Understanding the uncertainty of disaster tweets and its effect on retweeting: The perspectives of uncertainty reduction theory and information entropy

Abstract

AbstractThe rapid and wide dissemination of up‐to‐date, localized information is a central issue during disasters. Being attributed to the original 140‐character length, Twitter provides its users with quick‐posting and easy‐forwarding features that facilitate the timely dissemination of warnings and alerts. However, a concern arises with respect to the terseness of tweets that restricts the amount of information conveyed in a tweet and thus increases a tweetʼs uncertainty. We tackle such concerns by proposing entropy as a measure for a tweetʼs uncertainty. Based on the perspectives of Uncertainty Reduction Theory (URT), we theorize that the more uncertain information of a disaster tweet, the higher the entropy, which will lead to a lower retweet count. By leveraging the statistical and predictive analyses, we provide evidence supporting that entropy validly and reliably assesses the uncertainty of a tweet. This study contributes to improving our understanding of information propagation on Twitter during disasters. Academically, we offer a new variable of entropy to measure a tweetʼs uncertainty, an important factor influencing disaster tweetsʼ retweeting. Entropy plays a critical role to better comprehend URLs and emoticons as a means to convey information. Practically, this research suggests a set of guidelines for effectively crafting disaster messages on Twitter.