Collaborative Research: Collective Sense Making Following a Terrorist Attack: The Immediate and Long-Term Impact on Public Resilience

社交媒体已经成为公众应对恐怖主义的核心。从传播突发新闻，到提供社会支持，再到传播激进的、令人憎恨的信息，人们越来越多地转向社交媒体，分享和了解恐怖事件。该项目利用社交媒体数据调查巴黎个人在2015年11月恐怖袭击期间的反应。它分析了他们对袭击的直接社会和情感反应，以及他们交流行为的长期变化。调查集中在三个问题上。首先，在袭击后混乱和情绪化的背景下，如何以及如何有效地立即对袭击作出反应，例如使用#PorteOuverte标签为陌生人提供庇护所。其次，袭击发生后，个人对袭击不同方面的关注，如特定的新闻报道、不同种族的作用，或社交媒体讨论的其他突出方面，会对他们对恐怖主义威胁的长期态度产生什么影响。第三，政府当局和专业新闻媒体如何以及在多大程度上影响了公众对广泛和特定社会社区的关注。这一研究成果既将改善对具体恐怖袭击的反应，也将增进公众对恐怖主义利用社会影响的具体手段的了解。该项目推进了集体轰动的理论研究，在这里被理解为从认知上理解、在情感上接受并在逻辑上对令人惊讶的、破坏性事件做出反应的紧急、共同的尝试。该项目通过关注时间和基于主题的差异，以一种新颖的方式解决集体轰动效应。分析将侧重于短期和长期沟通行为的变化，例如情感表达或对特定URL的引用的变化。将通过利用文本挖掘、网络科学方法和技术以及社交媒体的传播理论来解决选择偏见和测量不同的耸人听闻的行为等方法论问题。通过这样做，该项目将极大地提高对公民对恐怖袭击的即时和长期行为反应的了解。

Social media has become central to the public's response to terrorism. From the transmission of breaking news, to the offering of social support, to the dissemination of radical, hateful messages, people increasingly turn to social media to both share and gain understandings of terrorist events. This project utilizes the social media data to investigate the reactions of individuals located in Paris during the November 2015 attacks. It analyzes both their immediate social and emotional reactions to the attacks as well as longer-term changes in their communication behavior. The investigation focuses on three questions. First, in immediate response to the attacks, how, and how effectively, did improvised logistical communications, such as the use of the #PorteOuverte hashtag offering shelter to strangers, emerge in the chaotic and emotional context of the attack aftermath. Second, what effect did attention by individuals to different aspects of the attack, such as particular news stories, the role of different ethnic groups, or other salient aspects of social media discussion after the attacks influence their longer term attitudes toward the threat of terrorism. Third, how and to what extent did government authorities and professional news outlets sway this public attention both broadly and for specific social communities. This research outcome will both improve responses to specific terrorist attacks as well as enhance public understanding of the specific means through which terrorism wields social influence. The project advances the theoretical study of collective sensemaking, understood here as the emergent, communal attempt to cognitively understand, emotionally accept, and logistically respond to surprising, disruptive events. The project addresses collective sensemaking in a novel way by focusing on both temporal and subject based differences. Analysis will focus on both short-term and longer-term communication behavioral changes, such as changes in the expression of sentiment or of reference to specific URLs. Methodological issues such as selection bias and the measurement of different sensemaking behaviors will be addressed by leveraging text mining, network science methods and techniques, and communication theories of social media. In so doing, the project will greatly improved understanding of both the immediate and longer-term behavioral responses of citizens to a terrorist attack.