Unveiling cultures in emergency response communication networks on social media: following the 2016 Louisiana floods

Jungwon Yeo; Claire Connolly Knox; Kyujin Jung

doi:10.1007/s11135-017-0595-3

Unveiling cultures in emergency response communication networks on social media: following the 2016 Louisiana floods

Qual Quant. 2018;52(2):519-535. doi: 10.1007/s11135-017-0595-3. Epub 2017 Oct 13.

Authors

Jungwon Yeo¹, Claire Connolly Knox², Kyujin Jung³

Affiliations

¹ 1School of Public Administration, College of Health and Public Affairs, University of Central Florida, BYC101B, 12805 Pegasus Drive, Orlando, FL 32816 USA.
² 2School of Public Administration, College of Health and Public Affairs, University of Central Florida, Rm235, 12805 Pegasus Drive, Orlando, FL 32816 USA.
³ 3Social Disaster & Safety Management Center, College of Liberal Arts, Korea University, Rm 203B, Inchon-ro 108, Seongbuk-gu, Seoul, 02841 Korea.

Abstract

While culture in emergency management has gained attention from the field of risk communication, few have systemically dealt with the nuances of general culture involved in the formation and differentiation of risk communication. To fill this gap, this research aims to first examine cultural nuances from the 2016 Louisiana flood response by primarily focusing on communications embedded in social media. The results from social network analysis and content analysis highlight that the flood response communication had strong cultural characteristics, highlighting the notion that of the cultures in Louisiana-faith-based, local authority, and nonprofits-were the prominent cultural responders in the flood response communication. In particular, cultural similarity in both intra/inter group response communication was observed, with each communication group comprising actors who shared a common cultural background and spoke similar keywords.

Keywords: Culture; Louisiana floods; Network analysis; Response communication; Social media.