and utilise social media services. This research focusses on the integration of social media services within these EMOs and how these EMOs use social media depending on their mode of operation, i.e. day-to-day or emergency management, for: 1) internal EMO communication; 2) interaction with other EMOs; and 3) communication with the general public and media organisations. The analysis of these cases is used to develop a framework of social media utilisation in emergency management organisations for emergency and disaster management. It also contributes to our existing body of knowledge about social media utilisation in emergency and disaster management scenarios. The results of this research project further provide EMOs with a basis to improve their existing approaches to social media utilisation.