Abstract
Nowadays, the use of social media by public institutions involved in disaster management is starting to become common practice. However, despite scientific interest in the effect of social media on disaster risk and crisis communication, data exploring emergency management agencies’ round-the-clock Facebook usage and the impact of their content and media choices on stakeholder engagement is limited. This study set out to investigate Romanian local emergency agencies’ Facebook usage patterns and stakeholders’ engagement with their content. The data is comprised of 7810 messages posted between the 1st January and 25th October 2017 by 32 County Inspectorates for Emergency Situations. First, using content analysis techniques, the topics of the posts were summarized to illustrate how these agencies use Facebook. Second, stakeholder engagement was investigated using social media marketing techniques. Third, messages related to natural hazards were analyzed in greater depth to reveal disaster risk communication patterns. The results suggest that Romanian emergency agencies mainly promote transparency and their institutional image on Facebook. Stakeholders were most likely to engage with brand-oriented posts, especially if these also offered rich multimedia feature. Meanwhile, stakeholders were less likely to interact with messages about natural hazards, particularly if they incorporated educational content. These observations suggest that, while at the moment Romanian local emergency management agencies take advantage of Facebook to create and maintain relationships with their stakeholders, they bypass opportunities to implement communication strategies for effective disaster risk reduction.
Highlights
As of late, there has been an increasing interest in the utilization of social media (SM) for disaster risk and crisis communication, and it seems that there are no emergencies without scientific coverage on SM use anymore [1]
Facebook events offer a unique form of stakeholder engagement—they offer the possibility of showing interest in a public event or announcing a willingness to participate in it
County Inspectorates for Emergency Situations (CIES)-designated personnel for Facebook communication should select messages considering their news value, because content choice impacts how stakeholders engage with CIES posts a great deal
Summary
There has been an increasing interest in the utilization of social media (SM) for disaster risk and crisis communication, and it seems that there are no emergencies without scientific coverage on SM use anymore [1]. Studies examining the potential of SM for the pre-event phase, fewer in number, focus especially on how to disseminate preparedness information and monitor SM to identify risks [6,7] These studies are relevant in light of the fact that practice calls for the utilization of SM to promote strategies to raise awareness in disaster risk reduction [8]. Numerous recommendations have emerged from research and practice to guide emergency managers through the process of implementing and maintaining SM pages These recommendations cover a wide range of topics, such as the identification of the most suitable SM tools/applications to fulfil specific communication objectives [7,11]; the development of policy documents [12] or best practices in order to establish an active presence on SM; and the establishing of a network of stakeholders [13,14]
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