TY - JOUR
T1 - The impact of social media on risk communication of disasters—a comparative study based on sina weibo blogs related to tianjin explosion and typhoon pigeon
AU - Liu, Tiezhong
AU - Zhang, Huyuan
AU - Zhang, Hubo
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.
PY - 2020/2
Y1 - 2020/2
N2 - Social media has brought opportunities and challenges to risk communication of disasters by undermining the monopoly of traditional news media. This paper took blogs about Tianjin Explosion and Typhoon Pigeon posted through Sina Weibo as empirical objects. Moreover, the paper used the analytical method of social network to conduct a comparative study on the network structures of information disseminated among different types of disasters, with the goal of uncovering the impact of social media on different types of risk communication of disasters. The result shows a different impact of the risk communication on the two types of disasters. While the role of social media for the risk communication of natural disasters is mainly to influence information dissemination, the roles of social media for the risk communication of man-made disasters are to transmit information as well as to communicate emotions. The differences seen within the structure of social media networks are causes differences in functions. Specifically, the structure for the social media communication network on man-made disasters takes on a “core-periphery structure” which is endowed with both information communication and emotional communication functions. Also, the role of the opinion leaders for the subnet is found to be significant while the communication within small groups is kept pretty active; additionally, the slow speed of information transmission of the network could result in easily distorted information. On top of that, the network is characterized with intense vulnerability to the attacks on core nodes. In contrast, the social media network for natural disaster risk communication is not seen with an obvious “peripheral-core” structure which is a relatively pure information transmission network with relatively equal principal status. In other words, the entire network is found with stronger connectivity and relatively faster information transmission speed. Furthermore, the nodes inside the network are found to have weaker control over information transmission. In sum, the research results are helpful in improving the risk communication theory based on social relations, optimizing the communication structure of disaster information so as to change the effect of risk communication.
AB - Social media has brought opportunities and challenges to risk communication of disasters by undermining the monopoly of traditional news media. This paper took blogs about Tianjin Explosion and Typhoon Pigeon posted through Sina Weibo as empirical objects. Moreover, the paper used the analytical method of social network to conduct a comparative study on the network structures of information disseminated among different types of disasters, with the goal of uncovering the impact of social media on different types of risk communication of disasters. The result shows a different impact of the risk communication on the two types of disasters. While the role of social media for the risk communication of natural disasters is mainly to influence information dissemination, the roles of social media for the risk communication of man-made disasters are to transmit information as well as to communicate emotions. The differences seen within the structure of social media networks are causes differences in functions. Specifically, the structure for the social media communication network on man-made disasters takes on a “core-periphery structure” which is endowed with both information communication and emotional communication functions. Also, the role of the opinion leaders for the subnet is found to be significant while the communication within small groups is kept pretty active; additionally, the slow speed of information transmission of the network could result in easily distorted information. On top of that, the network is characterized with intense vulnerability to the attacks on core nodes. In contrast, the social media network for natural disaster risk communication is not seen with an obvious “peripheral-core” structure which is a relatively pure information transmission network with relatively equal principal status. In other words, the entire network is found with stronger connectivity and relatively faster information transmission speed. Furthermore, the nodes inside the network are found to have weaker control over information transmission. In sum, the research results are helpful in improving the risk communication theory based on social relations, optimizing the communication structure of disaster information so as to change the effect of risk communication.
KW - Man-made disaster
KW - Natural disaster
KW - Risk communication
KW - Social media
KW - Social network analysis
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85079048288&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.3390/ijerph17030883
DO - 10.3390/ijerph17030883
M3 - Article
C2 - 32023825
AN - SCOPUS:85079048288
SN - 1661-7827
VL - 17
JO - International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health
JF - International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health
IS - 3
M1 - 883
ER -