Title: Does the provision of emergency information on social media facilitate citizen participation during a disaster?

Authors: Minsun Song; Jung Wook Kim; Yonghee Kim; Kyujin Jung

Addresses: The Askew School of Public Administration and Policy, Florida State University, 627 Bellamy Building, Tallahassee, FL 32306, USA ' Department of Public Administration, University of North Texas, 1155 Union Circle #310617, Denton, TX 76203, USA ' Graduate School of Governance, Sungkyunkwan University, 25-2 Sungkyunkwan-ro, Jongno-gu, Seoul, South Korea ' Department of Public Administration, Tennessee State University, 330 – 10th Avenue N, Box 140, Suite F-400, Nashville, TN 37203, USA

Abstract: While public management has investigated how citizens participate in disasters, few studies have examined how public organisations encourage citizens to communicate on social networking services (SNSs). To fill this gap, this research investigates how public organisations provisioned information to help citizens participate more during a disaster response. We analysed the 2013 Seoul Emergency Management Survey to highlight how organisations communicated more effectively during the 2013 Seoul Floods and implies that SNS can help organisations share information and communicate decisions in emergency situations. The findings support the hypothesis that governments can share and provision information on SNS to positively affect citizen participation in a disaster. This research concludes with the notion that public organisation can use SNS not only to transmit information but also to reduce uncertainty by facilitating citizens to participate in risk communication on SNS.

Keywords: social networking services; SNS; emergency management; citizen participation; emergency information; social media; disaster management; public organisations; disaster response; emergency response; risk communication.

DOI: 10.1504/IJEM.2015.071707

International Journal of Emergency Management, 2015 Vol.11 No.3, pp.224 - 239

Received: 26 Jun 2014
Accepted: 13 May 2015
Published online: 15 Sep 2015 *

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