This thesis reports on the use of verified Twitter accounts during crisis events. Twitter is a social media platform that allows users to broadcast and exchange public text messages and it can be used as a communication tool during crisis events. Verified Twitter accounts are those accounts that Twitter has investigated and found to be genuinely maintained by the claimed owner. Celebrities, public officials, and other well-known persons or companies often seek this account status. The owners of these accounts are likely to provide more accurate or relevant information during a crisis event because they represent a brand, whether themselves or an organization. To study the role verified Twitter accounts play in a crisis event, information was collected from Twitter’s API (Application Programming Interface) from February 28, 2018 through March 3, 2018 during a powerful storm on the East Coast of the United States called a Nor’easter. Through data collection and analysis, this thesis describe show verified Twitter accounts communicated during a crisis event. Three exploratory questions were proposed to better understand the use of verified Twitter accounts: Who are the verified Twitter users that tweet about a crisis event? What types of information do verified Twitter users tweet about a crisis event? When do verified Twitter users tweet about a crisis event? Results show that verified Twitter accounts create more original messages, share more informative messages, and spread less spam than their non-verified counterparts.

This dissertation consists of three studies that examine online communications during crisis events. The first study identified and examined the information sources that provided official information online during the 2014 Carlton Complex Wildfire. Specifically, after the wildfire, a set of webpages and social media accounts were discovered that were named after the wildfire—called Crisis Named Resources (or CNRs). CNRs shared the highest percentage of wildfire-relevant information. Because CNRs are named after a crisis event, they are easier to find and appear to be dedicated and/or official sources around an event. They can, however, be created and deleted in a short time, and the creators of CNRs are often unknown, which raises questions of trust and credibility regarding the information CNRs provide. To better understand the role of CNRs in crisis response, the second study examined CNRs that were named after the 2016 Fort McMurray Wildfire. Findings showed that many CNRs were created around the wildfire, most of which either became inactive or were closed after the wildfire containment. These CNRs shared wildfire-relevant information and served a variety of purposes from information dissemination to offers of help to expressions of solidarity. Additionally, even though most CNR owners remained anonymous, these resources received good reviews and were followed by many people. These observations about CNRs laid the foundation for the third study that sought to determine the factors that influence the trustworthiness of these resources. The third study involved 17 interviews and 105 surveys with members of the public and experts in Crisis Informatics, Communication Studies, and Emergency Management. Participants were asked to evaluate the trustworthiness of CNRs that were named after the 2017 Hurricane Irma. Findings indicate that participants evaluated the trustworthiness of CNRs based on their perceptions of CNR content, information source(s), owner, and profile.

Social media data can be collected and analyzed during and after crisis events to aid in disaster relief efforts. Setting up a system to perform this analysis is associated with various technical challenges. This thesis presents the design and implementation of a social media analysis as a service system. This system is hosted on cloud infrastructure and allows for on demand collection, processing, and delivery of social media data via an intuitive web interface. The service model and cloud infrastructure allow the system to be highly scalable and produce near real time analysis data. A cost evaluation of the system was performed and presented in this thesis. The SMAS system was evaluated through a user study and participants found the system unique, interesting, and easy to understand and use. The usability of the system was also evaluated during the user study and resulted in a system usability score of 79.25 out of 100. Suggestions to improve the system and increase its adoptability are also discussed. The thesis concludes with suggestions for future work.

Events like earthquakes, terrorist attacks, water contamination etc. have drawn an increased attention on the way crisis preparedness can be improved by citizens, authorities and society as a whole. Current research has highlighted the importance of social media in crisis communication and why social media are important, but neglects to describe how social media is used by public organizations during crisis situations. By studying a particular crisis situation in a municipal organization, this thesis investigates how public organizations organize to collect and share information with the use of social media during crisis events. The results show that social media enabled fast response to citizens, due to the coordination and collaboration ability within the municipality. The importance of an existing digital strategy is recognized, for proper managing of social media as response to sudden change.

The purpose of this study is to provide knowledge about Cambodian students’ information access and how their information behaviour is affected by floods. The research material consisted of 15 semi- structured interviews of university students in Cambodia. The results concluded that students have an immense difficulty accessing information for their studies. The results also reveal that students change their information behaviour during heavy rain and floods. The students learn to adapt to their environment and develop creative strategies to cope with accessing information during rainfall and floods. The students learn to share information with each other to a greater extent. Primarily they disseminate information through social media and messaging applications. The results were analysed using theories on information behaviour together with proposed categories of information behaviour during a crisis.

Social media plays an important role during multiple phases of a disaster. While it is widely known that citizens turn to social media during disasters to gain information and send help requests, there is a significant gap in our knowledge of how, or if, first responders use social media to conduct disaster response operations. To help address this gap this study employed qualitative, semi-structured interviews with a sample of first responders (N = 20) who were deployed to Hurricane Harvey in 2017. The interviews sought to gain a better understanding of how social media was used to conduct response operations and identify both limitations and advantages of social media as perceived by first responders. Through a systematic coding process the analysis identified four themes related to social media usage among first responders to disasters: (1) more than just Twitter; (2) rumor has it; (3) one size does not fit all; and (4) timing is everything. The findings of this research highlight the importance of social media for both organizations and individuals involved in responding to disasters.

