Implementing Social Media: Practical Reflections From County Governments During Hurricane Matthew

Introduction

On October 10, 2016, Hurricane Matthew made landfall in Florida, as the first major hurricane to hit Florida in over a decade. This Category 5 storm was responsible for 12 deaths and over $2.5 billion in damages within the state of Florida alone (National Centers for Environmental Information, 2017). Given the advances in communication technology adopted up to this time, Hurricane Matthew also represented the first time that social media would be used in the full life cycle of a major disaster in the state of Florida, including mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery.

The American Red Cross reports that most Americans believe social media should be used for emergency communication with the public (Briones, 2011), and a growing body of evidence cites the contributions of social media in emergency communication (Hughes & Palen, 2012; Kavanaugh et al., 2012; Latonero & Schkovski, 2013; Luna & Pennock, 2018; Neely & Collins, 2018). These innovative tools are particularly useful in emergency situations because of their ability to provide real-time communication to broad audiences (Yates & Paguette, 2011). With more than 2.23 billion monthly active users on Facebook alone (Facebook, 2018) social networking features can capitalize on audience participation, and permit two-way information sharing between residents and government, as well as residents and one another (Luna & Pennock, 2018). Emerging research has also highlighted many challenges with social media use. Of these, studies indicate a need for better understanding the management of social media, including understanding the changing role of those who manage information, concerns about accuracy and utility of citizen content on social media, and management of updates and accounts during emergency scenarios (Reddick & Norris, 2013; Wukich & Mergel, 2016).

However, the collection and analysis of real-time data on social media remains a challenge (Yuan, Li, & Liu, 2020). For instance, to date most studies use social media data collected from Twitter, often due to ease of accessibility in data collection resulting from permissions granted by the company (Hughes & Palen, 2009; Latonero & Shklovski, 2013; Martinez-Rojas et al., 2018). However, current data shows that there are more Facebook users than Twitter users worldwide (Statista, 2020). Additionally, although several studies attempt to use “big data” to analyze government use of social media during emergencies (Wang et al., 2016; Xu et al., 2016), these analyses are primarily quantitative, and may not capture nuanced detail or provide practical advice to public managers (Gelo et al., 2008; Toomela, 2008).

The present article contributes to the better understanding of a major social media platform in emergency management situations by analyzing the use of Facebook by county governments during Hurricane Matthew. The study considers two exploratory research questions, one of which is about contemporary use and the other about effectiveness of comparative practices: