How Communication Ecology Impacts Disaster Support Seeking in Multiethnic Communities: The Roles of Disaster Communication Network Size, Heterogeneity, and Localness

ABSTRACT

Advancing a network concept of disaster communication ecology, the current study explores how key properties of one’s disaster communication network—which consists of interpersonal, media, and organizational ties—influence various kinds of support-seeking processes during a natural disaster, the 2021 Texas Winter Storm. Specifically, the study investigates how the sizes, heterogeneity, and localness of individuals’ disaster communication networks predict the frequencies of seeking emotional, informational, and physical support during the disaster, using survey data collected from a multiethnic community. Results indicate that different network properties of disaster communication ecologies are related to different types of support seeking levels. Furthermore, the localness and heterogeneity of interpersonal ties, as well as the heterogeneity of media ties, significantly vary across major ethnic groups.

Acknowledgment

The authors would like to acknowledge the financial support from the Mass Communication & Society Division Research Award at the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC).

Disclosure statement

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

Ethical approval

The study was approved by the Institutional Review Board at the University of Houston on May 17^th, 2021.

Notes

¹ According to Eisinga et al. (2013), “The Pearson correlation is not an adequate measure of the reliability of a two-item scale. Rather, one may call that the reliability of a one-item test. Cronbach’s alpha is an accurate estimate of reliability under rather restrictive assumptions.” (p. 8). Note that the Spearman-Brown coefficient is equivalent to standardized coefficient alpha based on standardized items for 2-item scales (Eisinga et al., 2013).

² The respondents listed a total of 545 unique organizations and reported the type of their listed organizations. A sample (23%) of the list was examined to verify the organization type reported by the respondents. The list was purposively ranked based on the number of mentions, so only the 125 organizations mentioned more than once (e.g., FEMA, Red Cross, YMCA) were checked. The authors did not verify the full list, because (1) over 90% were correctly categorized (e.g., “Conroe Church of Christ” is a church group, and “Red Cross” is an NGO), and (2) many organizations mentioned only once by a respondent were unidentifiable (e.g., the mission, SSA). Thus, we made a reasonable assumption regarding the accuracy of organizational type in our paper.

³ Blau’s index of those who did not report any tie should not be 0, as 0 indicates perfect homogeneity. For example, a respondent reported five personal ties who were all white scores 0 on Blau’s index.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Wenlin Liu

Wenlin Liu (University of Southern California) is an Assistant Professor of Strategic Communication in the Jack J. Valenti School of Communication, University of Houston. Liu’s research focuses on social media-mediated disaster communication, interorganizational alliance building, and multiethnic community building using a social network approach.

Xinyan Zhao

Xinyan Zhao. (University of Maryland) is an assistant professor at the School of Journalism and Media, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her research focuses on the roles of social media and social networks in crisis, risk, and health communication using computational and quantitative methods.