Våren 2017 upplevde Sverige en kris när det terrorattentat med flest dödsfall sen 1940 inträffade; en lastbil körde längs Drottninggatan i Stockholm, varpå flera personer blev påkörda varav fem personer dödades. Händelsen spred sig snabbt i sociala medier och delar av informationen som spreds var obekräftade uppgifter som senare visade sig vara felaktiga. Syftet med denna studie har varit att framställa rekommendationer för kriskommunikatörers proaktiva arbete mot falsk information och ryktesspridning på sociala medier samt utgöra en grund för vidare forskning inom krisinformatik. För att uppnå detta syfte har sex respondenter från Krisinformation.se och Polisen intervjuats och en tidslinje (Bilaga 3) upprättats för att förtydliga händelseförloppet på sociala medier under terrorattentatet. Analys av data från det insamlade materialet har resulterat i tio rekommendationer som kan appliceras för att proaktivt motverka falsk information och ryktesspridning på sociala medier. Rekommendationer som kan appliceras generellt hos aktörer inom krishantering. Dessa rekommendationer var: Öva; Bevaka; Skapa material; Var snabb; Var korrekt; Var närvarande; Bemöt rykten; Var tillgänglig; Utbilda; Crowdsourca. / In the spring of 2017, Sweden experienced a crisis when the most deadly act of terrorism since 1940 occured; a truck drove through a crowd of people on Drottninggatan in Stockholm, hitting several people and killing five. The event spread rapidly in social media and the circulating information was in part unconfirmed data that later turned out to be incorrect. The purpose of this study was to generate recommendations regarding emergency communicators’ proactive work against false information and the spreading of rumors on social media, while at the same time be a foundation for future studies within crisis informatics. To achieve this purpose six respondents from Krisinformation.se and the Swedish police were interviewed and a timeline (Bilaga 3) was created in order to clarify the chain of events on social media during the act of terrorism. Analysis of data from the aggregated material has resulted in ten recommended measures applicable to proactive work against false information and spreading of rumors in social media. Measures that can be applied generally to actors within crisis management. These measures were: Practice; Monitor; Create material; Be quick, Be correct; Be present; Respond to rumors; Be available; Educate; Crowdsource.

Våren 2017 upplevde Sverige en kris när det terrorattentat med flest dödsfall sen 1940 inträffade; en lastbil körde längs Drottninggatan i Stockholm, varpå flera personer blev påkörda varav fem personer dödades. Händelsen spred sig snabbt i sociala medier och delar av informationen som spreds var obekräftade uppgifter som senare visade sig vara felaktiga. Syftet med denna studie har varit att framställa rekommendationer för kriskommunikatörers proaktiva arbete mot falsk information och ryktesspridning på sociala medier samt utgöra en grund för vidare forskning inom krisinformatik. För att uppnå detta syfte har sex respondenter från Krisinformation.se och Polisen intervjuats och en tidslinje (Bilaga 3) upprättats för att förtydliga händelseförloppet på sociala medier under terrorattentatet. Analys av data från det insamlade materialet har resulterat i tio rekommendationer som kan appliceras för att proaktivt motverka falsk information och ryktesspridning på sociala medier. Rekommendationer som kan appliceras generellt hos aktörer inom krishantering. Dessa rekommendationer var: Öva; Bevaka; Skapa material; Var snabb; Var korrekt; Var närvarande; Bemöt rykten; Var tillgänglig; Utbilda; Crowdsourca. / In the spring of 2017, Sweden experienced a crisis when the most deadly act of terrorism since 1940 occured; a truck drove through a crowd of people on Drottninggatan in Stockholm, hitting several people and killing five. The event spread rapidly in social media and the circulating information was in part unconfirmed data that later turned out to be incorrect. The purpose of this study was to generate recommendations regarding emergency communicators’ proactive work against false information and the spreading of rumors on social media, while at the same time be a foundation for future studies within crisis informatics. To achieve this purpose six respondents from Krisinformation.se and the Swedish police were interviewed and a timeline (Bilaga 3) was created in order to clarify the chain of events on social media during the act of terrorism. Analysis of data from the aggregated material has resulted in ten recommended measures applicable to proactive work against false information and spreading of rumors in social media. Measures that can be applied generally to actors within crisis management. These measures were: Practice; Monitor; Create material; Be quick, Be correct; Be present; Respond to rumors; Be available; Educate; Crowdsource.

As the world gets more exposed to natural hazards, new practices of response to crisis have become a topic that requires innovation. FindMe Tag is a device designed in partnership with Frog and Sony that provides rescue teams with information on victims’ locations and their medical conditions. This data is used to facilitate the stages of reconnaissance and triage by quickly hierarchizing tactical priorities and areas of intervention.  Through this design practice, we proposed to mitigate the impact of hurricanes and tropical storms in low-income countries by addressing issues that search and rescue missions undertake to locate and prioritize victims. The outcome of this project, apart from the FindMe Tag device, was a digital interface for rescuers and citizens to receive and communicate different information.  In this design research, I will present some consequences and opportunities of this technological development. The proposed interface designs centred on the usage of different communication patterns to balance aspects of transparency and surveillance that affect differently the stakeholders involved in crisis response. Rather than using technologies to surveil citizens and share this information with authorities, the outcome of this research focused on providing both users with awareness and agency over the information they are sharing and receiving.

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