Assessing Risk Communication in Social Media for Crisis Prevention: A Social Network Analysis of Microblog

Abstract This article examines risk communication and perception differences via social media in the context of crisis management. Based on data from the Shifang Protest, this study constructed a relational matrix identifying how critical actors facilitated risk communication and interactions. In addition, the article identified measures of network structure and risk perception differences with Social Network Analysis (i.e. density, centralization, structure holes and subgroups) using UCINET software program along visual structures with NetDraw. Key findings of this study include: a) ranked actors controlled most of the information resources and threat diffusion; b) the level of interaction between government users and others users is extremely low; and c) divergence occurred between personal (informal) and official (formal) nodes in the context of risk perception.

[1]  Juha Munnukka,et al.  Perceived risks and risk management of social media in an organizational context , 2014, Electron. Mark..

[2]  Murray Scot Tanner,et al.  China rethinks unrest , 2004 .

[3]  Eni Mustafaraj,et al.  Can Collective Sentiment Expressed on Twitter Predict Political Elections? , 2011, AAAI.

[4]  Ines Mergel,et al.  A Three‐Stage Adoption Process for Social Media Use in Government , 2013 .

[5]  Gi Woong Yun,et al.  Media and social amplification of risk: BSE and H1N1 cases in South Korea , 2013 .

[6]  L. Freeman.  Centrality in social networks conceptual clarification , 1978 .

[7]  Christopher W. Moore.  The Mediation Process: Practical Strategies for Resolving Conflict , 1996 .

[8]  Deanne Bird,et al.  Flooding Facebook - the use of social media during the Queensland and Victorian floods , 2012 .

[9]  Timothy L. Sellnow,et al.  Risk Communication as Interacting Arguments: Viewing the L'aquila Earthquake Disaster Through the Message Convergence Framework , 2014 .

[10]  Yu Jian-ron.  Problems and Solutions for Public Participation in the "We Media" Era——A Case Study of 2012 Major Group Events , 2013 .

[11]  Pieter Rutsaert,et al.  The use of social media in food risk and benefit communication , 2013 .

[12]  Chen Hai-song.  Discrepancy Between Perception of Science Risks and Its Interpretation in View from Psychology to Sociology , 2009 .

[13]  Naim Kapucu,et al.  Designing, Managing, and Sustaining Functionally Collaborative Emergency Management Networks , 2013 .

[14]  G L Brown,et al.  Information and Risk Perception: A Dynamic Adjustment Process , 1998, Risk analysis : an official publication of the Society for Risk Analysis.

[15]  Naim Kapucu,et al.  The State of Network Research in Public Administration , 2017 .

[16]  W. Zachary,et al.  An Information Flow Model for Conflict and Fission in Small Groups , 1977, Journal of Anthropological Research.

[17]  Y. Benkler,et al.  The Wealth of Networks , 2008 .

[18]  Stanley Wasserman,et al.  Social Network Analysis: Methods and Applications , 1994, Structural analysis in the social sciences.

[19]  W. H. Rodgers.  Consumer behavior as risk taking; a new model and new hypotheses. , 1969 .

[20]  Ming-sho Ho,et al.  The Maoming Anti-PX Protest of 2014. An environmental movement in contemporary China , 2014 .

[21]  J. Klausen.  Tweeting the Jihad: Social Media Networks of Western Foreign Fighters in Syria and Iraq , 2015 .

[22]  Andrea H. McMakin,et al.  Risk Communication: A Handbook for Communicating Environmental, Safety, and Health Risks , 1994 .

[23]  Kyujin Jung,et al.  Citizens' social media use and homeland security information policy: Some evidences from Twitter users during the 2013 North Korea nuclear test , 2014, Gov. Inf. Q..

[24]  Maria Bondes,et al.  Derailed emotions: The transformation of claims and targets during the Wenzhou online incident , 2014 .

[25]  Craig W. Trumbo,et al.  Heuristic-Systematic Information Processing and Risk Judgment , 1999 .

[26]  Naim Kapucu,et al.  Information Communication Technology Utilization for Effective Emergency Management Networks , 2016 .

[27]  A. Metzner-Szigeth,et al.  Contradictory Approaches? – On Realism and Constructivism in the Social Sciences Research on Risk, Technology and the Environment , 2009 .

[28]  M. Douglas,et al.  Risk and Culture: An Essay on the Selection of Technological and Environmental Dangers , 1983 .

[29]  Bin Zhu,et al.  Visualizing social network concepts , 2010, Decis. Support Syst..

[30]  Cass R. Sunstein,et al.  Moral Heuristics and Risk , 2010 .

