Emergent Forms of Online Sociality in Disasters Arising from Natural Hazards
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Emergent Forms of Online Sociality in Disasters Arising from Natural Hazards by MARINA KOGAN M.S., University of Colorado Boulder, 2015 M.A., University of Illinois, 2010 B.S./B.A., City University of New York, 2005 A thesis submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Colorado in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Computer Science Department 2017 i This dissertation entitled: Emergent Forms of Online Sociality in Disasters Arising from Natural Hazards written by Marina Kogan has been approved for the Department of Computer Science Leysia Palen Aaron Clauset Clayton Lewis Jed Brubaker Mor Naaman Date The final copy of this thesis has been examined by the signatories, and we Find that both the content and the form meet acceptable presentation standards Of scholarly work in the above mentioned discipline. ii ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Kogan, Marina (Ph.D., Computer Science) Emergent Forms of Online Sociality in Disasters Arising from Natural Hazards Thesis directed by Professor Leysia Palen Disasters arising from natural hazards are associated with breakdown of existing structures, but they also result in creation of new social ties in the process of self-organization and problem solving by those affected. This dissertation focuses on emergent forms of sociality that arise in the context of crisis. Specifically, it considers collaborative work practices, social network structures, and organizational forms that emerge on social media during disasters arising from natural hazards. Social media platforms support highly-distributed social environments, and the forms of sociality that emerge in these contexts are affected by the affordances of their technical features, especially those that more or less successfully facilitate the creation of a shared information space. Thus, this dissertation is organized around two important aspects of social media spaces: the availability of an explicitly-shared site of work and the availability of a visible, legible record of activity. This dissertation investigates the forms of sociality that emerge during disasters in three social media activities: retweeting, crisis mapping in OpenStreetMap (OSM), and Twitter reply conversations. These three social media activities highlight various availability of an explicitly-shared site of work and visible record of activity. The studies of retweeting and reply conversations investigate the Twitter activity in response to the 2012 Hurricane Sandy—the second costliest hurricane in US history and the most tweeted about event to date at the time. Analysis of crisis mapping in OpenStreetMap—an open, editable, volunteer-based map of the world—focuses on the OSM activity after the 2010 Haiti earthquake, which was the first major disaster event supported by OpenStreetMap. For these investigations, the dissertation elaborates and develops human-centered data science methods—a set of methodological approaches that both harness the power of computational techniques and account for the highly-situated nature of the social activity in crisis. Finally, the dissertation positions the findings from the three studies iii within the larger context of high-tempo, high-volume social media activity and highlights how the framework of the two intersecting dimensions of the shared information space reveals larger patterns within the emergent forms of sociality across contexts. iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS First and foremost, I’d like to thank my incredible advisor Leysia Palen. She always knows how to push me to become a better, more reflexive scholar, while also being the most supportive mentor. I only hope to be such an inspiring role model to my future students. I’d like to thank all my collaborators for all the support and productive discussions that made this work possible: Ken Anderson, Julie Demuth, Jennifer Henderson, Heather Lazrus, Rebecca Morss, Sid Redner, and Olga Wilhelmi. I’m especially grateful to my committee members—Aaron Clauset, Clayton Lewis, Jed Brubaker, and Mor Naaman—who graciously invested their time and energy into improving this dissertation and through that process into challenging me to be a better scholar. A special thank you goes to my friends and colleagues Melissa Bica, Jennings Anderson, Lise St. Dennis, Nicole Beckage, Robert Soden, and Abigale Stangl, who in addition to academic discussions and collaborations offered invaluable emotional support throughout this process. Thank you for your patience with me. Finally, I’d like to thank my husband, Koji Otsuka, for helping me stay grounded and sane through this incredible roller coaster ride and for lovingly nudging me to take it as a learning experience both professionally and personally. v Table of Contents CHAPTER 1 : INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................ 1 1.1 SOCIAL MEDIA IN DISASTER ............................................................................................................................. 1 1.2 EMERGENT FORMS OF SOCIALITY IN DISASTER ........................................................................................... 1 1.3 SOCIAL MEDIA CONTEXT .................................................................................................................................. 2 1.4 STRUCTURE VS. AGENCY DEBATE: STRUCTURATION AND COMPLEXITY SCIENCE AS AN ANSWER .... 4 1.5 OVERVIEW OF THE STUDIES ............................................................................................................................. 6 CHAPTER 2 : BACKGROUND LITERATURE .................................................................................... 8 2.1 DISASTER SOCIOLOGY ........................................................................................................................................ 8 2.1.1 The Public as First Responders ............................................................................................................. 8 2.1.2 Convergent Behavior ................................................................................................................................ 8 2.1.3 Temporality of Disaster ........................................................................................................................... 9 2.1.4 Organizational Structure in Disaster ............................................................................................. 10 2.2 CRISIS INFORMATICS ....................................................................................................................................... 13 2.2.1 Active Participation in Early CI Research ..................................................................................... 13 2.2.2 Social Media and Microblogging in Crisis ..................................................................................... 15 Social Media and Situational Awareness ............................................................................................................................... 17 Credibility of Information ............................................................................................................................................................. 18 Collective Intelligence .................................................................................................................................................................... 20 2.2.3 Emergent Organizations in Crisis ..................................................................................................... 21 2.3 EMERGENT FORMS OF SOCIALITY ................................................................................................................ 23 2.3.1 Organizational Forms ........................................................................................................................... 24 2.3.2 Network Structures ................................................................................................................................ 27 2.3.3 Collaborative Work Practices ............................................................................................................ 29 2.4 SOCIAL MEDIA CONTEXT ............................................................................................................................... 31 CHAPTER 3 : CONCEPTUAL FRAMING AND METHODS ............................................................ 35 3.1 RESEARCH QUESTIONS ................................................................................................................................... 36 3.2 CONCEPTUAL FRAMING .................................................................................................................................. 36 3.3 INCLUSION OF PUBLISHED WORK .................................................................................................................. 39 3.4 METHODOLOGICAL CONSIDERATIONS: HUMAN-CENTERED DATA SCIENCE ....................................... 39 CHAPTER 4 : RETWEETING BY THE GEOGRAPHICALLY-VULNERABLE DURING HURRICANE SANDY ............................................................................................................................. 43 4.1 STUDY OVERVIEW ........................................................................................................................................... 43 4.2 STUDY INTRODUCTION ..................................................................................................................................