Researchers have established the prominent role digital volunteers play during crises and disasters. From self‐organizing to annotating public data, these volunteers are now a fixture in disaster research. However, we know much less about how these volunteers function, behind the public scene, when using private social media as a disaster unfolds and people need to be rescued. This qualitative study identified the emergent helping roles along with the skillsets and abilities that helped volunteers perform these behind‐the‐scene roles during the Hurricane Harvey flooding in 2017. Using in‐depth interviews along with captured images in private social media, we find these volunteers resembled organizational knowledge workers. We identify nine specific communicating and coordinating actions that these disaster knowledge workers performed. The contributions of these findings centre on implications for disaster response and management.

中文翻译：

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另一种类型的灾难响应数字志愿者：在幕后观察，以揭示灾难知识工作者的协调行动

研究人员已经确定了数字志愿者在危机和灾难中扮演的重要角色。从自组织到注释公共数据，这些志愿者现在已成为灾难研究的对象。但是，我们对于这些志愿者在公共场合背后如何使用私人社交媒体的灾难了解甚少，而人们需要被救出时，我们对此知之甚少。这项定性研究确定了新兴的帮助角色，以及帮助志愿者在2017年飓风“哈维”（Hurricane Harvey）洪水期间扮演这些幕后角色的技能和能力。使用深入的访谈以及在私人社交媒体中捕获的图像，我们发现了这些志愿者类似于组织知识工作者。我们确定了这些灾难知识工作者执行的九种具体的沟通和协调行动。