RAPID: Social Media: Learning from the Boston Marathon Bombing

2013年4月15日的波士顿马拉松爆炸案（BMB）再次提醒我们，社会不仅会受到地震和飓风等自然灾害的冲击，也会受到恐怖主义行为的冲击。爆炸事件以多种方式吸引了公众，社交媒体平台（Twitter, YouTube， Facebook等）使公众既了解情况，又在一定程度上参与其中。可以从这些地点收集到的数字痕迹为研究这种参与是如何以及在多大程度上出现的提供了一个短暂的机会。RAPID项目将从Twitter等社交媒体和其他相关来源收集数据，以解决以下问题：传统媒体和社交媒体上有关事件的信息流、未经证实的信息和错误信息的传播和放大、官方和大众社交媒体使用的差异、援助或嫌疑人追踪工作的自组织以及随着时间的推移公众情绪的变化。这一事件的数据可能会揭示恐怖事件与自然灾害之后社交媒体使用动态的差异。拟议项目的智力优势在于，它将社会媒体研究的新兴方法和技术与灾害响应协调和规划的最新研究相结合，以开发BMB信息流的概念模型，以指导数据收集和分析。由于波士顿马拉松吸引了来自世界各地的参与者，这次爆炸事件具有全球性，可能会影响社交媒体传播的性质和范围。项目的更广泛影响包括参与项目和课程的学生的教育效益，这些课程将根据项目的发现得到通知。收集到的数据将提供给其他研究人员，主要研究人员计划与其他研究人员协调他们的工作，从而为科学基础设施做出贡献。该建议包括为传播对所收集数据进行初步分析的结果提供资金。分析的结果可以为危机和灾害（无论是自然的还是人为的）中的传播和信息流的研究提供改进的指南，从而使社会受益。

The April 15, 2013 Boston Marathon Bombing (BMB) is a fresh reminder that societies can be shocked not only by natural disasters such as earthquakes and hurricanes but also by acts of terrorism. The bombing engaged the public in multiple ways, and social media platforms (Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, etc.) enabled the public to become both informed and to some extent involved. Digital traces that can be collected from these sites present a brief window of opportunity for research on how, and to what extent, this involvement emerged. This RAPID project will collect data from social media such as Twitter and other linked sources to address questions about the flow of information about the event across traditional and social media, the propogation and amplification of unsubstantiated information and misinformation, differences between official and popular social media use, self-organization of efforts for assistance or suspect tracking and changes in public sentiment over time. Data from this event may reveal differences in the dynamics of social media use in the wake of terrorist events vs. natural disasters. The intellectual merit of the proposed project is that it combines emerging methods and techniques for social media research with recent research on disaster response coordination and planning to develop a conceptual model of the BMB information flows to guide data collection and analysis. Because the Boston Marathon attracted participants from around the world, this bombing has a global dimension that may affect the nature and reach of the social media communications. Broader impacts of the project include educational benefits from students involved in the project and in courses that will be informed by the project findings. The collected data will be made available to other researchers and the principal investigators plan to coordinate their work with others examining this event, thus contributing to the infrastructure for science. The proposal includes funding for dissemination of the results of preliminary analysis of the collected data. Results from analysis may offer an improved guide for research on communication and information flows in crises and disasters (whether natural or human-initiated), thus benefiting society.