All hands on deck to tweet #sandy: Networked governance of citizen coproduction in turbulent times

Highlights

• Examines citizen co-production, information processing, and network governance theories and adaptive governance.

• Conducted social network analyses of Twitter #sandy during the enfolding Hurricane Sandy crises in U.S.

• Conducted case interview with New York City Fire Department, Social Media Director.

• Evidence found for the role of networked citizen coproduction of multi-directional crisis communications.

• Developed a framework for citizen coproduction of crisis communications in turbulent times.

Abstract

While citizens previously took a back seat to government, citizen coproduction of disaster risk communications through social media networks is emerging. We draw on information-processing, citizen coproduction, and networked governance theories to examine the governance and impact of networked interactions in the following question: When government's capacity in information-processing and communication is overwhelmed by unfolding disasters, how do government and citizens coproduce disaster risk communications? During the Hurricane Sandy, we collected 132,922 #sandy tweets to analyze the structure and networked interactions using social network analysis. We then conducted case study of the government's social media policy governance networks. Networked citizen interactions – their agility in voluntarily retweeting the government's #sandy tweets and tweeting their own messages – magnified the agility and reach of the government's #sandy disaster communications. Our case study indicates the criticality of social media policy governance networks in empowering the lead agencies and citizens to coproduce disaster communication public services.

Introduction

Over the last twenty years, the frequency, scale, and impact of extreme events (EEs) worldwide has sharply increased (Chatfield and Brajawidagda, 2014, Chatfield and Reddick, 2017, Chatfield et al., 2013, Coyle and Meier, 2009, Peek and Mileti, 2002, Scholl and Chatfield, 2014). EEs refer to natural or man-made hazards of exceptional and unthinkable magnitude (Harrald, 2006). In the course of an unfolding EE, ad-hoc timely information needs surge acutely and unpredictably for government, because their agile and adaptive responses to the enfolding EE are critical for public safety, political viability, and public trust in government. However, the recent EEs overwhelmed the government's capacity for processing information and delivering disaster risk communication services by a wide margin (Chatfield and Reddick, 2017, Scholl and Chatfield, 2014), which, in turn, impeded their agile, adaptive, coordinated and interoperable responses to the rapidly changing and unpredictable disaster situations (Chatfield and Reddick, 2017, Kapucu, 2008, Scholl and Chatfield, 2014).

Despite the criticality of the government's agile and adaptive response capacity in turbulent times, however, governments routinely face budgetary cuts and constraints (Brudney & England, 1983), which rule out costly solutions such as increasing government size and information technology (IT) infrastructure investment in the short run. In this paper, we explore networked coproduction during the response phase of the disaster management cycle as an alternative to increase the government capacity for information processing and disaster risk communications during EEs. Previously, coproduction was defined as voluntary and active citizen engagement and cooperation with government in the delivery of public services whose benefits may accrue to the entire community as a collective (Brudney and England, 1983, Whitaker, 1980). In this paper, we extend this extant definition towards networked coproduction by explicitly integrating government-steered social media networks and their potential positive network effects that may be accrued from network size and networked interactions among network actors: governments and citizens for enhanced coproduction.

The use of social media platforms by government and citizens in disaster risk communications has been accelerated across various disaster types and in different country contexts (Chatfield and Reddick, 2015, Chatfield and Reddick, 2017, Lin et al., 2016, Song et al., 2015, Tagliacozzo and Magni, 2017).

Despite the accelerating recent research on social media use in government for managing disaster risk communications, however, theory-driven empirical research on potential (enabling) roles of networked coproduction in the delivery of disaster risk communications in turbulent times is still lacking. Moreover, very few governments actively measure the impact of their social media networked interactions (Mergel, 2013). Furthermore, the U.S. local government use of social media policies to guide networked interactions still remains marginal and low (Bennett & Manoaran, 2017) and empirical research on government use of social media policies to guide networked disaster risk communications is lacking (Brajawidagda & Chatfield, 2016).

This research is motivated to reduce the gaps in the literature with regard to the potential enabling roles of social media policy governance networks and social media networked interactions on facilitating citizen coproduction of the delivery of public services in sensing and responding to enfolding EEs; namely disaster risk communications during the response phase which is the most time-critical phase of the disaster management cycle. We draw on public administration theory of citizen coproduction (Ferris, 1984, Whitaker, 1980), information processing theory (Galbraith, 1974, Galbraith, 2002), and networked governance (Eberhard et al., 2017, Janssen and van der Voort, 2016, Kellogg and Samanta, 2017, Ojo and Mellouli, 2016) and the literature on social media in government (Bennett and Manoaran, 2017, Wukich, 2016, Yuliana et al., 2017) to examine the following research question:

When government's capacity in information-processing and communication is overwhelmed by the scale and impact of unfolding extreme events, how do government and citizens coproduce the delivery of disaster risk communication public services?

In this paper, we examine this research question with our special focus on the role of social media policy governance networks and the impact of networked interactions on citizen coproduction of disaster risk communication public services in the context of Hurricane Sandy, which devastated the Northeastern United States in late October of 2012. When the Hurricane's devastating impact spread rapidly and widely, government agencies responsible for disaster response, citizens, and mass media voluntarily engaged in networked interactions using a specific hashtag, #sandy, for disaster risk communications. In this paper, we used mixed methods research methodology, which integrated the quantitative social network analysis method and the qualitative case study research method. We first used the trail of tweets with #sandy as the keyword to collect a total of 132,922 tweets exchanged during the unfolding Hurricane Sandy, from October 23, 2012 to November 10, 2012. We have applied the social network analysis theory and method (Marin and Wellman, 2011, Scott and Carrington, 2011) to analyze the Twitter social networks that were formed by government, citizens, and mass media through the use of #sandy. In the second phase of case study research we interviewed the lead agency that played an influential role in networked citizen coproduction.

The remainder of this paper is structured as follows: the next section presents our research background on Hurricane Sandy and extant framework for comprehensive disaster management cycle. The third section presents a literature review of information processing theory, citizen coproduction, networked governance and policy governance networks, and social media networks and positive network effects. Following this section, we describe the mixed methods research methodology: #sandy social networks, our first phase research: the tweet data collection using #sandy and social network analysis (SNA), and our second phase research: a single-site case study of the New York City government's social media policy governance networks and the New York Fire Department's use of #sandy during the Hurricane Sandy. Then, we detail the results of the analyses on the social media policy governance networks and networked interactions, followed by the discussion of citizen coproduction of public services in disaster risk communications during the unfolding EE. SNA results show that networked citizen interactions – their agility in voluntarily retweeting the government's #sandy tweets and tweeting their own messages – magnified the agility and reach of the government's #sandy disaster risk communications to the affected wider communities. This finding indicates the criticality of efficacy of social media policy networks in empowering the lead agencies and citizens in the coproduction of disaster risk communication public services.