Feedback from social media during crisis management

This report summarizes the results of a study conducted in order to place the results of the EU project Alert4All in a Swedish context. Within the Alert4All project, FOI has developed a tool which analyzes the expressions of emotions on social media in relation to crises in general and in relation to broadcasted emergency messages in particular. The overall aim of the tool is to obtain feedback related to crisis communication. Within the Alert4All concept the tool is called the "Screening of New Media" tool, or the SNM tool. The report provides a brief introduction to the SNM tool, as well as the technology behind the tool. The main contribution of the report, however, is the results of the study in which four different organizations involved in crisis management and crisis communication at different levels in Sweden have participated. The organizations (the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency, a county administrative board, a municipality, and a military unit from the Swedish Armed Forces) were chosen as they are all representative for and possible future users of a tool like the SNM tool. A qualitative approach was used in the study, where one workshop per target group was held. The main focus of the workshops was to identify both specific and general needs in relation to a screening tool. The results of the study show that all four target groups see potential in the concept of screening of social media, and that adaptation of the SNM tool to a Swedish context could be useful.