The possibility of social media analysis for disaster management

Collecting, sharing, and delivering information in disaster situations is crucially important. Mass media such as TV, radio, and newspapers have played important roles in information distribution in past disasters and crises. Recently, social media have received much attention for their use as an information sharing tool. Especially, it is said that people used Twitter to collect and share information in the aftermath of the Great East Japan Earthquake. In academic fields, some researchers have started to propose some methods and systems for disaster management by analyzing social media data. Other people doubt whether social media will actually function effectively for disaster management because of uncertainty and inaccuracies related to rumors and misunderstanding. In this paper, we overview current studies of social media analysis for disaster management and explain some studies in detail to show their possibility and availability. We specifically examine situational awareness, user behavior analysis and information propagation analysis, which are three approaches to social media analysis, to clarify what social media analysis can and cannot do. Additionally, we propose some concepts for social media analysis and show how those concepts help to collaborate with us, researchers in social media analysis fields and other research fields.