[31]  Nicholas Frank Pidgeon,et al.  The Social Amplification of Risk: The social dynamics of environmental risk perception: implications for risk communication research and practice , 2003 .

[32]  S. Krimsky,et al.  Evaluating risk communication: narrative vs. technical presentations of information about radon. , 1992, Risk analysis : an official publication of the Society for Risk Analysis.

[33]  Leonard M. Freeman,et al.  A set of measures of centrality based upon betweenness , 1977 .

[34]  Ortwin Renn,et al.  The role of risk perception for risk management , 1998 .

[35]  Cristin Finch,et al.  Food safety knowledge and behavior of emergency food relief organization workers: effects of food safety training intervention. , 2005, Journal of environmental health.

[36]  Greg Simons.  Uncertainty and Risk: Multidisciplinary Perspectives, Gabriele Bammer & Michael Smithson (ed) , 2009 .

[37]  A. S. Teja,et al.  Binary interaction coefficients for mixtures containing the n-alkanes , 1978 .

[38]  R. Karl Rethemeyer,et al.  Big Data in Public Affairs , 2016 .

[39]  Naim Kapucu,et al.  Emergency Information Management and Public Disaster Preparedness: Lessons from the 2004 Florida Hurricane Season , 2008, International Journal of Mass Emergencies & Disasters.

[40]  Ortwin Renn,et al.  The Risk Perception Paradox—Implications for Governance and Communication of Natural Hazards , 2013, Risk analysis : an official publication of the Society for Risk Analysis.

[41]  D. R. White,et al.  Social Cohesion and Embeddedness : A Hierarchical Conception of Social Groups , 2000 .

[42]  B E Sabey,et al.  PERCEPTION OF RISK , 1982 .

[43]  A. Kaplan,et al.  Users of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of Social Media , 2010 .

[44]  D. R. White,et al.  Structural cohesion and embeddedness: A hierarchical concept of social groups , 2003 .

[45]  Ronald S. Burt,et al.  Personality correlates of structural holes , 1998 .

[46]  Klaus Rasborg,et al.  ‘(World) risk society’ or ‘new rationalities of risk’? A critical discussion of Ulrich Beck’s theory of reflexive modernity , 2012 .

[47]  Craig W. Trumbo,et al.  Heuristic-Systematic Information Processing and Risk Judgment , 1999, Risk analysis : an official publication of the Society for Risk Analysis.

[48]  M. V. Asselt,et al.  Coping with Complexity, Uncertainty and Ambiguity in Risk Governance: A Synthesis , 2011, AMBIO.

[49]  Cédric Denis-Rémis,et al.  The 2008 Anti‐French Demonstrations in China: Learning from a Social Media Crisis , 2013 .

[50]  Simon Cottle.  Ulrich Beck, `Risk Society' and the Media , 1998 .

[51]  Guobin Yang,et al.  A Chinese Internet? History, practice, and globalization , 2012 .

[52]  Gert Sabidussi,et al.  The centrality index of a graph , 1966 .

[53]  Matthew W. Seeger,et al.  Communication and Organizational Crisis , 2003 .

[54]  H Roberts,et al.  Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity , 1994 .

[55]  Pang-Ning Tan,et al.  Identifying Cohesive Subgroups and Their Correspondences in Multiple Related Networks , 2010, 2010 IEEE/WIC/ACM International Conference on Web Intelligence and Intelligent Agent Technology.

[56]  Matias Thuen Jørgensen.  Synergistic Social Network Analysis: a Synergistic Approach to Qualitative and Quantitative Network Analysis , 2016 .

[57]  D. Watts,et al.  Influentials, Networks, and Public Opinion Formation , 2007 .

[58]  R. Burt.  Structural Holes versus Network Closure as Social Capital , 2001 .

[59]  Ewan Ferlie,et al.  Applying Strategic Management Theories in Public Sector Organizations: Developing a typology , 2016 .

[60]  Landong Zuo,et al.  Weibo communication and government legitimacy in China: a computer-assisted analysis of Weibo messages on two ‘mass incidents’† , 2014 .

[61]  Gabriele Bammer,et al.  Uncertainty and Risk: Multidisciplinary Perspectives , 2008 .

[62]  Ludwig Lauwers,et al.  Risk perception, attitudes towards risk and risk management: evidence and implications , 2018 .

[63]  Shaohua Lei,et al.  Large-Scale Mass Incidents and Government Responses in China + , 2010 .

[64]  Mark S. Hamm,et al.  Endgame? Sports Events as Symbolic Targets in Lone Wolf Terrorism , 2015 .