Dynamics of Interorganizational Emergency Communication on Twitter: The Case of Hurricane Irma.

Despite the increasing use of social media, interorganizational emergency communication on social media remains an understudied area of research. We examined how county emergency management offices (EMOs) used Twitter to communicate with other public, nonprofit, and for-profit organizations for emergency communication before, during, and after Hurricane Irma. We further examined the strategies that EMOs and other stakeholders employed to communicate risks on Twitter, and their respective foci. We found that Twitter's potential has not been fully exploited by EMOs, especially at the disaster recovery stage. County EMOs only frequently interacted with a small number of nonprofit and for-profit organizations, despite these organizations' active engagement in emergency communication. While EMOs and other public agencies emphasized information dissemination and called for citizens to act and be prepared for the hurricane, nonprofit organizations tended to stress service and resource-related information, called for others to assist with disaster response, and offered emotional support. Business organizations actively addressed customers' concerns by engaging in direct two-way communication. Our findings suggest that EMOs should integrate nonprofit and business organizations' communication efforts by engaging them in important conversations on Twitter and advocating for the use of highly relevant hashtags at different stages of disaster management. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.