A Comparison of Emergency Management Social Media Use in the United States and England

A survey was distributed to U.S. county-level emergency managers in 2014 which included questions exploring the importance of barriers to use of Social Media (SM) for dissemination and collection of information during disasters. Key questions were replicated in a survey of emergency responders in England in 2015-2016. There are many similarities in the perceived importance of various specific barriers, but also many significant differences in results. For example, in both samples, trustworthiness of data and information overload are among the top barriers to collecting SM data. However, agencies in England are more likely to have official policies prohibiting the use of SM (58% in England vs. 25% in the U.S.). The differences suggest that software enhancements to deal with the technical problems of trustworthiness and information overload may be universally useful, but other barriers to use need to be addressed through organizational and policy measures.

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

[2]  Christian Reuter,et al.  Towards social resilience: A quantitative and qualitative survey on citizens' perception of social media in emergencies in Europe , 2017 .

[3]  Andrea H. Tapia,et al.  Good Enough is Good Enough: Overcoming Disaster Response Organizations’ Slow Social Media Data Adoption , 2014, Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW).

[4]  Mark J. Weal,et al.  Social Media during a Sustained Period of Crisis: The Case of the UK Storms , 2017, ISCRAM.

[5]  Starr Roxanne Hiltz,et al.  Supporting the Use of Social Media by Emergency Managers: Software Tools to Overcome Information Overload , 2017, HICSS.

[6]  Starr Roxanne Hiltz,et al.  Use of Social Media by U.S. Public Sector Emergency Managers: Barriers and Wish Lists , 2014, ISCRAM.

[7]  Yixing Shan.  Decision making study: methods and applications of evidential reasoning and judgment analysis , 2015 .

[8]  Starr Roxanne Hiltz,et al.  Red Tape: Attitudes and Issues Related to Use of Social Media by U.S. County-Level Emergency Managers , 2015, ISCRAM.

[9]  Leysia Palen,et al.  Mastering social media: An analysis of Jefferson County's communications during the 2013 Colorado floods , 2014, ISCRAM.

[10]  Francesca Comunello,et al.  A #cultural_change is needed. Social media use in emergency communication by Italian local level institutions , 2017, ISCRAM.

[11]  Leysia Palen,et al.  Online public communications by police & fire services during the 2012 Hurricane Sandy , 2014, CHI.

[12]  Starr Roxanne Hiltz,et al.  Dealing with information overload when using social media for emergency management: Emerging solutions , 2013, ISCRAM.