The Ripples of Fear, Comfort and Community Identity During the Boston Bombings

Lin, Yu-Ru

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/47411 Copy

Description

Title

The Ripples of Fear, Comfort and Community Identity During the Boston Bombings

Author(s)

Lin, Yu-Ru

Issue Date

2014-03-01

Keyword(s)

• emergency response
• collective activity
• crisis management
• emergent use of communication tools
• social media and social networks

Abstract

The Boston Marathon bombing event presents a rare opportunity to study how a massive disruptive event triggers emotional contagion. In this work, we use over 180 million geocoded tweets over an entire month to study how Twitter users expressed shared fear, comfort and community identity, over time and across different cities following the bombings. We quantify the level of shared fear by using the sentiment and time-series analyses. The expressions of comfort and community identity are studied based on the emergent use of two hashtags widely adopted after the bombings: #prayforboston and #bostonstrong. We found that these emotional responses varied with their geographical distances from the Boston area. However, statistical analyses show that users' direct experience of being in Boston predicts the shared fear better, and users' social networks are more effective in predicting the occurrences of expressing comfort and community identity. Our study has implication in identifying potentially vulnerable population, and predicting the perceived threat in the face of future massive disruptive events such as terrorist attacks.

Publisher

iSchools

Series/Report Name or Number

iConference 2014 Proceedings

Type of Resource

text

Language

en

Permalink

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/47411

DOI

https://doi.org/10.9776/14331

Copyright and License Information

Copyright 2014 is held by the authors of individual items in the proceedings. Copyright permissions, when appropriate, must be obtained directly from the authors.

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