Vulnerability of public space and the role of social networks in the crisis

Abstract

Tragic events, such as terrorist attacks and related crisis, puts the spotlight on safety and security of public spaces as well as on the new ways of behaviour and spending time in these spaces. While spending time in potentially vulnerable public spaces, an ordinary user becomes a soft target. On the other hand, this change in behaviour can also influence the ways in which social networks are used to distribute information, including call for help or safety check. Drawing on social network analysis, this paper presents the use of hashtags in emergency situations in the context of major events as case studies. This work examines the tweets of top trending topics, resulting as a social discussion on headline news, based on the user participation, topic diffusion with retweets and their effect on other users. Of particular interest is to analyse how development of a certain event can be followed through the frequency and temporal behaviour of Twitter conversations. Such analysis will point out how cyber space forms a community in emergency events and how mutual support can be facilitated through social media.