RAPID: Social Media: Learning from the Boston Marathon Bombing

2013年4月15日波士顿马拉松爆炸案（BMB）再次提醒人们，社会不仅会受到地震和飓风等自然灾害的冲击，还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）使公众既能了解情况，又能在一定程度上参与进来。可以从这些网站收集的数字痕迹提供了一个简短的机会窗口，研究如何以及在何种程度上，这种参与出现。这个快速行动项目将从推特等社交媒体和其他相关来源收集数据，以解决有关事件的信息在传统媒体和社交媒体上的流动、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之间的差异、援助或嫌疑人追踪工作的自我组织以及公众情绪随时间的变化等问题。来自这一事件的数据可能揭示了恐怖事件与自然灾害之后社交媒体使用动态的差异。拟议项目的智力价值在于，它将社会媒体研究的新兴方法和技术与最近关于救灾协调和规划的研究相结合，以开发BMB信息流的概念模型，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，这起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。 该项目的更广泛影响包括参与该项目的学生以及将通过项目调查结果了解情况的课程的学生的教育效益。收集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工作，从而为科学基础设施做出贡献。该提案包括为传播对所收集数据的初步分析结果提供资金。分析结果可为研究危机和灾害（无论是自然还是人为引发的）中的通信和信息流动提供更好的指导，从而造福社会。

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.