Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Situational Awareness In Mass Emergency: A Behavioral And Linguistic Analysis Of Microblogged Communications, Sarah E. Vieweg

Sarah E. Vieweg

In times of mass emergency, users of Twitter (a popular microblogging service) often communicate information about the event, some of which contributes to situational awareness. Situational awareness refers to a state of understanding the “big picture” in time- and safety-critical situations. The more situational awareness people have, the better equipped they are to make informed decisions. Given that hundreds of millions of Twitter communications (known as “tweets”) are sent every day and emergency events regularly occur, automated methods are needed to identify those tweets that contain actionable, tactical information. The purpose of this dissertation is to explore how Twitter is …