Urban response towards tropical cyclone using twitter in Indonesia

Abstract

Tropical Cyclone Cempaka struck the southern coast of Java Island in November in 2017, causing floods and landslides in Yogyakarta, Wonogiri, Pacitan, Ponorogo, and the surrounding areas. These disasters devastated urban and rural areas and disrupted community livelihoods as they disconnected inter-city road access, flooded agricultural land, and damaged public facilities. During these hazardous events, many people actively left a "trace" on social media, especially Twitter. This research was designed to describe urban respond using Twitter during Tropical Cyclone Cempaka (TCC). The research data sources were tweets filtered with five keywords with geotagging. After the preprocessing stage, a total of 457 tweets were categorized as "urban" and "rural". Then, the content was analyzed qualitatively by identifying the most frequently appearing words, the number of response (like, reply, and retweet), and the accounts mentioned on the tweets. The results showed that urban response to these catastrophic events was positive by posting words of prayer and sympathy, disseminating information for raising awareness of disasters, and organizing fundraising for the victims. Turned out that those able to respond was not mainly urban dwellers, there were many responds which based at rural areas. It was marked by similar words that mostly appeared in two comparative areas.