Towards a realtime Twitter analysis during crises for operational crisis management

Today's crises attract great attention on social media, from local and distant citizens as well as from news media. This study investigates the possibilities of real-time and automated analysis of Twitter messages during crises. The analysis was performed through application of an information extraction tool to nearly 97,000 tweets that were published shortly before, during and after a storm hit the Pukkelpop 2011 festival in Belgium. As soon as the storm hit the festival tweet activity increased exponentially, peaking at 576 tweets per minute. The extraction tool enabled analyzing tweets through predefined (geo)graphical displays, message content filters (damage, casualties) and tweet type filters (e.g., retweets). Important topics that emerged were 'early warning tweets', 'rumors' and the 'self-organization of disaster relief' on Twitter. Results indicate that automated filtering of information provides valuable information for operational response and crisis communication. Steps for further research are discussed. © 2012 ISCRAM. Environmental Systems Research Institute, Inc. (ESRI)

[1]  M. Siegrist,et al.  Perception of Hazards: The Role of Social Trust and Knowledge , 2000, Risk analysis : an official publication of the Society for Risk Analysis.

[2]  Leysia Palen,et al.  Pass it on?: Retweeting in mass emergency , 2010, ISCRAM.

[3]  Teun Terpstra,et al.  Emotions, Trust, and Perceived Risk: Affective and Cognitive Routes to Flood Preparedness Behavior , 2011, Risk analysis : an official publication of the Society for Risk Analysis.

[4]  M. Kuttschreuter.  Communicating environmental risk in multiethnic communities , 2005 .

[5]  Leysia Palen,et al.  Chatter on the red: what hazards threat reveals about the social life of microblogged information , 2010, CSCW '10.

[6]  R.J.P. Stronkman,et al.  Exploiting Twitter to fulfill information needs during incidents , 2011 .

[7]  Teun Terpstra,et al.  Households' Perceived Responsibilities in Flood Risk Management in The Netherlands , 2008 .

[8]  Leysia Palen,et al.  Supporting “Everyday Analysts” in Safety- and Time-Critical Situations , 2011, Inf. Soc..

[9]  Leysia Palen,et al.  Microblogging during two natural hazards events: what twitter may contribute to situational awareness , 2010, CHI.

[10]  Leysia Palen,et al.  Twitter adoption and use in mass convergence and emergency events , 2009 .

[11]  Hosung Park,et al.  What is Twitter, a social network or a news media? , 2010, WWW '10.

[12]  Leysia Palen,et al.  "Voluntweeters": self-organizing by digital volunteers in times of crisis , 2011, CHI.

[13]  Rizal Setya Perdana.  What is Twitter , 2013 .