Citizens' social media use and homeland security information policy: Some evidences from Twitter users during the 2013 North Korea nuclear test

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.giq.2014.06.003Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Current study examines homeland security policy issues.

  • We analyze some risk communication networks emerged from Twitter users.

  • The response to the 2013 nuclear test in North Korea was chosen as research topic.

  • Citizens' risk communication is formulated through social media over time.

  • The dynamic evolution of risk communication networks had important policy implications.

Abstract

In the era of Web 2.0, managing risk communication on social networking sites has increasingly become crucial and complicated issues in the field of homeland security. The response to the 2013 nuclear test in North Korea was largely based on a coordinated effort by Korea's Ministry of Defense, the United Nations, and many countries from around the globe. By analyzing risk communication networks emerged from Twitter users for the period from January 30 to February 24, 2013, this study investigates the way in which citizens' risk communication is formulated through social media and how they transmit risk information in homeland security. Analysis results show the dynamic evolution of risk communication networks based on influential actors with critical information who played pivotal roles in distributing this information to other actors.

Introduction

As indicated in Beck, 1992, Beck, 2008, rapid technological advances have led to a “risk society” in which the safety of the public has been overtaken by the risk derived from conflicts between religions, states, and organizations through the creation of diverse weapons of mass destruction (WMD) such as biological and nuclear weapons. After the United Nations Security Council's Resolution 2087 concerning North Korea on January 22, 2013, the country carried out its third nuclear test in Punggye-ri, Mantapsan, Hamkyeongbuk-do, on February 12, 2013. The international community, particularly East Asian countries, was shocked and expressed concern over threats to global security and safety by North Korea's continued nuclear program. In terms of crisis management, scholars and practitioners have increasingly highlighted the importance of networked actors' communication (Federal Emergency Management Agency, 2013, Purpura, 2007, Ressler, 2006), but little attention has been paid to citizens' social media use in risk communication in the context of homeland security.

Recent years have witnessed the great potential of social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook as crucial communication tools for managing crises (Bird et al., 2011, Spong, 2011, Yates and Paquette, 2011), but few studies have examined the patterns of risk communication through social media during threats involving terrorist attacks. Because deficient risk communication may limit emergency responses and recovery efforts (Cole & Fellows, 2008), interorganizational and interpersonal communication plays a critical role in enhancing homeland security. In the field of risk communication through social media, both the situational theory of publics (STP) and the social amplification of risk framework (SARF) are used and discussed to predict and explain the behavior of the public on social media by focusing on a more in-depth picture of factors playing indispensable role in effective risk communication. In this study, the STP presents a theoretical framework for investigating how the public forms in the face of risk communication and when people are most likely to engage in such communication with others through social media (Aldoory et al., 2010, Aldoory and Sha, 2007, Binder et al., 2011, Grunig, 2003), whereas the SARF focuses on the social context of various risks to shape different patterns of information diffusion by identifying the most critical actors facilitating effective risk communication on social media (Binder et al., 2011, Chung, 2011, Renn, 2011, Rogers et al., 2007).

The primary objective of this study is to extend the STP and the SARF to the realm of risk communication on social media. To develop a theoretical framework for examining the dynamic evolution of risk communication on social media, the study considers North Korea's nuclear test in 2013 as the main research theme and employs longitudinal Twitter data collected in the U.S. and South Korea over the 24-day period of the nuclear test. Based on the theoretical framework derived from the STP and the SARF, the study is guided by the two research questions of (1) how citizens in the U.S. and South Korea formed different dynamically evolving patterns of risk communication on social media during the nuclear test and (2) how intermediary actors disseminating risk information on social media facilitated information diffusion in different social contexts of South Korea and the U.S. The framework fundamentally posits that a serious homeland security threat would lead to the dynamic evolution of citizens' risk communication networks on social media (Wang, 2014) but have a limited impact on the clustering of subgroups because there may be no obvious actors coordinating crucial information even when more actors participate in and facilitate risk communication.

