EmerGent is a European research project that examines the role played by current mainstream social media in emergencies and assesses their impact.
The overall objective of EmerGent is to understand the positive and negative impact of social media in emergencies to:
- enhance the safety and security of citizens before, during and after emergencies,
- strengthen the role of European companies supplying services and products related to EmerGent’s results.
Wherever emergencies or crises occur, ad-hoc communities are built through existing social media. These communities are often weakly connected to emergency management services. Systematic research concerning the effective identification and integration of valuable and reliable information from social media into emergency management processes is needed.
Further information is available on the project website.
Tavistock Institute of Human Relations (TIHR) will lead the effort in work package 2 (WP2) focussing on what is known about the impact of social media in emergencies, in the light of approaches used by EmerGent. TIHR will also contribute to other work packages.
The TIHR team consists of Thomas Spielhofer, Kerstin Junge, Anna Sophie Hahne, David Drabble and Matt Gieve as well as Joe Cullen.
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration, under grant agreement no 608352.
Publications include:
Reuter, C., Kaufhold, M. A., Spahr, F., Spielhofer, T., & Hahne, A. S. (2020). Emergency service staff and social media–A comparative empirical study of the attitude by emergency services staff in Europe in 2014 and 2017. International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, 101516.
Reuter, C., Kaufhold, M. A., Stefka, S., Spielhofer, T., & Hahne, A.S. (2019). The Impact of Risk Cultures: Citizens’ Perception of Social Media Use in Emergencies across Europe. Technological Forecasting and Social Change.
Spielhofer, T., Hahne, A.S, Reuter, C., Kaufhold, M. A., & Stefka, S., (2019). Social Media Use in Emergencies of Citizens in the United Kingdom, In Proceedings of the Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (ISCRAM), Franco, Z. , González, J.J., & Canós, J.H. (Eds.), València, Spain: ISCRAM Association.
Reuter, C., Ludwig, T., Kaufhold, M. A., & Spielhofer, T. (2018). Studie: Wie sehen Mitarbeiter von Feuerwehr und THW den Einsatz sozialer Medien in Gefahrenlagen? Crisis Prevention – Fachmagazin Für Innere Sicherheit, Bevölkerungsschutz Und Katastrophenhilfe, vol. 1, pp. 64–66.
Reuter, C., Kaufhold, M. A., Spielhofer, T., & Hahne, A. S.. (2018). Soziale Medien und Apps in Notsituationen: Eine repräsentative Studie über die Wahrnehmung in Deutschland. BBK Bevölkerungsschutz, vol. 2, pp. 22–24.
Reuter, C., Kaufhold, M. A., Spielhofer, T., & Hahne, A. S. (2017). Social media in emergencies: A representative study on citizens’ perception in Germany. Proceedings of the ACM: Human Computer Interaction (PACM): Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing, 1(2), 1-19.
Reuter, C., & Spielhofer, T. (2017). Towards social resilience: A quantitative and qualitative survey on citizens’ perception of social media in emergencies in Europe. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 121, 168-180.
Spielhofer, T., Greenlaw, R., Markham, D., & Hahne, A. (2016). Data mining Twitter during the UK floods: Investigating the potential use of social media in emergency management. In Information and Communication Technologies for Disaster Management (ICT-DM), 2016 3rd International Conference on (pp. 1-6). IEEE.
Reuter, C., Ludwig, T., Kaufhold, M. A., & Spielhofer, T. (2016). Emergency services׳ attitudes towards social media: A quantitative and qualitative survey across Europe. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 95, 96-111.