The development of critical projects and initiatives requires extensive applied research that often follows a multi-disciplinary approach. The research follows a systematic procedure from hypothesis formulation, variables determination, research design, testing of the hypothesis, and results verification (Fisher & Bloomfield, 2019). Each of these steps requires careful planning and implementation. The “Social Media and Crisis Communications” study followed an applied survey of Florida local governments aimed at understanding the roles played by social media in emergency communications. A review of the study’s hypothesis, variables, tests, limitations, and conclusions provides a framework to formulate efficient social media policies and practices.
Purposes of Research
The stipulated aims and end goals uniquely define every research. According to Fisher and Bloomfield (2019), research has three primary purposes: exploratory, descriptive, and explanatory. In this research, the authors sought to fulfill the exploratory study by surveying how local governments utilized social media in communicating information on emergencies. The researchers effectively served their purpose by supplementing the survey data with records from the U.S. Census Bureau and the University of Florida’s Research by the Bureau of Economic and Business Studies (Neely & Collins, 2018). Regression analysis done on the data provided crucial details on the influence of institutional and community elements on social media utilization for crisis communication.
Hypotheses
The researchers formulated five hypotheses to address their central research question, divided into three sub-questions. The first hypothesis addressed the question of the portion of local authorities that have adopted social media use during a crisis.
They stated hypothesis one: The local agencies’ adoption rates will lag behind federal levels (Neely & Collins, 2018). The second hypothesis question was based on the platforms mainly used, wherein they stated: Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube will be the most commonly used platforms by local agencies (Neely & Collins, 2018). Three hypotheses were formulated on the last question of institutional and demographic factors. Hypotheses three, four, and five stated as local agencies with larger budgets, serving local agencies, and dealing with more educated populations will be more likely to adopt social media platforms for crisis management, respectively.
Variables, Conceptualization, and Operationalization
The study employed several independent variables that significantly affected the rate of social media adoption by Florida agencies. The dependent variable was the likelihood of using social media for emergency management. The independent variables used include municipal payroll, population density, age, level of education, and median income (Neely & Collins, 2018).
The authors conceptualized social media use as a variable that significantly depended on the prevailing institutional factors outside the control of the local agencies. They operationalized it by looking into 180 municipalities and evaluating the most commonly used social media platforms, the proportion of cities adopting them, and factors influencing the probability of their adoption. This way, the authors linked the use of social media to internal and external factors at the local government’s level.
A Summary of the Findings
According to the findings, the scope of social media use is fairly constrained. Only 28.9% of agencies claim that they employ more than one platform for this purpose, and a slight majority of organizations (50.6%) indicate that they do not utilize any social media sites (Neely & Collins, 2018). Facebook is the most used channel, according to nearly half (49.4%) of the respondents (Neely & Collins, 2018). Twitter is the second most used platform, although a much lesser percentage of authorities (27.7%) reported utilizing it and less than 10% of participants stated that they used other social media sites such as YouTube and LinkedIn. This confirmed the second research hypothesis regarding the most commonly used sites. The regression analysis results demonstrated that organizational size, in terms of payroll, age, and education levels, significantly influences the probability of a municipality using social media to rely on crisis information.
Study Limitations Influencing the Research Credibility
The credibility of research is a crucial element worth considering. According to LeBel et al. (2018), transparency, reproducibility, robustness, and replicability of a study are the critical elements influencing the study’s credibility and the applications of the results obtained. The emergency manager can assess two key limitations in this study to determine the survey’s credibility. First, the lack of verifiability of the independent variables us as municipality payroll and population density, my limit the credibility of the study outcomes. Second, the lack of replicability, founded on the fact that the study was conducted in Florida and may not be applicable in other states, presents a significant limitation on the survey’s credibility.
Suggestions for Social Media Policy
Based on the study results, improving future emergency crises can be addressed by formulating effective social media policies. One of the options includes employing more educated people in the crisis management section of local municipalities. Increasing the local government’s budget allocations to the emergency handling department is the second suggestion that can increase the likelihood of social media use for emergency communication since a low budget was found to limit the adoption of such platforms.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the study on social media use for communication during the emergency response was studied through a survey of Florida local government agencies. In this exploratory research, institutional and demographic factors were shown to play crucial roles in influencing the probability of social media adoption. Based on the results obtained, financial allocation to the crisis handling departments and increasing the number of highly educated employees in such agencies will inform better policy developments, increasing the chances of social media application.
References
Fisher, M. J., & Bloomfield, J. (2019). Understanding the research process. Journal of the Australasian Rehabilitation Nurses Association, 22(1), 22-27. Web.
LeBel, E. P., McCarthy, R. J., Earp, B. D., Elson, M., & Vanpaemel, W. (2018). A unified framework to quantify the credibility of scientific findings. Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science, 1(3), 389-402. Web.
Neely, S. & Collins, M. (2018). Social Media and Crisis Communications: A Survey of Local Governments in Florida. Journal of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, 15(1). Web.