Abstract
Social media allows users to share information and communicate interpersonally during natural disasters, environmental disasters, and other environmental concerns. We conducted a scoping review of the literature using the Arksey and O’Malley framework to examine how social media is used during these environmental concerns, determine what the implications are for public health officials, and identify research gaps. Thirty-four articles were retrieved for the review. From these articles, four main questions were answered: How can social media be used to disseminate information to others? How is social media used for data prediction and early warnings? How is social media used for environmental awareness and health promotion? Lastly, how can social media be used as an indicator of public participation in social media during environmental concerns? We found evidence supporting social media as a useful surveillance tool during natural disasters, environmental disasters, and other environmental concerns. Public health officials can use social media to gain insight into public opinions and perceptions. Social media allows public health workers and emergency responders to act more quickly and efficiently during crises. Further research is needed to improve the use of social media during natural disasters, environmental disasters, and other environmental concerns.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Abbreviations
- BP:
-
British petroleum
References
Apuzzo R (2014) Social media user statistics & age demographics. Retrieved April 2, 2015. http://jetscram.com/blog/industry-news/social-media-user-statistics-and-age-demographics-2014/
Arksey H, O’Malley L (2005) Scoping studies: towards a methodological framework. Int J Soc Res Methodol 8:19–32. doi:10.1080/1364557032000119616
Aulov O, Halem M (2012) Human sensor networks for improved modeling of natural disasters. Proc IEEE 100:2812–2823. doi:10.1109/JPROC.2012.2195629
Bunce S, Partridge H, Davis K (2012) Exploring information experience using social media during the 2011 Queensland Floods: a pilot study. Aust Libr J 61:34–45. doi:10.1080/00049670.2012.10722300
Cassa CA, Chunara R, Mandl K, Brownstein JS (2013) Twitter as a sentinel in emergency situations: lessons from the Boston Marathon explosions. PLos Curr Disasters. doi:10.1371/currents.dis.ad70cd1c8bc585e9470046cde334ee4b
Chae J, Thom D, Jang Y, Kim S, Ertl T, Ebert DS (2014) Public behavior response analysis in disaster events utilizing visual analytics of microblog data. Comput Graph 38:51–60. doi:10.1016/j.cag.2013.10.008
Chatfield AT, Brajawidagda U (2014) Crowdsourcing hazardous weather reports from citizens via Twitter sphere under the short warning lead times of EF5 intensity Tornado conditions. In: System sciences (HICSS), 2014 47th Hawaii international conference on, 6–9 Jan 2014. pp 2231–2241. doi:10.1109/HICSS.2014.281
Chatfield AT, Scholl HJ, Brajawidagda U (2013) Tsunami early warnings via Twitter in government: net-savvy citizens’ co-production of time-critical public information services. Gov Inform Q 30:377–386. doi:10.1016/j.giq.2013.05.021
Chewning LV (2014) Multiple voices and multiple media: co-constructing BP’s crisis response. Public Relat Rev. doi:10.1016/j.pubrev.2014.10.012
Daudt HML, van Mossel C, Scott SJ (2013) Enhancing the scoping study methodology: a large, inter-professional team’s experience with Arksey and O’Malley’s framework. BMC Med Res Methodol. doi:10.1186/1471-2288-13-48
Dong H, Halem M, Zhou S (2013) Social media data analytics applied to hurricane sandy. In: Social computing (SocialCom), 2013 international conference on, 8–14 Sept 2013. pp 963–966. doi:10.1109/SocialCom.2013.152
Fung ICH, Tse ZTH, Fu KW (2015a) The use of social media in public health surveillance. West Pac Surveill Response J WPSAR 6(2):3–6. doi:10.5365/wpsar.2015.6.1.019
Fung ICH, Tse ZTH, Fu KW (2015b) Converting big data into public health. Science 347(6222):620
