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T witter: An Underutilized Potential during Sudden Crises?
Author(s) -
Helsloot Ira,
Groenendaal Jelle
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
journal of contingencies and crisis management
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.007
H-Index - 51
eISSN - 1468-5973
pISSN - 0966-0879
DOI - 10.1111/1468-5973.12023
Subject(s) - government (linguistics) , position (finance) , political science , business , public relations , finance , philosophy , linguistics
The widespread use of T witter by citizens during sudden crises has convinced communications experts that governments should also actively use T witter during crises. However, this position seems insufficiently empirically validated. In this article, we want to provide empirical building blocks for an informed approach to the use of T witter by the government. To this end, we analyze the tweets posted by citizens and governments about the large‐scale fire in M oerdijk (2011), the N etherlands. The results show that by far, most tweets do not contain any new and relevant information for governments and that the tweets posted by governments got buried under an avalanche of citizen tweets. We may conclude that the M oerdijk case does not give rise to advocate a (more) active role of governments on T witter during sudden crises.