Online social media in a disaster event: Network and public participation

Abstract

In August 2009, Typhoon Morakot attacked southern Taiwan and caused the most tremendous disaster in the decade. In this disaster, netizen used internet tools such as blog, Twitter, and Plurk to transmit great amount of timely information including emergencies, rescue actions and donations. By reviewing electronic documents and interviewing eight major micro-bloggers during that period of time, two major functions of social media are identified: information dissemination and resources mobilization. In sum, three major findings are concluded in this study: (1) micro-blogging applications presented potentials for public participation and engagement in crisis events; (2) these end to end users of blog, Twitter, and Plurk successfully employed collective networking power and played the vital collaborator in this disaster event.; (3) the use of social media as a more efficient disaster backchannel communication mechanism demonstrates the possibility of governmental and public participation collaboration in times of disaster. © 2011 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.