Downloaded 09/30/21 07:50 PM UTC 538 WEATHER, CLIMATE, and SOCIETY VOLUME 10

JULY 2018 D E M U T H E T A L . 537 ‘‘Sometimes da #beachlife ain't always da wave’’: Understanding People’s Evolving Hurricane Risk Communication, Risk Assessments, and Responses Using Twitter Narratives JULIE L. DEMUTH AND REBECCA E. MORSS National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, Colorado LEYSIA PALEN,KENNETH M. ANDERSON,JENNINGS ANDERSON,MARINA KOGAN, KEVIN STOWE, AND MELISSA BICA University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, Colorado HEATHER LAZRUS AND OLGA WILHELMI National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, Colorado JEN HENDERSON Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, Boulder, Colorado (Manuscript received 13 November 2017, in final form 14 May 2018) ABSTRACT This article investigates the dynamic ways that people communicate, assess, and respond as a weather threat evolves. It uses social media data, which offer unique records of what people convey about their real-world risk contexts. Twitter narratives from 53 people who were in a mandatory evacuation zone in a New York City neighborhood during Hurricane Sandy in 2012 were qualitatively analyzed. The study provides rich insight into the complex, dynamic information behaviors and risk assessments of people at risk, and it illustrates how social media data can be collected, sampled, and analyzed to help provide this understanding. Results show that this sample of people at significant risk attended to forecast information and evacuation orders as well as multiple types of social and environmental cues. Although many tweeted explicitly about the mandatory evacuation order, forecast information was usually referenced only implicitly. Social and environmental cues grew more important as the threat approached and often triggered heightened risk perceptions or protective actions. The results also reveal the importance of different aspects of people’s cognitive and affective risk perceptions as well as specific emotions (e.g., fear, anger) for understanding risk assessments. People discussed a variety of preparatory and protective behavioral responses and exhibited multiple types of coping responses (e.g., humor) as the threat evolved. People’s risk assessments and responses were closely inter- twined, and their risk perceptions were not continuously elevated as the hurricane approached; they exhibited different ways of interpreting, coping, and responding as they accessed and processed evolving information about the threat. 1. Introduction to natural hazard risks are also dynamic, as individuals process information and interact with each other to The risks posed by many natural hazards are dynamic communicate about, interpret, and respond to the in that the threat and information available about it changing threat. These dynamic individual and social evolve. When a hurricane threatens a coastline, for ex- processes are fundamental aspects of how people ample, its position and intensity changes, and forecast perceive and respond to natural hazards (Morss et al. and preparedness information is refined as the storm 2017). Thus, it is essential to understand them in order approaches. People’s assessments of and responses to develop effective risk communication and emer- gency response policies that help protect people from Corresponding author: Julie L. Demuth, [email protected] harm. DOI: 10.1175/WCAS-D-17-0126.1 Ó 2018 American Meteorological Society. For information regarding reuse of this content and general copyright information, consult the AMS Copyright Policy (www.ametsoc.org/PUBSReuseLicenses). Unauthenticated | Downloaded 09/30/21 07:50 PM UTC 538 WEATHER, CLIMATE, AND SOCIETY VOLUME 10 Although previous research notes that people may it- Our study addresses three research questions: eratively assess and respond to a threat (Lindell and Perry 1) How do people interact with different types of 2012; Mileti and Sorensen 1990), there is little empirically information related to the hurricane threat? based understanding of how this actually occurs for an 2) How do they perceive and respond to the risks posed evolving risk, such as that posed by an approaching by the hurricane? hurricane. This lack of knowledge derives partly from 3) How do these processes evolve and interact as the the difficulty in gathering data from people about what threat unfolds? they know, perceive, feel, and do at multiple times as a threat is occurring. These challenges are exacerbated We focus on the time period leading up to landfall be- by the inherent uncertainties associated with whether, cause we are interested in investigating evolving forecast where, and when hazardous weather events will occur, and preparedness information as a form of risk com- which make it difficult to know in advance who will be munication that