The use of social media for crisis management: A privacy by design approach

Social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook foster the open environment and are convenient ways to produce, share, and consume information faster and more easily than ever before. Recent years have witnessed a huge influx of information in the form of text, images, videos, and text messages that people observe, report, collect, and disseminate through social media platforms. These platforms have become a popular medium for disseminating situation-sensitive information during natural disasters and other mass convergence events. Recent studies have shown that social media are an invaluable source of time-critical information during emergencies (Mendoza et al. 2010; Vieweg 2012; Yin et al. 2012; Power et al. 2014; Mulder et al. 2016). This citizen-generated content contains valuable information that can enhance crisis response, if processed swiftly and effectively (Sakaki et al. 2010; Imran et al. 2013c).