Content features of tweets for effective communication during disasters: A media synchronicity theory perspective

Abstract Users’ ability to retweet information has made Twitter one of the most prominent social media platforms for disseminating emergency information during disasters. However, few studies have examined how Twitter’s features can support the different communication patterns that occur during different phases of disaster events. Based on the literature of disaster communication and Media Synchronicity Theory, we identify distinct disaster phases and the two communication types—crisis communication and risk communication—that occur during those phases. We investigate how Twitter’s representational features, including words, URLs, hashtags, and hashtag importance, influence the average retweet time—that is, the average time it takes for retweet to occur—as well as how such effects differ depending on the type of disaster communication. Our analysis of tweets from the 2013 Colorado floods found that adding more URLs to tweets increases the average retweet time more in risk-related tweets than it does in crisis-related tweets. Further, including key disaster-related hashtags in tweets contributed to faster retweets in crisis-related tweets than in risk-related tweets. Our findings suggest that the influence of Twitter’s media capabilities on rapid tweet propagation during disasters may differ based on the communication processes.