Narratives and Needs: Analyzing Experiences of Cyclone Amphan Using Twitter Discourse

Ancil Crayton, João Fonseca, Kanav Mehra, Michelle Ng, Jared Ross, Marcelo Sandoval-Castañeda, Rachel von Gnechten

Abstract: People often turn to social media to comment upon and share information about major global events. Accordingly, social media is receiving increasing attention as a rich data source for understanding people's social, political and economic experiences of extreme weather events. In this paper, we contribute two novel methodologies that leverage Twitter discourse to characterize narratives and identify unmet needs in response to Cyclone Amphan, which affected 18 million people in May 2020.