Re-Tweet Count Matters: Social Influences on Sharing of Disaster-Related Tweets

Li Huaye () and Sakamoto Yasuaki
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Sakamoto Yasuaki: Stevens Institute of Technology – Technology Management Hoboken, NJ, USA

Journal of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, 2015, vol. 12, issue 3, 737-761

Abstract: Communication during and after disasters increasingly relies on social media technologies. For example, victims, emergency responders, and others took to Twitter to share information about conditions, aid, resources and the like in the aftermath of the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake. The current paper concerns how a re-tweet count, or the number of others who have already forwarded a message, influences people’s spreading of disaster-related tweets. The results of a human-subjects experiment revealed that, when the re-tweet count of a tweet increased, the likelihood that people would share the tweet increased when it came from an individual’s account, but the likelihood decreased when it came from a news agency’s account. These social influences disappeared when the re-tweet counts were over 1000 people. These findings extend the understanding of how disaster-related information spreads on social media, which is essential for improving social media during disaster management.

Keywords: disaster response; information transmission; re-tweet count; social influence; social media (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
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DOI: 10.1515/jhsem-2014-0081

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