A Different Kind Of Disaster Response Using Social Media Best

Bonisiwe Shabane

-Dec 5, 2025, 10:14 PM

a different kind of disaster response using social media best

In the wake of natural disasters, social media has served as far more than just a platform for sharing life updates and photos–it’s become an indispensable tool for disaster response and recovery. We would be unwise to neglect to acknowledge the influential role it plays and can play. As recent hurricanes, wildfires, and earthquakes have shown, social media can help bridge communication gaps and connect victims with loved ones, first responders, or volunteers, all in real time. Platforms like Facebook and Instagram offer the immediacy and convenience needed to distribute crucial information during crises, while newer platforms like TikTok have brought real-time coverage of impacted areas to an even wider audience. From the floods in the US to wildfires in Australia, social media has allowed individuals on the scene to report conditions as they unfold, usually outpacing traditional news media. Amazingly, this instantaneous information sharing can mean the difference between life and death for those in danger.

It offers first responders and relief organizations the information they need to allocate resources where needed most. But social media’s role doesn’t end there. It can also facilitate fundraising, mobilize volunteers, or help families reconnect after being separated. The rise of tools like Facebook’s Safety Check has made it easier to track the safety of loved ones. Beyond crisis management, social media is becoming a key tool in both disaster preparedness and recovery, allowing communities to stay informed, organize aid, and rally around those most affected. When traditional news outlets struggle to provide up-to-the-minute coverage–due to dangerous conditions or an inability to predict where an impact will be–citizens on platforms like TikTok, Reddit, and Instagram step in.

Community members can share live updates on conditions and hazards and identify areas needing help; this “citizen journalism” provides critical on-the-scene information during emergencies. Take, for example, the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Harvey in 2017, when thousands of stranded residents turned to Twitter and Facebook to post their locations for rescue crews. Volunteers with boats and local authorities could follow these posts in real-time, coordinating rescue efforts in ways that would not have been possible through “traditional” response means. The Resource Library contains a searchable inventory of documents related to hazards and disaster preparedness in communities around the globe. It serves as a repository of program documentation, policies, annual reports, lessons learned, guidance, and tools and methodologies that can help you design and learn about preparedness operations in any region. Use the search box and filters below to better find what you’re looking for.

Social media platforms have revolutionized disaster management by facilitating efficient communication, information sharing, and collaboration among stakeholders. These technologies enable authorities, disaster management professionals, and at-risk communities to collect information and communicate live-saving messages faster and more effectively. Despite their benefits, there are inherent risks – social media may inadvertently propagate rumors and misinformation, which that can be harmful when a disaster looms. Social media platforms have become an integral part of many people's daily lives. As of January 2024, over 5 billion people worldwide use social media, representing about 62.3% of the global population, according to Datareportal. Users spend an average of 2.5 hours per day on social media.

With their extensive reach and high levels of user engagement, social media platforms offer significant potential to enhance disaster preparedness, response, and risk reduction efforts. Social media can be utilized by disaster management organizations in two broad ways: passive dissemination of information to the public and collection of user feedback, and systematic use as an active emergency management tool... Social media plays a crucial role in preparedness and disaster response for different actors: local governments communicating with citizens; nonprofit organizations delivering awareness and education messages, and situational updates; communities sharing experiences of risk... Social media can be used across all phases of a disaster cycle: messages on how to cope and updating situational reports; communities sharing their experiences of risk and hazards. You have full access to this open access article Social media has become one of the Internet’s most popular and quickly changing data sources, greatly extending the range of data-driven applications.

Disaster management is one of the most important areas of these, where social media insights can be used to inform emergency response and resilience planning in real time. Especially in low-income areas, vulnerable populations are disproportionately affected by natural and man-made disasters, which frequently result in significant social and economic losses. This study provides a thorough review of artificial intelligence (AI)-based disaster management systems that use data from social media. We look at several approaches that have shown promise recently, such as deep learning, machine learning, and statistical models. To classify and compare these techniques, a taxonomy of AI approaches is presented. We also draw attention to the growing significance of multimodal data fusion, which combines text, images, and metadata, in improving the precision and resilience of crisis intelligence systems.

We also go over these methods’ advantages and disadvantages, point out unsolved issues, and investigate their wider ramifications in relation to social media analytics. The objective of this review is to promote the creation of more resilient and adaptable AI systems to improve disaster preparedness and response activities by pointing out important research gaps. Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript. Social network is a tool which can broadcast the information to millions of people with in a second. The microblogging platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram have become the largest source of real time unstructured information in this 21st century [59, 123]. Hand-held device users are very much active on these microblogging sites in each and every mode of their life.

