Abstract
Social media applications facilitate information sharing between agencies, yet scholarship primarily focuses on government-to-citizen communication. This article explores how agencies use social networking applications and microblogs such as Twitter and Facebook to share information and interact with each other. Public information officers (PIOs) from 35 state emergency management agencies were interviewed, and transcripts were analyzed using a grounded theory approach. Findings demonstrate that PIOs employ Twitter and Facebook to monitor content for situational awareness, post training opportunities, network with other agencies, and share and reuse content in different ways. Fewer agencies directly coordinate preparedness information campaigns during nonthreat periods and risk communication during emergency response operations. General impediments to those practices include lack of personnel, insufficient technical knowledge, and preferences for other channels. In all, Twitter and Facebook complement—but do not take the place of—other information and communications technology (ICTs) that facilitate operational coordination.
Acknowledgments
The author thanks the PIOs who participated in the study for their insights, the journal's editors and reviewers for their suggestions, and Professor Louise K. Comfort for her wisdom and guidance. The project was supported by Sam Houston State University's College of Humanities and Social Sciences and Cleveland State University's Maxine Goodman Levin College of Urban Affairs.
APPENDIX: Interview Questions
Who is involved in social media use in your organization and what responsibilities do they have?
Do you monitor other organizations’ social media feeds?
If so, what kind of information do you seek out? / If not, why?
What do you do with that information?
What organizations do you follow/monitor?
How did you go about monitoring social media?
Do you use social media to interact directly with other agencies?
If so, with whom and in what types of situations? / If not, why?
What do you do with that information?
How did you go about developing those tactics?
What other techniques do you use, if any, to interact with other agencies?
In general, what do you think of social media as a tool to interact with other organizations? To what extent is it valuable?
Overall, how would you evaluate your organization’s social media use?
What barriers exist to using social media as effectively as possible in your organization?
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