Social media: Connecting and sharing in a bushfire crisis

Social media has become an integral channel for official agencies to communicate with citizens in a natural disaster crisis and increasingly time, effort and money are being spent on improving social media strategies and practices. However, there is much less research focused on understanding how people engage with official social media content, a significant piece of the crisis communication puzzle. As the use of social media for crisis communication in natural disasters is increasing and the amount of information threatens to overwhelm people, understanding how people engage with official social media content is vital. Using quantitative content analysis, this study examined the use of Facebook by two Australian emergency response agencies during a specific bushfire event and explored how the attributes of social media content are related to user engagement with the information. The findings show that the two agencies had markedly different approaches which resulted in differences in user engagement.