Goncalves A, Silva C, Morreale P, Bonafide J (2014) Crowdsourcing for public safety. In: Systems conference (SysCon), 2014 8th annual IEEE, March 31 2014–April 3 2014, pp 50–56. doi:10.1109/SysCon.2014.6819235
Gupta A, Joshi A, Kumaraguru P (2012) Identifying and characterizing user communities on Twitter during crisis events. Paper presented at the proceedings of the 2012 workshop on data-driven user behavioral modelling and mining from social media, Maui, Hawaii, USA, pp 23–26
Hjorth L, Kim K-HY (2011) Good grief: the role of social mobile media in the 3.11 earthquake disaster in Japan. Digit Creat 22:187–199. doi:10.1080/14626268.2011.604640
Houston JB et al (2015) Social media and disasters: a functional framework for social media use in disaster planning, response, and research. Disasters 39:1–22. doi:10.1111/disa.12092
Jung JY, Moro M (2014) Multi-level functionality of social media in the aftermath of the Great East Japan Earthquake. Disasters 38(Suppl 2):S123–S143. doi:10.1111/disa.12071
Keim ME, Noji E (2011) Emergent use of social media: a new age of opportunity for disaster resilience. Am J Disaster Med 6:47–54
Kent JD, Capello HT (2013) Spatial patterns and demographic indicators of effective social media content during the Horsethief Canyon fire of 2012. Cartogr Geogr Inform Sci 40:78–89. doi:10.1080/15230406.2013.776727
Kongthon A, Haruechaiyasak C, Pailai J, Kongyoung S (2012) The role of Twitter during a natural disaster: case study of 2011 Thai flood. In: Technology management for emerging technologies (PICMET), 2012 proceedings of PICMET ‘12, July 29 2012–Aug 2 2012, pp 2227–2232
Lachlan KA, Spence PR, Lin X (2014) Expressions of risk awareness and concern through Twitter: on the utility of using the medium as an indication of audience needs. Comput Hum Behav 35:554–559. doi:10.1016/j.chb.2014.02.029
Levac D, Colquhoun H, O’Brien KK (2010) Scoping studies: advancing the methodology. Implement Sci IS 5:69. doi:10.1186/1748-5908-5-69
Martinello N, Donelle L (2012) Online conversations among Ontario university students: environmental concerns. Inform Health Soc Care 37:177–189. doi:10.3109/17538157.2012.678448
Middleton SE, Middleton L, Modafferi S (2014) Real-time crisis mapping of natural disasters using social media. Intell Syst IEEE 29:9–17. doi:10.1109/MIS.2013.126
Muralidharan S, Dillistone K, Shin J-H (2011) The Gulf Coast oil spill: extending the theory of image restoration discourse to the realm of social media and beyond petroleum. Public Relat Rev 37:226–232. doi:10.1016/j.pubrev.2011.04.006
Murthy D, Longwell SA (2013) Twitter and disasters: the uses of Twitter during the 2010 Pakistan floods. Inform Commun Soc 16:837–855. doi:10.1080/1369118x.2012.696123
Palen L, Starbird K, Vieweg S, Hughes A (2010) Twitter-based information distribution during the 2009 Red River Valley flood threat. Bull Am Soc Inform Sci Technol 36:13–17. doi:10.1002/bult.2010.1720360505
Pham MT, Rajić A, Greig JD, Sargeant JM, Papadopoulos A, McEwen SA (2014) A scoping review of scoping reviews: advancing the approach and enhancing the consistency. Res Synth Methods 5:371–385. doi:10.1002/jrsm.1123
Procopio CH, Procopio ST (2007) Do you know what it means to miss New Orleans? Internet communication, geographic community, and social capital in crisis. J Appl Commun Res 35:67–87. doi:10.1080/00909880601065722
Ripberger JT, Jenkins-Smith HC, Silva CL, Carlson DE, Henderson M (2014) Social media and severe weather: do Tweets Provide a valid indicator of public attention to severe weather risk communication? Weather Clim Soc 6:520–530. doi:10.1175/WCAS-D-13-00028.1
Robinson J, Cox G, Bailey E, Hetrick S, Rodrigues M, Fisher S, Herrman H (2016) Social media and suicide prevention: a systematic review. Early Interv Psychiatry 10(2):103–121. doi:10.1111/eip.12229
Rogstadius J, Vukovic M, Teixeira CA, Kostakos V, Karapanos E, Laredo JA (2013) CrisisTracker: crowdsourced social media curation for disaster awareness. IBM J Res Dev 57(4):1–4. doi:10.1147/JRD.2013.2260692
