1. IAM Institute of Applied Media Studies
4th International Disaster and Risk Conference, Davos, 26-30 August 2012
Social Media and Linguistics as a Part of an Integrative Risk Management
Disasters, Crisis Communication, and Social Media
Michael Schanne
Zurich Universities of Applied Sciences and Arts

2. Disasters, Crisis Communication, and Social Media
• A media sociology point of view
• Meta-analytical evidence based on content analyses
• Keyword search for studies from three fields: events, technical
channels, communications
• Anecdotal evidence
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3. Disasters, Crisis Communication, and Social Media
Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant
• Natural disaster; marine earthquake, tsunami
• Industrial accident; full meltdown of reactors
• Wilful negligence of security and safety standards (The Official
Report of the Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent
Investigation Commission; Executive Summary)
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4. Disasters, Crisis Communication, and Social Media
• Social media is a most general term that keeps together blogs,
micro-blogs, forums, audio-photo-video-sharings, Wikis, social
bookmarking, social networking and other tools and applications
that facilitate interactive communication and message or
content exchange among and between individuals, audiences,
publics, organizations.
• Twitter and Facebook are best known and most studied
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5. Disasters, Crisis Communication, and Social Media
• It is a common place that social media may serve as an
important channel of information and communication during and
in the aftermath of disasters.
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6. Disasters, Crisis Communication, and Social Media
Functions of social media in disaster communication
•social media provide breaking news and updates; provide a flow
of information
•social media provide situational updates; provide geolocation
information helping people to be aware of the situation; at least of
the uncertainties of the situation
•social media provide good advice just in time; provide guidelines
how to cope with changing situations
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7. Disasters, Crisis Communication, and Social Media
• social media provide “raw material”-information for journalistic
reporting; social media provide “frames” for journalistic reporting
and public discussion – thus setting the public agenda
• social media enable disaster-related citizen participation;
mobilizing and activating information thus empowering people
• social media make accessible sources of independent and
reliable knowledge and expertise – thus providing a sort of
counter-competence
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8. Disasters, Crisis Communication, and Social Media
• social media gave a voice to the workers in the nuclear power
plant; gave a voice to the evacuees; gave a voice to the
protesters; gave a voice to children and mothers; that is to say
give a voice to victims
• social media serve people to organize protest against nuclear
power
• social media allow for expressing emotions, for emotional
ventings, provide emotional support.
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9. Disasters, Crisis Communication, and Social Media
• Research is still at its infancy
• Caution: Which effects are (only) attributed (marketing jargon)
and which effects are the «real» ones
• Problem: accessibility
• Problem: credibility
• Problem: manageability
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10. Disasters, Crisis Communication, and Social Media
• «Public relations professionals and academics have only just
begun to measure the impact of the blogosphere on public
relation practices.» (Yan Lin, Brooke Liu Fisher 2010, 449)
• And as an open end: It is useful to think of different social media
as serving different functions among different user groups
during different events (Palen et al 2010)
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