Presentation given to the RMIT/Salford University Symposium on Resilience and Disaster Management

1. THE SOCIOLOGY OF SOCIAL MEDIA AND
DISASTERS: THE BRISBANE FLOODS 2011
RMIT DISASTER MANAGEMENT AND
RESILIENCE SYMPOSIUM
29 NOVEMBER 2012
Dr Mark Bahnisch
Fellow of the Centre for Policy Development
Research Fellow, School of Medicine, The University of Queensland
Sessional Lecturer, School of Population Health, The University of
Queensland

2. THE SOCIOLOGY OF SOCIAL MEDIA AND
CRISES

3. THE SOCIOLOGY OF SOCIAL CRISES
 Social class most significant predictor of awareness of flood
risk (Burningham et al 2008)
 “Disasters expose our social structure more sharply than other
important events.” (Perrow 2007: 3)
 „Natural‟ disasters are social events (Burgess 2006)
 Disasters „deritualise‟ (Thornburg et al 2007); posing problems
for meaning and action. Communications assist sense giving
and communal processes reveal patterns of distributed and
collective sense making (Kendra & Wachtendorf 2006)
 Disasters reveal an imagined community encompassing the
interdependence of many smaller networks; this can lead to
both resilience/solidarity and discord (Albright 2006)
 Social networks, repricocity and trust are important elements
of „social resilience‟ (Patterson et al 2007)
 Panic is rare: emergent collective action combined with official
response is optimal (Drabek & McEntire 2003)

4. IMAG(IN)ING THE FLOODED CITY
 The city is an imagined space (Bahnisch 2009)
 Recombinative urbanism (Shane 2007)

5. THE SOCIOLOGY OF SOCIAL MEDIA AND OF
CRISES
 Trust:
 “Trust networks... contain ramified interpersonal
connections, consisting mainly of strong ties, within which
people set valued, consequential, long-term resources and
enterprises at risk to the malfeasance, mistakes, or failures of
others.” (Tilly 2007: 81)
 Repricocity and equality
 Equipotentiality of contribution (Bruns & Bahnisch 2009)
 Networks, weak ties and strong ties
 Connectivity, information and trust
 Community and culture
 Community as concentric circles (Bruns 2009)
 Equality and civic belonging (Wilkinson & Pickett 2009)
 Social resilience, emergent action and a social media
heterotopia?

6. RESEARCH QUESTIONS FOR THE FUTURE
 To what degree could there be a meaningful difference in
experience of the floods and social resilience between
strong, occasional and non social media users?
 How were the floods conceptualised by social media users?
 To what degree did social media effects diffuse more
generally, and how? How did distributed processes of „sense
making‟ impact on collective responses?
 What indicators might be valid for comparison between the
experience of the Brisbane floods and comparable events
elsewhere?
 How measurable is community resilience? (Sherrieb et al 2010)
 What can we learn about the levels of and causes of social
resilience in Brisbane from this experience?
 What are the lessons for emergency management, community
disaster response and communications?

7. THANKS!

8. REFERENCES
 Albright, K. 2006 Review: The Meaning(s) of Community in Post-Disaster New York. Sociological Forum 21(2): 307-314
 Bahnisch, M. 2009 Rethinking online hyperlocal urbanisms and creativity. Paper presented at the 'Creative Communities:
Sustainable Solutions to Social Inclusion' Conference, 15th-17th April, 2009, Surfers Paradise.
 Bruns, A. 2009 Social Media: Tools for User-Generated Content: Volume 2 - User Engagement Strategies. Smart Services
CRC: Sydney.
 Bruns, A. & Bahnisch, M. 2009 Social Media: Tools for User-Generated Content: Volume 1 – State of the Art. Smart Services
CRC: Sydney.
 Burgess, A. 2006 The Shock of a Social Disaster in an Age of (Nonsocial) Risk. Space and Culture 9(4):
 Burningham, K., Fielding, J., Thrush, D. 2008 „It‟ll never happen to me‟: Understanding public awareness of local flood risk.
Disasters 32(2): 216-238.
 Drabek, T. & McEntire, D. 2003 Emergent phenomena and the sociology of disaster: lessons, trends and opportunities from
the research literature. Disaster Prevention and Management 12(2): 97-112.
 Kendra, J. & Wachtendforf, T. 2006 „Community Innovation and Disasters‟ in Rodriguez, H., Quarentelli, E. & Dynes, R. Eds.
Handbook of Disaster Research. Springer: New York.
 Patterson, O., Weil, F., Patel, K. 2009 The Role of Community in Disaster Response: Conceptual Models. Population
Research and Policy Review 29(2): 127-141.
 Perrow, C. 2007 The Next Catastrophe: Reducing our vulnerabilities to natural, industrial and terrorist disasters. Princeton
University Press: Princeton NJ.
 Shane, D. 2005 Recombinant Urbanism: Conceptual modeling in architecture, city design and urban theory. Wiley:
Chichester.
 Sherrieb, K., Norris, F. & Galea, S. 2010 Measuring capacities for community resilience. Social Indicators Research 99(2):
227-247.
 Thornburg, P., Knottnerus, J., Webb. G. 2007 Disaster and deritualization: A re-interpretation of findings from early disaster
research. The Social Science Journal 44(1): 161-166
 Tilly, C. 2007 Democracy. Cambridge University Press: New York.
 Wilkinson, R. & Pickett, K. 2009 The Spirit Level: Why Equality is Better for Everyone. Penguin Books: London.

9. ADDENDUM: LARVATUS PRODEO AND THE
FLOODS

10.  Flood thread: January 11 2011
 Flood posts
 Post-flood fundraising