This document discusses Twitter use during the 2011 Queensland floods in Australia. It notes that the #qldfloods hashtag and leading accounts like @QPSMedia rapidly organized flood information sharing. Twitter allowed for self-organization, innovation, and emergency services began adopting social media despite lacking strategies. The document advocates learning from this experience to improve crisis communication and better identify influential users who could assist during future disasters.

1. Twitter in the 2011 Queensland Floods
(and Beyond)
Assoc. Prof. Axel Bruns
ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation
Queensland University of Technology
Brisbane, Australia
a.bruns@qut.edu.au
http://mappingonlinepublics.net/
http://mappingonlinepublics.net/

2. The Queensland Floods Community
o Self-organisation:
o Rapid establishment of #qldfloods hashtag
o Ad hoc development of community structures
o Highlighting of leading accounts, vigilant against disruption
o Suspension of petty squabbles (e.g. state politics)
o Innovation and rapid prototyping:
o Adjunct hashtags (#Mythbuster, #bakedrelief)
o Sharing and gathering of online resources
o Additional tools (Google Maps, Ushahidi Maps)
o Emergency services rapidly adopting social media tools
(despite lack of established strategies)
 ‘Go where they are’ rather than ‘build it and they will come’
 See CCI Report: #qldfloods and @QPSMedia: Crisis Communication on
Twitter in the 2011 South East Queensland Floods
(http://cci.edu.au/floodsreport.pdf)
http://mappingonlinepublics.net/

3. Major Information Sources Remain Important
@sunriseon7
@couriermail
@612brisbane
@QPSMedia
@abcnews
http://mappingonlinepublics.net/

4. Crises on Twitter: Find, Share, Retweet
http://mappingonlinepublics.net/

5. Just the Facts: Selective Retweeting
http://mappingonlinepublics.net/

6. What Links Are Shared?
http://mappingonlinepublics.net/

7. What Do Users Tweet About during a Crisis?
http://mappingonlinepublics.net/

8. Content Patterns: #qldfloods vs. @QPSMedia
http://mappingonlinepublics.net/

9. Retweet Rates in @QPSMedia Conversations
http://mappingonlinepublics.net/

10. Beyond the Queensland Floods
o Further outlook:
o Need to build on #qldfloods experience
o Maintain momentum of @QPSMedia and other lead accounts
o Review what did/didn’t work, improve communication strategies
o Analyse and work with community communication patterns
o Cultivate potential lead users:
o Who (institutions / individuals) was most active / influential?
o How can they be identified as crises unfold?
o Are they the usual suspects (e.g. community leaders), or not?
o How stable are such communication structures?
 Will social media use look similar next time around?
http://mappingonlinepublics.net/

11. #eqnz: Number of Unique Users Discussing the 2010/11 Earthquakes
http://mappingonlinepublics.net/

12. #eqnz: Contribution by Different User Groups (22 Feb.-7 Mar.)
http://mappingonlinepublics.net/

13. #eqnz: Contribution by Different User Groups in Each Event
http://mappingonlinepublics.net/

14. #eqnz: Visibility of Leading Accounts in Each Event
http://mappingonlinepublics.net/

15. Twitter and the Christchurch Earthquake
o Towards better strategies for social media in disasters:
o February 2011 earthquake building on lessons learnt in September
2010
o #eqnz and key Twitter accounts already established
o Several key accounts sharing the load and dividing responsibilities
o More sophisticated use of Twitter by residents and authorities
o Clear shift in attention after the immediate rescue phase:
o Marked differences in list of most @replied/retweeted accounts
o Some tracking of current problems / issues / fears may be possible
o Decline in overall tweet volume / diversification of #hashtags?
http://mappingonlinepublics.net/

16. Where to from Here?
o #hashtags:
o Useful coordinating mechanism for core communication
o Relatively easy to track and analyse
o Important for message dissemination by key authorities
o Crowdsourcing situational information from the community?
o Fails to capture non-hashtagged tweets about the topic
o Need more comparative data – how do hashtags work in different crisis
situations?
o Twitter (and social media) as additional communication channels:
o Tracking Twitter activities to identify weak crisis signals early on?
o Use of Twitter by emergency organisations outside of crisis situations?
o Twitter use for long-term preparedness, resilience, and recovery?
o Institutional resourcing, positioning, training and evaluation?
http://mappingonlinepublics.net/

17. http://mappingonlinepublics.net/
@snurb_dot_info
@jeanburgess
@_StephenH
@DrTNitins
@timhighfield
@cdtavijit
http://mappingonlinepublics.net/