If data mining is performed correctly, useful information can be extracted from the online content. Unfortunately, the recurrence and fierceness of natural disasters are surging tremendously due to a list of factors like excess climate variations, huge population, depleting forests, and maturing infrastructure [125]. Disaster resilience will be the most significant factor in the coming times in urban locations. In the last decade microblogging platforms like Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram play a vital role in disaster management. During any disaster situation people take the help of these social networking sites to disseminate information about their health conditions and requirements for their family, friends, and loved ones [88]. In contrast to the traditional methods of data collection such as survey, personal interview, and surveillance which are costly and time consuming, social networks are easy to use and dynamic in nature [121].

These microblogging sites are the medium which are frequently used for coordinating and information sharing between government and officials during emergencies [127]. Many government and non-government organizations may extract information from these informal text for post disaster relief operations [122]. Among the important advances social media has brought in is how the authority twists its processes, so that it can locate the casualties and provide the relief required by them appropriately [126]. In the present era big data technologies may be embedded with the social media platforms to analyze the contents and assist disaster monitoring, assessment, rescue and relief operations [128, 129]. Despite the increasing use of artificial intelligence (AI) in disaster management, there is still a huge gap in the development of real-time, multimodal systems that can efficiently exploit social media data during catastrophes. While various research have investigated text-based analysis utilizing machine learning and deep learning models, existing systems frequently struggle to combine multiple data modalities such as photos, videos, and geolocation metadata into a coherent and...

This constraint impairs the capacity to deliver timely and contextualized situational awareness during crises. Furthermore, many present techniques prioritize post-disaster analysis over proactive or real-time response mechanisms. This gap is particularly important in low-resource contexts, where catastrophe response delays can have disproportionately severe repercussions (Fig. 1). Sarah Lee AI generated Llama-4-Maverick-17B-128E-Instruct-FP8 5 min read · May 26, 2025 Photo by Priscilla Du Preez 🇨🇦 on Unsplash

Social media has become an indispensable tool in disaster preparedness and emergency response, revolutionizing the way communities and organizations interact, share information, and respond to crises. The rapid dissemination of information through social media platforms has significantly enhanced community resilience and response efforts, saving lives and reducing the impact of disasters. Social media platforms, such as Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, have evolved into critical communication channels during disasters, enabling real-time information sharing, situational awareness, and coordination among stakeholders. These platforms facilitate the exchange of vital information, including evacuation instructions, shelter locations, and resource availability, between emergency responders, government agencies, and the public. The importance of social media in emergency response cannot be overstated. It provides a platform for:

Social Media in Emergency ResponseTopic Collection November 18, 2025 The use and impact of social media platforms (e.g., Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Snapchat, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube) has skyrocketed over the past decade and has significantly supplemented—if not nearly replaced—more traditional means of communication... There are four primary ways that healthcare, public health, and emergency management use social media: posting information for public knowledge, posting to correct misinformation or rumors, obtaining incident information to help allocate resources, and... Recent disasters and mass casualty incidents have highlighted the level to which victims, family members, and responders use social media to communicate about issues such as: their status and location, the effect of the... In addition to building community relationships and emphasizing preparedness and resilience pre-disaster, planners can use social media to identify and monitor potential threats to public health, and communicate with residents about threats (e.g., infectious... Tools such as crowdsourcing (collecting information from a large group of people via the Internet) and data mining bolster these efforts.

Photos and live-streamed video can help amplify messaging, provide locational data, and communicate the urgency of a situation. Consistency and bi-directional communication is key as healthcare organizations communicate with their communities via social media, since misinformation (the spread of erroneous information), disinformation (the purposeful creation and proliferation of false/misleading information), and malinformation... Most recently, the word “infodemic” has been used to refer to the dissemination of too much information, especially misleading information, during an infectious disease outbreak (e.g., World Health Organization, 2023). Social media-specific resources are included in this Collection; the Risk Communications Topic Collection includes additional resources on mis- and disinformation. The ASPR TRACIE Topic Collections on Communication Systems, Cybersecurity, Information Sharing, and Virtual Medical Care Collections may also be of interest.

A Different Kind Of Disaster Response Using Social Media Best

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