Salathe M, Bengtsson L, Bodnar TJ, Brewer DD, Brownstein JS, Buckee C, Campbell EM, Cattuto C, Khandelwal S, Mabry PL, Vespignani A (2012) Digital epidemiology. PLoS Comput Biol 8(7):e1002616. doi:10.1371/journal.pcbi.1002616
Spiro ES, Fitzhugh S, Sutton J, Pierski N, Greczek M, Butts CT (2012) Rumoring during extreme events: a case study of deepwater horizon 2010. Paper presented at the proceedings of the 4th annual ACM web science conference, Evanston, Illinois, pp. 275–283. doi:10.1145/2380718.2380754
Starbird K, Dailey D, Walker AH, Leschine TM, Pavia R, Bostrom A (2014) Social media, public participation, and the 2010 BP deepwater horizon oil spill. Hum Ecol Risk Assess Int J 21:605–630. doi:10.1080/10807039.2014.947866
Sutton J, League C, Sellnow TL, Sellnow DD (2015) Terse messaging and public health in the midst of natural disasters: the case of the Boulder floods. Health Commun 30:135–143. doi:10.1080/10410236.2014.974124
Tang J, Folmer H, Xue J (2013) Estimation of awareness and perception of water scarcity among farmers in the Guanzhong Plain, China, by means of a structural equation model. J Environ Manage 126:55–62. doi:10.1016/j.jenvman.2013.03.051
Wang X (2014) How do people participate in social network sites after crises? A self-determination perspective. Soc Sci Comput Rev. doi:10.1177/0894439314525116
Watson BR (2014) Normalizing community structure’s restraint on critical tweets about a polluting industry. J Broadcast Electron Media 58:581–600. doi:10.1080/08838151.2014.966359
Werts JD, Mikhailova EA, Post CJ, Sharp JL (2012) An integrated WebGIS framework for volunteered geographic information and social media in soil and water conservation. Environ Manage 49:816–832. doi:10.1007/s00267-012-9818-5
White J, Fu KW, Benson B (2013) Social media: an Ill-defined phenomenon. In: Ozok AA, Zaphiris P (eds) Online communities and social computing, vol 8029., Lecture notes in computer scienceSpringer, Berlin, pp 422–431. doi:10.1007/978-3-642-39371-6_47
World Health Organization (WHO) (2015) Health promotion. Retrieved April 1, 2015: http://www.who.int/topics/health_promotion/en/
Yates D, Paquette S (2011) Emergency knowledge management and social media technologies: a case study of the 2010 Haitian earthquake. Int J Inf Manage 31:6–13. doi:10.1016/j.ijinfomgt.2010.10.001
Zhang MW, Ho C, Fang P, Lu Y, Ho RC (2014) Usage of social media and smartphone application in assessment of physical and psychological well-being of individuals in times of a major air pollution crisis. JMIR mHealth uHealth 2:e16. doi:10.2196/mhealth.2827
Zielinski A (2013) Detecting natural disaster events on Twitter across languages. In Tsihrintzis GA, Virvou M, Watanabe T, Jain LC, Howlett RJ (eds) Intelligent interactive multimedia systems and services, pp 291–301. doi:10.3233/978-1-61499-262-2-291
Funding
ICHF is supported by the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) (15IPA1509134). This paper is not related to ICHF’s CDC-supported research. CDC has no role in the study design, writing, and submission of this literature review. This paper does not represent the official positions of the CDC or US Government.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Kathryn C. Finch, Kassandra R. Snook, Carmen H. Duke have contributed equally to this paper as co-first authors.
King-Wa Fu, Zion Tsz Ho Tse, Atin Adhikari and Isaac Chun-Hai Fung have contributed equally to this paper as joint senior authors.
Electronic supplementary material
Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Finch, K.C., Snook, K.R., Duke, C.H. et al. Public health implications of social media use during natural disasters, environmental disasters, and other environmental concerns. Nat Hazards 83, 729–760 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-016-2327-8
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-016-2327-8