Priceless tweets! A study on Twitter messages posted during crisis: Black Saturday

Abstract

Twitter has been regarded as an outstanding social media application due to its immediacy in communication. Twitter has experienced exponential growth and been used for various purposes including crisis communication. However, there have been less empirical studies on Twitter messages (tweets) posted during crisis. In this paper, we analyse the tweets that were posted during Australia’s worst fire disaster - Black Saturday. We propose a new coding scheme for tweets during crisis and propose further research into how Twitter can be used as an alternative communication tool during crisis to support official communications, in particular, reflecting ground level conditions. Further, we find that tweets made during Black Saturday are laden with actionable factual information which contrasts with earlier claims that tweets are of no value made of mere random personal notes.

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