Summary Paper for a article

Twitter, a micro-blogging social media platform, enables a maximum of 140 character tweet to be communicated between networked users and allows its followers to easily rebroadcast an original authored tweet using Twitter’s retweet function, which provides a powerful mechanism to proliferate information on a massive scale. Starbird and Palen (2010) claimed that the retweet function played a critical role in propagating information to the public during all phases of the two emergency events because there were more emergency related retweets than original tweets in their data sets. Since the retweet identifies the original author, Starbird and Palen (2010) concluded that this function of Twitter acted as a recommendation tool for locals when choosing to spread tweets from various sources.

During the analysis of the two disasters, Starbird and Palen (2010) took a close look at the content of the tweets to determine authorship and dissemination behaviour. Starbird and Palen (2010) observed that the type of microblogged information differed between locals and the general public during the mass emergency events but the retweet function of Twitter proved valuable to both groups. The broader public were more interested in sharing general information about the emergency event and retweeted information ranging from photographs to prayers for those affected, whereas, locals were most interested in circulating pertinent emergency related information that was specific and relevant to their local situation.

Starbird and Palen (2010) concluded that, since Twitter encourages full public participation but currently remains an unregulated means to disseminate information, the formal role for emergency management organizations in the social media world will continue to be beneficial. From their analysis of the two emergency events, Starbird and Palen (2010) asserted that authorship from trusted sources played an important role for locals disseminating emergency related information since the majority of retweeted content was originated by local and mainstream media and other official organizations. Starbird and Palen (2010) further suggest that local behavior and use of the retweet function of Twitter in an emergency should be observed by the emergency management information systems when considering social media’s role in future crisis situations.