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Re-Tweet Count Matters: Social Influences on Sharing of Disaster-Related Tweets

  • Huaye Li EMAIL logo and Yasuaki Sakamoto
Published/Copyright: July 3, 2015

Abstract

Communication during and after disasters increasingly relies on social media technologies. For example, victims, emergency responders, and others took to Twitter to share information about conditions, aid, resources and the like in the aftermath of the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake. The current paper concerns how a re-tweet count, or the number of others who have already forwarded a message, influences people’s spreading of disaster-related tweets. The results of a human-subjects experiment revealed that, when the re-tweet count of a tweet increased, the likelihood that people would share the tweet increased when it came from an individual’s account, but the likelihood decreased when it came from a news agency’s account. These social influences disappeared when the re-tweet counts were over 1000 people. These findings extend the understanding of how disaster-related information spreads on social media, which is essential for improving social media during disaster management.


Corresponding author: Huaye Li, Stevens Institute of Technology – Technology Management 1 Castle Point on Hudson, Hoboken, NJ 07030, USA, Tel.: 5703170763, e-mail:

Acknowledgments

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. IIS-1138658 and Grant No. BCS-1244742. The research reported here is part of HL’s doctoral dissertation at Stevens Institute of Technology.

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Published Online: 2015-7-3
Published in Print: 2015-9-1

©2015 by De Gruyter

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