can influence people’s risk assessments affected and thus to design and implement real-time data and responses. Moreover, the dynamics of this time collection with those populations throughout a threat. period is understudied compared to the response and The prevalence of social media use offers new op- recovery phases of a hazard, even as studied through portunities for studying the dynamic risk information social media (Shelton et al. 2014; Morss et al. 2017). ecosystem that emerges when hazards threaten (Morss The goal of this analysis is to gain a deeper un- et al. 2017). Although in the weather community social derstanding of the complex and evolving ways that media is often discussed in terms of its potential for people assess and respond to their risk from the dynamic authorities to distribute risk information, it can offer threat of an approaching hurricane by analyzing social much more. Social media offers intrinsically participa- media narratives from a sample of individuals who were tory platforms where users actively access, discuss, cre- at high risk leading up to Sandy. In doing so, we aim to ate, and share information about many topics, including augment knowledge gained from other studies that uti- information about their situations, attitudes, and be- lize complementary methods, samples, and theories to haviors related to risks (Palen et al. 2010; Neeley 2014). investigate behavioral responses to risks. We further aim Moreover, when people post on social media more than to provide a foundation for additional research in- once during the course of a threat, their posts offer a vestigating similar questions using social media data, chronological record of how they are assessing and re- including broader Twitter datasets. sponding to a real-world, evolving risk from their con- This study adds to the weather risk, natural hazards, text and perspective. and social media literatures in several ways. First, it re- Here, we utilize social media data as a lens for ex- veals what is salient to people who are at risk from an amining individuals’ risk information behaviors, risk approaching hurricane as they process the ubiquitous perceptions, and responses as a hazardous weather pieces of risk-related information available to them, threat unfolded over several days. We investigate these evaluate the risk, and decide how to respond. Because processes by qualitatively analyzing Twitter narratives the Twitter narratives we investigate provide a new type created by people at risk from Hurricane Sandy1 during of data for understanding how people assess and re- the time period leading up to and during the storm’s spond to risks, the analysis reveals aspects of these landfall. The Twitterers analyzed were located in the Far processes that have not previously been well described Rockaway neighborhood of New York City, which was in the theoretical and empirical literatures. It also de- in a mandatory evacuation zone during Sandy. Com- velops new knowledge about the dynamics of these plementing recent work that utilizes Twitter data for processes, for example, what factors are important at macrolevel analyses of what hazard information is different times and how these intersect and change as a shared, how much, and by whom across broader pop- threat evolves. Finally, the analysis illustrates the po- ulations (see section 2), we perform an in-depth analysis tential value not only of social media data, but also of that aims to build a rich understanding about how in- social media narratives, for building understanding dividuals experience evolving risks. about how people interact with information and perceive and respond to evolving threats. 1 The day that Hurricane Sandy made landfall, it transitioned to a 2. Background and study scope posttropical storm, and thus was no longer referred to as a hurricane by the National Weather Service (NOAA 2013a,b). However, A number of previous studies have investigated for simplicity, we refer to it as Hurricane Sandy throughout the how people assess and respond to hurricane risks [see, article. e.g., reviews by Baker (1991), Dash and Gladwin (2007), Unauthenticated | Downloaded 09/30/21 07:50 PM UTC JULY 2018 D E M U T H E T A L . 539 Lindell (2012), Lazo et al. (2015), and Huang et al. perspectives when faced with real-world, changing risks, (2016)]. This body of work provides important knowl- providing researchers a window into people’s evolving edge about how people’s perceptions of hurricane risks risk assessments and decision-making (Palen et al. 2010; and their protective decisions are influenced by a variety Morss et al. 2017). of factors, ranging from sociodemographic characteris- Twitter is one social media platform that is particu- tics to situational factors to risk messages. Much of this larly conducive

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