{"id":659,"date":"2011-03-16T11:06:37","date_gmt":"2011-03-16T01:06:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mappingonlinepublics.net\/dev\/2011\/03\/16\/twitter-in-the-christchurch-earthquake-pt-1\/"},"modified":"2012-04-10T13:55:05","modified_gmt":"2012-04-10T03:55:05","slug":"twitter-in-the-christchurch-earthquake-pt-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mappingonlinepublics.net\/dev\/2011\/03\/16\/twitter-in-the-christchurch-earthquake-pt-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Twitter in the Christchurch Earthquake, Pt. 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

Given the recent focus on this blog on the use of social media during major disasters, a closer look at the use of Twitter<\/em> during the devastating Christchurch earthquake on 22 Feb. 2011 is long overdue (and sadly, more on the horrible Japanese earthquake and tsunami will follow soon, too). I’m following our previous methodology here – much as we’ve employed it for looking at the Queensland floods<\/a> and other major events before. However, rather than relying on data from Twapperkeeper<\/em> (which may not remain available for much longer, given the recent changes in how Twitter<\/em> governs its data), we’re now using our own install of yourTwapperkeeper<\/em>, which (with a few tweaks – more on that at another time) I can thoroughly recommend so far.<\/p>\n

First, an overall look at the volume of tweets. As soon as news of the earthquake broke, I set our yTK<\/em> to archive #eqnz, the major hashtag associated with the disaster, so we have data from exactly 10:28:16 (AEST) onwards; the earthquake itself took place at 9:51 AEST, or 12:51 local time. (Working across timezones will be a little confusing in what follows, so I’ll stick with Australian Eastern Standard Time (AEST) here – for New Zealand time, add three hours.) In other words, we’re missing only the first 37 minutes here:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"image\"<\/a> <\/p>\n

Very obviously, then, Twitter<\/em> coverage of the earthquake spikes within the first hours of the event, at nearly 7500 tweets\/hour – this is the phase when locals and more distant onlookers alike are likely to be tweeting and retweeting the first reports in order to get the news out; a very clear illustration of what Alfred Hermida has called Twitter’<\/em>s ‘ambient journalism<\/a>‘ role: it may lie dormant for most of the time, but it’s there when you need it.<\/p>\n

So who were the major participants in the Twitter<\/em> conversation, then? As always, an analysis of @replies (including old-style retweets) provides a very good indication of the central sources of information (click on the image for a full-size graph):<\/p>\n

\"image\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Some interesting patterns emerge here, especially also in comparison with the data from the Queensland floods<\/a> emergency: again, we see government and emergency authorities as well as mainstream media as central sources of information on Twitter<\/em>. However, compared to Queensland, where the Queensland Police Service (@QPSmedia) led the field, here it is a newspaper, the NZ Herald<\/a><\/em>, with more than twice as many @replies as the next account. In second place is another account of a kind we haven’t seen in this form in Queensland: CEQgovtnz, the New Zealand government’s official Canterbury Earthquake<\/a> Twitter<\/em> account which (as I understand it) was set up to provide information about the previous major earthquake in September 2010. Having already been in place from this previous disaster, it’s no surprise that it would swing into action again, and become a major source of information, during this second earthquake – however (and this is by no means a criticism, given what the people running the Canterbury Earthquake site no doubt had to deal with in the immediate aftermath), it is also notable that its first post-quake tweet we see in the data was only at about 8:10 a.m. AEST on 24 Feb. – two days after the quake hit. @CEQgovtnz is more important as a source for the long-term relief and recovery effort, therefore, than for the immediate response to the disaster.<\/p>\n

Many other highly notable accounts follow established patterns from the Queensland floods – we see accounts for the Christchurch City Council (@ChristchurchCC), the Fairfax-owned news Website @NZStuff, @TVNZNews, @NZcivildefence, and the @NZRedCross, for example, and (unsurprisingly, given the close relations and the significant attention paid to the disaster by Australians) also the Australian public broadcaster’s account @abcnews, for example. Also of interest are @TelecomNZ and @VodafoneNZ, though they are prominent here mainly because their advisories, e.g.<\/p>\n

\n

RT @TelecomNZ: Please keep ALL calls nationwide to minimum to save capacity for emergency services. Txt instead if you can #eqnz<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

were widely retweeted by other users. Similarly, various individuals show up here for relatively idiosyncratic reasons:<\/p>\n

\n

RT @georgedarroch: Incredible image of Christchurch, from the hills, moments after the quake. http:\/\/i.imgur.com\/0vZbD.jpg<\/a> #eqnz<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

was frequently retweeted, as were<\/p>\n

\n

RT @anthonybaxter: Google has people finder up for #eqnz #christchurch http:\/\/bit.ly\/i0aAle<\/a> please RT widely<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

and Stephen Fry’s message of support:<\/p>\n

\n

RT @stephenfry: Oh dear, poor Christchurch. Another horrific earthquake. http:\/\/t.co\/S5nL3lq<\/a> #chch #eqnz http:\/\/t.co\/plUcmcP<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

A further worthy attempt was the @safeinchch account, set up to gather and retweet information about people thought missing in Christchurch – e.g.<\/p>\n

\n

RT @publicaddress: Just confirmed that [name redacted]<\/em> is okay. Yay! #eqnz<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Tweets directed to @safeinchch mostly retweeted information about its existence, though, and the account itself made 235 tweets between 22 Feb. and 8 March; while not taken up very widely, then, it was no doubt a valuable service for anyone it managed to help…<\/p>\n

That’s it for part 1 – I’m exploring Alfred Hermida’s idea of Twitter<\/em> as ‘ambient journalism’ further in part 2<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Given the recent focus on this blog on the use of social media during major disasters, a closer look at the use of Twitter during the devastating Christchurch earthquake on 22 Feb. 2011 is long overdue (and sadly, more on the horrible Japanese earthquake and tsunami will follow soon, too). I’m following our previous methodology … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Twitter in the Christchurch Earthquake, Pt. 1”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[180,172,8],"tags":[92,93,74,94,298],"class_list":["post-659","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-analysis","category-crisis-2","category-twitter","tag-eqnz","tag-christchurch","tag-disaster","tag-earthquake","tag-twitter","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mappingonlinepublics.net\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/659","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mappingonlinepublics.net\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mappingonlinepublics.net\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mappingonlinepublics.net\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mappingonlinepublics.net\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=659"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mappingonlinepublics.net\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/659\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mappingonlinepublics.net\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=659"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mappingonlinepublics.net\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=659"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mappingonlinepublics.net\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}