numerous studies have been conducted about the role of media during a crisis. accordingly diverse functions have been defined for media while in crisis. by applying a prescriptive viewpoint to derive mass media functions, most of the studies have been the based on the opinions of experts and the opinions of the victims have rarely been taken into consideration. for the first time, we have direc...

Social media provides a digital space – a meeting place, for different people, often representing one or more groups in a society. The use of this space during a disaster, especially where information needs are high and the availability of factually accurate and ethically sourced data is scarce, has increased substantially over the last 5-10 years. This paper attempts to address communication i...

Social media have played integral roles in many crises around the world. Thailand faced severe floods between July 2011 and January 2012, when more than 13.6 million people were affected. This 7-month disaster provides a great opportunity to understand the use of social media for managing a crisis project before, during, and after its occurrence. However, current literature lacks a theoretical ...

A survey about the information needs of elderly people could find out the information required to address the needs of the aged in a community. Analyzing data collected from 600 elderly people through field investigation with a questionnaire in a rural community in central China, the results show that the preferred information format of the majority of aged people is audio and/or visual informa...

Real-world information needs are generally complex, yet almost all research focuses on either relatively simple search based on queries or recommendation based on profiles. It is difficult to gain insight into complex information needs from observational studies with existing systems; potentially complex needs are obscured by the systems’ limitations. In this paper we study explicit information...

With the rise of social media, writings by ordinary people are becoming increasingly available for linguistic analysis. Such analyses offer great opportunities to identify individual users’ needs from user-generated content, so that better tailored products or services can be recommended. Literature suggests that several types of human needs are universal and directly influence consumer purchas...