ABSTRACT
Given the increasingly important roles social media play during disasters and the apparent disparity in organizations' and publics' expectations, it is essential to understand what is known and remains to be tested about social media use during disasters. Disasters are sometimes equated with crises; however, researchers have singled out crises as organization based whereas disasters are community based. In understanding publics' disaster information seeking and sharing, research has begun to identify three publics that emerge during disasters: influential social media creators, social media followers, and social media inactive. Humor can motivate online disaster communication. Disasters often prompt high levels of uncertainty, spurring heightened information seeking, as seen in research on the September 11 terrorist attacks and many other scenarios. Academic scholarship tends to look at one or two types of social media at a time—often the popular longer-standing forms such as Facebook, Twitter, and blogs—with little regard for whether and how these sites act or are perceived differently.
