Citation

Sutton J, Gibson CB, Spiro ES, League C, Fitzhugh SM, Butts CT. PLoS One 2015; 10(8): e0134452.

Affiliation

Department of Sociology, University of California Irvine, Irvine, CA, United States of America; Department of Statistics, University of California Irvine, Irvine, CA, United States of America; Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of California Irvine, Irvine, CA, United States of America; Institute for Mathematical Behavioral Sciences, University of California Irvine, Irvine, CA, United States of America.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2015, Public Library of Science)

DOI

10.1371/journal.pone.0134452

PMID

26295584

Abstract

Message retransmission is a central aspect of information diffusion. In a disaster context, the passing on of official warning messages by members of the public also serves as a behavioral indicator of message salience, suggesting that particular messages are (or are not) perceived by the public to be both noteworthy and valuable enough to share with others. This study provides the first examination of terse message retransmission of official warning messages in response to a domestic terrorist attack, the Boston Marathon Bombing in 2013. Using messages posted from public officials' Twitter accounts that were active during the period of the Boston Marathon bombing and manhunt, we examine the features of messages that are associated with their retransmission. We focus on message content, style, and structure, as well as the networked relationships of message senders to answer the question: what characteristics of a terse message sent under conditions of imminent threat predict its retransmission among members of the public? We employ a negative binomial model to examine how message characteristics affect message retransmission. We find that, rather than any single effect dominating the process, retransmission of official Tweets during the Boston bombing response was jointly influenced by various message content, style, and sender characteristics. These findings suggest the need for more work that investigates impact of multiple factors on the allocation of attention and on message retransmission during hazard events.

Language: en