Collaborative Research: Organizational development, operations, and new media among civilian flood-rescue groups

在这个项目中，志愿者团体的稳定性或正规化和增长以及社交媒体在这些过程中的使用将被调查。具体而言，将通过与救援人员的密集访谈和参与，研究开展志愿洪水救援的过程，影响救援过程中即时决策的因素，志愿者群体发展的决策，以及使用社交媒体进行救援和群体发展。灾害是研究社会进程的独特机会，也正在成为日益频繁出现的社会问题。近年来的灾难催生了由社交媒体和新技术支持的志愿者组织。关于志愿者救援运动，这些志愿者，或者这些救援行动的学术研究非常有限。研究结果将有助于对群体形成和发展的学术理解，以及新技术对群体形成和发展的影响。它们还将被纳入应急管理、减灾和恢复等课程，并直接与从事救援的组织以及更广泛的应急管理和公共社区分享，从而为公共福利作出贡献。为了实现研究目标，将进行人种学研究，其中包括参与进行救援的志愿组织，与应急管理官员进行20-40次访谈，与志愿救援人员进行30-60次访谈，与平民志愿人员进行20-30次访谈。在项目的整个生命周期中，这将涉及与志愿者组织一起培训和旅行，因为他们应对灾害，例如2018年这些组织应对的三次灾害，佛罗伦萨飓风和迈克尔飓风以及德克萨斯州东南部的洪水。参与者将扮演三种不同的角色：船只救援者、调度员和领导协调。此外，将收集现有的社交媒体数据和媒体文章，并进行归纳分析。地理信息系统技术将用于分析有关救援地点的现有地理空间数据，这些数据将与危害数据有关。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

In this project, the stability or formalization and growth of volunteer groups and the use of social media in these processes will be investigated. Specifically, processes of conducting volunteer flood rescues, factors that affect immediate decision-making during rescues, decisions about volunteer group development, and use of social media for rescuing and group development will be researched through intense interviewing and participation with rescuers. Disasters are unique opportunities to study social processes, and they are also becoming more frequent social problems. Disasters of recent years have introduced volunteer organizations supported by social media and new technologies. Limited scholarly research has studied this volunteer rescue movement, these volunteers, or these rescue operations. Findings will contribute to scholarly understanding of group formation and development and how this may be affected by new technologies. They also will contribute to public welfare by being integrated in courses such as on emergency management and hazard mitigation and recovery, and by being directly shared with organizations that do rescues as well as the broader emergency management and public communities.To address the research goal, ethnographic research will be conducted that includes participation with volunteer organizations that conduct rescues, 20-40 interviews with emergency management officials, 30-60 interviews with volunteer rescuers, and 20-30 interviews with persons rescued by civilian volunteers. Over the life of the project, this will involve training and traveling with volunteer organizations as they respond to disasters, such as the three to which these organizations responded in 2018, Hurricanes Florence and Michael and floods in Southeast Texas. Participation will be in three different roles: boat rescuer, dispatcher, and leadership coordination. In addition, available social media data and media articles will be collected and analyzed inductively. GIS technology will be used to analyze available geospatial data on rescue locations, which will be related to hazard data.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.