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Strategies of social media use in disaster management: Lessons in resilience from Seoul, South Korea

Kyungwoo Kim (University of North Texas, Denton, Texas, USA)
Kyujin Jung (Korea University, Seoul, South Korea) (Tennessee State University, Nashville, Tennessee, USA)
Kenneth Chilton (Tennessee State University, Nashville, Tennessee, USA)

International Journal of Emergency Services

ISSN: 2047-0894

Article publication date: 7 November 2016

992

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to understand the effects of social media use on the resilience of organizations involved in emergency response. While social media has been utilized as a critical tool in the field of emergency management, few researchers have systemically examined its effect on organizations’ capacity to bounce back from catastrophic events. From the dimensional approach to social media use, this research focuses on the following three functions: providing information to local communities, transmitting information to local communities, and responding to the emotions of local communities.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors used survey data gleaned from 79 key organizations involved in emergency management to investigate the impact of social media use on resilience after a tragic flood in Seoul, South Korea in 2013. The authors also conducted interviews with ten emergency management officials to understand what administrative challenges they confront in using social media for their tasks.

Findings

The authors found that the provision of disaster information on social media such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube has a positive effect on the perceived level of organizational resilience. In addition, social media use correlates positively with community emotional responses.

Research limitations/implications

Given the focus on the emergency response to a natural disaster in urban areas, the results might not be generalizable to smaller cities or rural areas. The survey items that measure the perceptions of emergency managers may not represent the physical aspects of disaster recovery, such as the restoration of housing stock.

Practical implications

The findings suggest that public and nonprofit organizations can use social media to communicate with other organizations and the public in ways that demonstrate resilience. Emergency managers should address administrative challenges, such as trustworthiness of information delivered via social media and lack of personnel.

Originality/value

This paper provides systematic understandings of the effects of social media use on the resilience of the organizations that respond to a disaster.

Keywords

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea Grant funded by the Korean Government (NRF-2007-362-A00019).

Citation

Kim, K., Jung, K. and Chilton, K. (2016), "Strategies of social media use in disaster management: Lessons in resilience from Seoul, South Korea", International Journal of Emergency Services, Vol. 5 No. 2, pp. 110-125. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJES-02-2016-0005

Publisher

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Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2016, Emerald Group Publishing Limited

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