(SMA)2 - a Social Media Audience Sharing Model for Authorities to support effective crisis communication

Effective crisis communications play a vital role in increasing the resilience of communities against natural or man-made disasters. Warning and informing affected citizens is a crucial safety-critical process with the aim to raise public awareness prior to an event, or when one is imminent. This process has traditionally been facilitated through broadcast media, such as television and radio. This paper discusses social media platforms as additional channel to public alerting systems and introduces a model of effective social media audience sharing for authorities. The paper concludes with a discussion on the challenges for effective audience targeting and on reducing conflicting information, as well as the utility of the approach to the public and authorities.