ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews theoretical and empirical perspectives that illustrate how social media is being used when disasters become crises. Because social media platforms are constantly evolving, we use notions of affordances of social media to explain the links between platform features and how they are used in practice. Through a case study from data collected during Hurricane Harvey, we illustrate the uses of social media features from official emergency responders and ad hoc emergency response groups, both heavily involved in communication through social media. These groups used a host of social media platforms including Facebook, Twitter, WeChat, WhatsApp, Snapchat, Nextdoor, Instagram, as well as collaborative online documents, maps, and walkie-talkie apps, like Zello. Regardless of their official role, they all served as crisis communicators within their communities, even though very few of them had any formal social media training.
