Regional analysis of user interactions on social media in times of disaster

Takeshi Sakaki, Fujio Toriumi, Kousuke Shinoda, Kazuhiro Kazama, Satoshi Kurihara, Itsuki Noda, Yutaka Matsuo

Abstract: Social media attract attention for sharing information, especially Twitter, which is now being used in times of disasters. In this paper, we perform regional analysis of user interactions on Twittter during the Great East Japan Earthquake and arrived at the following two conclusions:People diffused much more information after the earthquake, especially in the heavily-damaged areas; People communicated with nearby users but diffused information posted by distant users. We conclude that social media users changed their behavior to widely diffuse information.