Abstract:

Social media users in disaster area can provide first-hand information about disasters. Therefore, study on user behavior of social media users in disaster area would be benefit for emergency response of disasters. This study conducted a content analysis and longitudinal study based on 13,757 tweets generated by users in disaster area after 24 hours of explosion in Tianjin 12^th August 2015. The main results are as followings: the post time of social media users in disaster area is much quicker than this of traditional media when disasters occur; social media users in disaster area tend to lead off emotion, and exceed 20% of tweets are praying; within the first 2 hours of disaster, social media users in disaster area express their personal experience of and fear of disasters; and then they participate in the emergency response couple with many emotions, such as praying, vicissitudes of life, etc. This study suggests that government should provide mental intervention for people in disaster area after disasters occur.

Key words: Micro-blogging, 　Social media, 　Social networking services, 　Disasters, 　User behavior, 　Information distribution