How people affected by disasters use social media: a study of Facebook usage during the 2017 Garden Route fires

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT: On June 7, wildfires began in Knysna and burned along a fire line for 300km, also affecting neighbouring Sedgefield and Plettenberg Bay (Knysna-Plett Herald 2017). The major fires burned between June 7 and June 11, however small smouldering fires continued for nearly two weeks (Knysna-Plett Herald 2017). Social media, which has become part of everyday life across the world (Fraustino, Liu & Jin 2012), was found to be a resourceful component to the management of the Garden Route fires. The one-to-many nature of Twitter and Facebook has shaped an opportunity for stakeholders and the public to distribute crisis-relevant messages, and to access large amounts of information they may not otherwise have (Fraustino, Liu & Jin 2012). There is extensive literature on social media in South Africa, as well as academic literature on disasters in South Africa. However, other than an article by Skinner and Rampersad (2014), no research has linked social media use to any specific disaster in South Africa. Since majority of the articles found on social media tend to focus on Twitter use, the unit of analysis for this thesis is Facebook.This research aims to fill the above-mentioned gap in literature, with a view to optimise the potential of social media as a communication tool, for disaster risk reduction, and to improve response during emergencies. This research examines how people used social media during the wildfires that affected the Garden Route communities in June 2017 and whether the results are similar to those found during other disasters in different parts of the world. The overarching aim was to determine how people affected by a disaster event use social media, and whether there are common ways that they communicate. Further focus was given to determining whether certain formats of messages and ways of communicating were more popular than others.Based on the results from the 2017 Garden Route fires, disaster-affected people may communicate in common ways on social media. Facebook proved to be an effective channel of communication throughout the disaster, and it continues to be, with the Knysna Fires 7th June 2017 Facebook page still receiving messages related to the disaster event. Results showed that messages posted on the Knysna Fires 7th June 2017 Facebook page could be classified into four main categories: Information-related, action-related, emotion-related, and opinion-related. These are the same four categories that were used to analyse social media use during the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, the 2010 Yushu earthquake, and the 2014 Hazelwood Mine fire. Based on the literature findings from this research, there are common things that disaster affected people do and say on social media, regardless of disaster type and demographics. The findings of this research highlight that photo and video messages that were accompanied by a text description to give context to the photos or videos were the most popular message format and thus received the most responses from Facebook users. The photos and videos helped to graphically show the extent of damages in areas affected by the fire. Since photo and video messages received such a high number of responses, it is recommended that both the public and disaster management officials make greater use of these formats to communicate during future disasters. Authorities can use social media platforms such as Facebook as an additional tool for disseminating emergency information to the public.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University