Twitter911: A cautionary tale

Abstract

Researchers have argued that social media, and in particular, Twitter, can be searched to improve "situational awareness" in emergency situations; that is, to provide objective, actionable, real-time information to first-responders. Prior studies have examined cases of very rare, catastrophic emergencies that took place over many days, such as the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. We asked instead if Twitter could provide useful information for first-responders on a more regular basis, by conducting an exhaustive analysis of tweets and fire department data for medium-sized county (population 1 million), and for two larger-scale single-day emergencies in New York City. Our results are resoundingly negative: useful tweets were extraordinarily rare or nonexistence. This study provides a cautionary note as to the potential of Twitter and similar platforms for emergency situational awareness.