What it Takes to Get Passed On: Message Content, Style, and Structure as Predictors of Retransmission in the Boston Marathon Bombing Response
نویسندگان
چکیده
Message retransmission is a central aspect of information diffusion. In a disaster context, the passing on of official warning messages by members of the public also serves as a behavioral indicator of message salience, suggesting that particular messages are (or are not) perceived by the public to be both noteworthy and valuable enough to share with others. This study provides the first examination of terse message retransmission of official warning messages in response to a domestic terrorist attack, the Boston Marathon Bombing in 2013. Using messages posted from public officials' Twitter accounts that were active during the period of the Boston Marathon bombing and manhunt, we examine the features of messages that are associated with their retransmission. We focus on message content, style, and structure, as well as the networked relationships of message senders to answer the question: what characteristics of a terse message sent under conditions of imminent threat predict its retransmission among members of the public? We employ a negative binomial model to examine how message characteristics affect message retransmission. We find that, rather than any single effect dominating the process, retransmission of official Tweets during the Boston bombing response was jointly influenced by various message content, style, and sender characteristics. These findings suggest the need for more work that investigates impact of multiple factors on the allocation of attention and on message retransmission during hazard events.
منابع مشابه
Terse message amplification in the Boston bombing response
On the morning of April 15, 2013, an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) was detonated near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, resulting in a large number of casualties. This generated a week-long response under the US National Incident Management System. In this paper, we examine online, terse messages broadcast by responding organizations and their amplification by other official entities ...
متن کاملRun amok: Group crowd participation in identifying the bomb and bomber from the Boston marathon bombing
In this paper we tell a version of the story of the bombing of the Boston Marathon. At first, two online groups gathered images, video and textual information concerning the bombing of the Boston Marathon and shared these with the FBI and amongst themselves. Secondly, these groups then created mechanisms to conduct their own investigation into the identities of the perpetrators. Finally, the la...
متن کاملEvaluating Public Response to the Boston Marathon Bombing and Other Acts of Terrorism through Twitter
متن کامل
Passed the Age of Puberty: Organizational Networks as a Way to Get Things Done in the Health Field; Comment on “Evaluating Global Health Partnerships: A Case Study of a Gavi HPV Vaccine Application Process in Uganda”
In this commentary I will demonstrate that the case study of Uganda’s Human papilloma virus (HPV) vaccine application partnership provides an excellent example of widening our lens by evaluating the successful HP vaccine coverage from a network-centric perspective. That implies that the organizational network is seen as the locus of production and that network theories become indispensable to a...
متن کاملMedia's role in broadcasting acute stress following the Boston Marathon bombings.
We compared the impact of media vs. direct exposure on acute stress response to collective trauma. We conducted an Internet-based survey following the Boston Marathon bombings between April 29 and May 13, 2013, with representative samples of residents from Boston (n = 846), New York City (n = 941), and the remainder of the United States (n = 2,888). Acute stress symptom scores were comparable i...
متن کاملذخیره در منابع من
با ذخیره ی این منبع در منابع من، دسترسی به آن را برای استفاده های بعدی آسان تر کنید
عنوان ژورنال:
دوره 10 شماره
صفحات -
تاریخ انتشار 2015