As part of the research project “International comparison of communicating situation reports on behalf of civil protection authorities (KOLIBRI)” we were interested in how the public finds and shares disaster information during events such as storms, floodings, earthquakes or heat/cold waves.
To address these questions we conducted a representative online-survey in nine countries in October 2018. The participants were asked to answer questions regarding their information (sharing) behavior in a disaster situation. Therefore, we provided them with the following storm scenario: There is a violent storm where you live with catastrophic consequences. There are severe damages in your area. However, the power supply is still working as usual. You are on your own at home.
Based on our findings we aimed at developing recommendations for a communication strategy that enhances communication of situation reports by the German civil protection authorities in a forward-looking and innovative way.
Percentage of respondents, who experienced one or more of the following disaster events in the last five years: Power cut lasting more than 72 hours, Extreme storm, Flooding, Major fire/forest fire, Attack, shooting, Extreme heat wave / cold wave, Earthquake
Question: Have you been affected by the following events in the last five years?
Answer format: Yes, No
Likelihood of using social media to get information about a storm event. The map displays the mean value of participants’ likelihood to use Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube.
Question: How likely is it that you would use the following social media channels to find out about such a situation or a similar situation?
Answer format: 1 = “very unlikely” to 5 = “very likely”
Results of a cluster analysis to derive a typology of information types among the public in all nine countries (n = 9126). Assessed information sources were personal contacts, tv news, online news, print news, websites of emergency agencies, (internet) radio, emergency calls, apps of emergency services, public information hotline, teletext, social media.
Classics = Use rather tv or online news, personal contacts, websites of emergency agencies and less social media to get information about disaster situations.
Inactives = Use all assessed information sources less than other information types during disaster situations.
Multisided = Use broadest media repertoire to get information during disaster situations, especially disaster-specific information channels such as websites and apps of emergency agencies, public information hotlines and social media.
Results of a cluster analysis to derive a typology of participation types among the public in all nine countries (n = 8090). Relevant variables were likelihood of using different social media channels (e.g. facebook, twitter, messenger services) to share information, reasons for sharing disaster information (socializing, status seeking, entertainment, information seeking, distrust in information from media or emergency services) as well as past and future sharing behavior.
Altruists = Share disaster information mainly via facebook and messenger services. They do so to socialize and help others. They were less active in the past, but would share more information during future situations if they knew how this could contribute to disaster management.
Extroverts = Use a variety of social media channels to share disaster information. They rather want to perceived as valuable by others and have rather less trust in information from media or emergency services. They were already sharing information during past events and would share more information during future situations if they knew how this could contribute to disaster management.
Inactives = Would rather not share disaster information with others via social media and have no interest to do so in the future.
The displayed results are findings from qualitative expert interviews with representatives from emergency services and public agencies in each country as well as a qualitative content analysis of strategy documents in 2017/2018. They describe some good practices for emergency services to communicate with the public during disaster events.