"This bulletin summarises the key findings and recommendations for strengthening collective efforts on communication and community engagement in the Libya floods response. The findings are drawn from a qualitative consultation with more than 30 representatives from the humanitarian community conduct
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ed in November 2023–January 2024." (About this bulletin)
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"In this paper, we identified seven most widely spread conspiracy discourses about earthquakes. These conspiracy discourses link earthquakes to military activities like secret nuclear bomb testing, God’s Providence like the punishment of humans for their sins, space activities like aliens visiting
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our planet, the US secret weather control program HAARP, tests of the Large Hadron Collider, fracking projects, and freemasonic plots. Following the major earthquake in Indonesia at the end of November 2022, we extracted data from Twitter by keywords using the Hoaxy tool for tracking the spread of information on Twitter. Applying the Bot Sentinel tool, we also got data on the sentiment of the users. The divine and military discourses dominated the conspiracy discussion, followed by the discussions about extraction and HAARP. Though there were more human-like accounts than bot-like accounts, we found a positive correlation between the frequency of tweets on the conspiracy discourses and the bot scores of the accounts, which suggests that bot-like accounts were tweeting more than human-like accounts. It was also found that normal accounts tweeted more than toxic accounts, and there was a positive relationship between the bot score and the toxicity level of an account. It suggests that bot-like accounts were involved more in disruptive activities than human-like accounts." (Abstract)
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"[This book] addresses the long-standing puzzle of why China outlived other one-party authoritarian regimes with particular attention to how the state manages an emerging civil society. Drawing upon over 1,200 survey responses conducted in 126 villages in the Sichuan province, as well as 70 intervie
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ws conducted with Civil Society Organization (CSO) leaders and government officials, participant observation, and online research, the book proposes a new theory of interactive authoritarianism to explain how an adaptive authoritarian state manages nascent civil society. Sun argues that when new phenomena and forces are introduced into Chinese society, the Chinese state adopts a three-stage interactive approach toward societal actors: toleration, differentiation, and legalization without institutionalization. Sun looks to three disruptions-earthquakes, internet censorship, and social-media-based guerilla resistance to the ride-sharing industry-to test his theory about the three-stage interactive authoritarian approach and argues that the Chinese government evolves and consolidates its power in moments of crisis." (Publisher description)
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"The major earthquake that struck central Nepal in April 2015 inspired a flurry of literary and cultural production, including the creation and online publication of over 50 earthquake-related music videos. Although they share a common thematic focus, these videos’ representations of the earthquak
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e aftermath and the Nepali people’s response to the disaster diverge from one another in some important respects. Through a detailed analysis of the lyrical, musical and visual content of a selection of five of these videos, and drawing upon recent research on digital cultures, the article asks to what extent these divergences reflect an attempt by online content creators to address Nepali publics (whether domestic, diasporic, urban, rural or gendered) that they imagine and construct in different ways." (Abstract)
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"This review was commissioned by CDAC Network to provide a snapshot of the status of Communication, Community Engagement and Accountability (CCEA) in Haiti six months into the earthquake response. The study aims to identify common themes and critical questions that response actors should be asking t
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o improve sustainable, collective, localised action in CCEA moving forward. Several recommendations are put forward for consideration going forward." (Page 4)
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"Agencies in charge of flood management use disaster reports (DRs) as the preferred source of information on past flooding events. A systematic survey of DRs prepared by Italian agencies suggests that DRs could be widely enhanced in view of targeting more effective communication to citizens, reinfor
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cing the communication pillar in civil protection planning and management, and improving the resilience of the population to extreme events. Without loss of the rigor and details required for all the usual technical uses of DRs, we suggest recompiling them in the form of ‘‘disaster tales’’ (DTs), as tools that offer wider knowledge of the events to improve people’s preparedness and self-protection behavior. Recent major flooding events have demonstrated the communication potential that videos and pictures taken by citizens have for risk perception and disaster preparedness. By watching and listening to what has happened the communication recipient can better understand the feelings of the people experiencing an emergency. The structure of the improved reports, we suggest, will finally integrate data, graphs, and maps with interactive tools and be able to present handier multimedia views of the events. Application to three case studies of flooding in Italy illustrates how to concretely implement the suggested disaster reports to create more readily accessible disaster tales." (Abstract)
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"Over the last two years, Fiji has worked to build a Communication and Community Engagement (CCE) platform that embeds advanced two-way communication capabilities in the national disaster response system. While it is common to think of “platforms” as a technology service, the intent here is much
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broader. While technology is an important component, today’s best-in-class national CCE “platforms” include a broad network of organisations that collaborate on communications efforts, create resources such as guides and training that support efforts, and provide governance structures that support an integrated communication framework. This is critical work. As a Pacific island nation, Fiji’s nearly 900,000 people are exposed to the ongoing threat of tropical cyclones and earthquakes. At the beginning of 2020, Fiji faced two tropical cyclones in a period of three weeks and then in April experienced land fall from the category five Tropical Cyclone Harold. These weather crises coincided with the public health challenges arising from the COVID-19 pandemic." (Page 1)
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"Comunicar o risco de inundação para as partes interessadas, sobretudo os vulneráveis, é um dos principais desafios que a gestão pública e demais atores possuem na busca pela construção de cidades e sociedades resilientes, e pelo desenvolvimento regional. Baseado nisso, o presente trabalho t
