Overview of Event Based Resources on Facebook and Twitter: Fort McMurray Wildfire, May 2016

• Main Authors: Chauhan, Apoorva, Hughes, Amanda Lee
• Format: Text
• Language: unknown
• Published: DigitalCommons@USU 2017
• Subjects: Fort McMurray
• Online Access: https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/researchweek/ResearchWeek2017/Session3Poster/20; https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1433&context=researchweek

Event Based Resources (EBR) are the web resources, named after an event. In this study, we focus on Facebook and Twitter EBRs created around the 2016 Fort McMurray wildfire. We determine the time when different EBRs were created, and were closed (if closed). We also determine if the content posted by these EBRs were relevant to the Fort McMurray wildfire. We categorize these EBRs, on the basis of their social media profile and the content posted by them, into different categories. We take a closer look at the accounts that were most well-received by the public to see if their activity (number of messages posted over the data collection timeframe) and the response they got from members of public (in terms of number of likes (on Facebook) and followers (on Twitter)) were correlated with the wildfire’s progression. We also study the Event Based Resources that were active past 2 months of wildfire being ‘under control’, i.e., after July 5, 2016.