Retransmitting Messages Online in Evolving Disasters: A Scenario Simulation

Tools such as Twitter and Facebook now allow rapid, large-scale message retransmission, the impact of which can be either helpful or harmful in disasters. To provide insights for industries on facilitating the spread of high-quality messages in evolving disasters, this paper seeks to outline a “context-specific” theory to identify IT-enabled message cues and human perceptions that affect online message retransmission in evolving disasters, and explain how the impact of message receivers’ perceptions on retransmission depends on their perceived uncertainty about the situation. After proposing my research model, I propose a way to test it by simulating a disaster scenario in an experiment. Theoretically, I seek to offer insights for research on online crisis communication, rumor theory, and information diffusion. Practically, my study could inform crisis managers on how to promote successful message retransmission in disasters, and offer insights for tool designers to design better functions for disaster or crisis professionals