Disaster communication behaviors in the U.S. and China: which channels do you use and with whom?

ABSTRACT

Enriching the social-mediated crisis communication model (SMCC) with the media theories of information repertoire and curation as well as the literature of risk communication, this study examines the antecedents, processes, and protective outcomes of disaster communication in the form of information gathering and sharing across countries. Analysis of online survey data collected in the United States and China shows that while Americans and Chinese exhibit similar patterns in using repertoires for disaster information gathering, they differ in the repertoires used for sharing disaster information. Moreover, different inter-repertoire patterns are manifested in disaster information gathering and sharing. Both countries also exhibit similarities and differences in terms of the association between the repertoires of disaster communication and protective action taking. Furthermore, the results show that subjective norms are the most consistent predictor of all types of repertoires of disaster information gathering across countries.

KEYWORDS:

• Information gathering
• information sharing
• risk and disaster
• social media
• cross-cultural comparison

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This project was supported by Singapore's Ministry of Education (MOE) AcRF Tier 1 Grant awarded to the first author. Taiwan's Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST 105-2410-H-009 -064 -SS3) also sponsored the presentation of the project.