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em como objetivo apresentar o status quo e as tendências e padrões na pesquisa de comunicação de risco de inundação ao longo do tempo. Para tanto, empregou-se a análise bibliométrica como técnica de pesquisa, visando ampliar e atualizar o arcabouço de referências que compõem a temática. Como principais resultados, tem-se a identificação de 59 artigos em 31 periódicos distintos, os quais foram publicados principalmente a partir de 2007. A maior parcela dos 189 autores identificados é oriunda de países europeus e norte-americanos, influenciando no estabelecimento de redes de colaboração. Há uma baixíssima ou até mesmo ausência de autores dos demais continentes, sobretudo os países em vias de desenvolvimento na África e na América Latina, onde o risco de desastres tem causado grandes impactos, sobretudo nos grupos mais vulneráveis. Embora seja um tema emergente e ainda pouco explorado, os trabalhos realizados até o momento têm apresentado resultados extraordinariamente elucidativos no que diz respeito à gestão e aos efeitos da comunicação de risco na sociedade." (Resumo)
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"In every disaster, problems of information and communication distribution always occur. The communication channel is very dependent on various supporting facilities. Electricity, transmitter towers, broadcasting stations, to human resources. In two big disasters in Indonesia in 2018: the Lombok ear
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thquake; and the earthquake, tsunami and liquefaction in Palu, there were issues of the information and communication channels. Local people do not know the conditions that occur in their area and the situation of their families. While outsiders, the government, and rescue teams did not get detailed information from the affected areas. In countries with high intensity of natural disasters, emergency broadcasting policies have been long practiced. The simplest device for emergency broadcasting is radio. This kind of media can immediately air with simple facilities. Regardless, the initiative of emergency radio has not yet adopted into regulation in Indonesia. Therefore, the emergency radio initiator limited to a handful of organization like in Lombok earthquake"
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"Risk communication is crucial to building community resilience and reducing risk from extreme events. True community resilience involves accurate and timely dissemination of risk information to stakeholders. This book examines the policy and science of risk communication in the digital era. Themes
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include public awareness of risk and public participation in risk communication and resilience building. The first half of the book focuses on conceptual frameworks, components, and the role of citizens in risk communication. The second half examines the role of risk communication in resilience building and provides an overview of some of its challenges in the era of social media. This book looks at the effectiveness of risk communication in socially and culturally diverse communities in the developed and developing world. The interdisciplinary approach bridges academic research and applied policy action. Contributions from Latin America and Asia provide insight into global risk communication at a time when digital technologies have rapidly transformed conventional communication approaches. This book will be of critical interest to policy makers, academicians, and researchers, and will be a valuable reference source for university courses that focus on emergency management, risk communication, and resilience." (Publisher description)
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"Best practices for agencies to counter misinformation, rumors and false information are detailed and categorized in this white paper, and challenges and additional considerations are presented for review. This report illustrates methods of countering false information on social media with case stud
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ies: The 2014 South Napa earthquake: Tweets were filtered by geolocation to eliminate posts from trolls; The 2016 Louisiana floods: The Red Cross published and shared a blog to counter rumors and misinformation about food distribution and shelter policies; The 2017 Oroville Dam evacuation: An accidentally misleading tweet suggested the evacuation area included all of Sacramento County. Local agencies used traditional and social media to provide correct information. Examples of best practices include: Establishing partnerships with local traditional media outlets before disasters, so means exist to disseminate accurate information; Using the Joint Information System to coordinate public information efforts of multiple jurisdictions and agencies; and Setting up a central website to debunk bad information." (Executive summary)
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"This book presents a comprehensive framework for disaster communication, with a main focus on earthquake-related communication, building on a previously fragmented, single-case study approach [especially based on experiences in Italy] to analysing the role of social media during natural disasters."
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(Publisher description)
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"This article examines how three Chinese and two British newspapers sourced content from social media in their coverage of the 2008 Wenchuan Earthquake, the 2013 Ya'an Earthquake, and the 2015 Tianjin Explosion. The media outlets citing of social media content present different patterns in line with
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their political and commercial interests, ideologies, and journalistic values. Diverse images of the three disasters as revealed on social media (social media reality) were constructed in the newspapers' coverage. Journalists gate-keep information from social media and dissolve it into daily disaster reporting, accepting selected aspects of social media reality but rejecting others. Especially in the case of the Chinese newspapers, meeting the needs of domestic political and commercial interest groups, journalists endorse social media content that is favorable to these groups." (Abstract)
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"Maria Repnikova reveals the webs of an uneasy partnership between critical journalists and the state in China. More than merely a passive mouthpiece or a dissident voice, the media in China also plays a critical oversight role, one more frequently associated with liberal democracies than with autho
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ritarian systems. Chinese central officials cautiously endorse media supervision as a feedback mechanism, as journalists carve out space for critical reporting by positioning themselves as aiding the agenda of the central state. Drawing on rare access in the field, Media Politics in China examines the process of guarded improvisation that has defined this volatile partnership over the past decade on a routine basis and in the aftermath of major crisis events. Combined with a comparative analysis of media politics in the Soviet Union and contemporary Russia, the book highlights the distinctiveness of Chinese journalist-state relations, as well as the renewed pressures facing them in the Xi era." (Publisher description)
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