The next section presents the situational background of the nuclear test and then explores the concept of homeland security and its crisis management by comparing it with the field of crisis management. The theoretical framework derived from the STP and the SARF is presented in a comprehensible manner consisting macro, micro, and information diffusion perspectives. The study employs social network analysis (SNA) methods based on data collected from Twitter from January 30, 2013 (when North Korea promulgated martial law), to February 24, 2013 (12 days after the test). The results have important implications for crisis management in terms of the positive role played by the leading homeland security agency in designing and developing risk communication in the U.S. and South Korea, a topic generally overlooked in the literature.

Section snippets

Risk communication in the homeland security information policy

Communication with the public is a critical but underdeveloped part of crisis management and homeland security (Bullock et al., 2006, Cole and Fellows, 2008, Pidgeon, 2012). In other words, communication in crisis management is limited to an activity for distributing important information before and after a terrorist threat to the public to prevent the anticipated loss. According to Deacker (2001), enhanced risk communication can reduce the risk derived from known or potential threats even when

Theoretical and situational background

One theoretical foundation of this study is the STP, which examines when and why individual citizens become active in risk communication behaviors such as information seeking and processing (Grunig, 1997, Grunig, 2003). In this study, the STP provides a key framework for identifying not only patterns of citizens' risk communication behaviors but also key actors in risk communication on social media. Another foundation is the SARF, which is based on the notion that citizens' risk communication

Data

To investigate the differences in patterns of citizens' risk communication on social media between the U.S. and South Korea during the 2013 North Korean nuclear test, NodeXL, which accumulates and estimates network structure statistics, including diverse actors on Twitter, was employed. In terms of policy analysis and management, NodeXL is a useful tool for identifying hypothesized patterns of individual actors' communication in the context of social media (Jung, Park, Wu, & Park, 2014). The

Results and discussion

In this study, different patterns of citizens' risk communication during the 2013 North Korean nuclear test were examined. With macro and micro network indices, the first research question (derived from the STP to indicate that how risk communication emerged from individual Twitter users as well as how it evolved before and after the nuclear test) was addressed. In particular, the analysis focused on risk communication networks based on Twitter mentions with the keyword “North Korea” because it

Conclusion

Although many studies have argued that interpersonal risk communication plays a critical role in coping with terrorist attacks, few have explained how citizens' risk communication networks emerge from key actors on social media (Federal Emergency Management Agency, 2013, Purpura, 2007, Ressler, 2006). With the intensification of terrorist threats in the Asia-Pacific region originating from North Korea and the southern Philippines, among others, risk communication is expected to play an

Acknowledgment

The earlier version of the current article was presented at the Summer Seminar of Asia Triple Helix Society in Daegu, South Korea. The authors wish to acknowledge Dr. Ralph Schroeder, Dr. Seong-Jun Lee, sand Dr. YonSoo Lee for their suggestions in the formative stages of the article as well as their review of the manuscript. They also wish to acknowledge Dr. Paul T. Jaeger and anonymous reviewers for their critical comments.

Kyujin Jung is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Public Administration at University of North Texas. His research interests include collaborative governance, emergency management, and the economics of intergovernmental networks.

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    Kyujin Jung is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Public Administration at University of North Texas. His research interests include collaborative governance, emergency management, and the economics of intergovernmental networks.

    Han Woo Park is a Professor in the Department of Media and Communication at Yeungnam University, South Korea. His research focuses on the use of new digital technologies in extending social networks and the role of communication in scientific, technical, and innovative activities. He has been a research associate at the Royal Netherlands Academy, a visiting scholar at the Oxford Internet Institute, and a director of the World Class University Webometrics Institute. He is currently the director of the Cyber Emotions Research Center and Asia Triple Helix Society. He sits on the editorial boards of prestigious journals including Scientometrics, Quality & Quantity, Knowledge Economy, and Big Data & Society.

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