Twitter Data Mining for Situational Awareness

Social Media Use in Extra-Ordinary Contexts

Social media platforms are built from the beginning to be used socially, and oriented around collaboration and sharing. These potentialities are emphasized in extra-ordinary contexts, when ordinary people adopt these tools to provide or search for first-hand and real-time information regarding a certain event (i.e. an earthquake, flood, etc.) (Lindsay, 2011; Taylor et al., 2012). The most recent catastrophic events, from the 2010 Haiti earthquake to the devastating 2013 Colorado floods, in fact, have shown that these platforms have been strongly used both during and after disasters (Figure 1), allowing a real-time dissemination of information to the wider public, an effective situational awareness, and an up-to-date picture of what is happening on the ground (i.e. Farinosi & Micalizzi, 2013; White et al., 2014).

According to Kotsiopoulos (2014), in extra-ordinary situations, social media enable citizens to play at least three roles: 1) first responders/volunteers; 2) citizen journalists/reporters; and 3) social activists. Oftentimes citizens on the scene experience the event first-hand and are able to provide updates more quickly than disaster response organizations and traditional news media (Sweetser & Metzgar, 2007; Procopio & Procopio, 2007; Farinosi & Micalizzi, 2013).

Given the increasing availability of data and meta-data produced and/or distributed on these online platforms, it is pivotal to understand how they should be used and integrated with traditional systems for situational awareness, supporting in this way the work of Civil Protection, Red Cross, Fire Department, and other agencies.