The effect of social media on the dynamics of (self) resilience during disasters: A literature review

Abstract

As is well known for decades, citizens are highly resilient during and after a disaster, they save the day by helping themselves and others. A relatively new phenomenon is the abundant use of social media. In this literature review, the authors bring together recent findings on how social media affects citizens' self-resilience by looking into its effect on four elements of self-resilience: information gathering, information dissemination, collaborative problem-solving, and coping. Social media supports citizens in their search for reliable information to reduce their uncertainty about the situation far beyond the regular but late information provided by authorities. This ability to gather information of their own accord is further aided by the enhanced ability of citizens (and authorities) to disseminate the information they possess quickly and widely. The ability of social media to connect people through time and space enhances collaborative problem-solving and citizens' ability to make sense of the situation and cope with it. And yet, authorities by and large find it troublesome to get used to this new reality.