microblogging in response to a violent crisis

www.ischool.drexel.edu

Microblogging in Response to a Violent Crisis

Philly NetSquaredTuesday, March 2, 2010

Thomas Heverin


“Four police officers shot dead in coffee-shop ambush near Tacoma”

Tacoma News Tribune, McClatchy Newspapers, November 29, 2009


Methodology

• Collected and qualitatively coded 6013 tweets (#washooting)– types of authors– contents of messages– trends of messages


Author Types

• 1668 unique authors • Citizens:

– 91.5% of authors, contributed to 82.3% of the tweets

• Local/national media:– 4.5% of authors, 8.9% of the tweets

• Local government:– < 1% of authors, < 1% of tweets


Message Types

• Information-related • Opinion-related• Technology-related• Emotion-related• Action-related


Time Period (12 hour time periods)

Information (%)

Opinion (%)

Technology (%)

Emotion (%)

Action (%)

Other (%)

0-12 hrs 90.0% 6.8% 1.1% 5.6% 1.1% 0.0%

12-24hrs 86.6% 13.0% 3.1% 4.5% 1.3% 0.7%

24-36hrs 73.9% 18.3% 7.0% 2.7% 0.5% 3.7%

36-48hrs 74.6% 21.3% 1.0% 3.8% 0.5% 2.8%

49-60hrs 80.1% 20.9% 2.4% 3.0% 0.0% 0.0%

Table 2. Percentage of tweet type (non-exclusive) per 12 hour time period


Conclusion

• In this case….– citizens contributed the most to the stream of

messages – #washooting primarily used for sharing crisis-

related information• Future work

– analyze sources of information, temporal trends of information shared, and retweeted information