Images for the present. The catastrophical event’s Twitter (visual) data

Journal title SOCIOLOGIA DELLA COMUNICAZIONE
Author/s Giovanni Boccia Artieri, Laura Gemini, Manolo Farci, Elisabetta Zurovac
Publishing Year 2015 Issue 2015/49 Language Italian
Pages 28 P. 55-82 File size 437 KB
DOI 10.3280/SC2015-049005
DOI is like a bar code for intellectual property: to have more infomation click here

Below, you can see the article first page

If you want to buy this article in PDF format, you can do it, following the instructions to buy download credits

Article preview

FrancoAngeli is member of Publishers International Linking Association, Inc (PILA), a not-for-profit association which run the CrossRef service enabling links to and from online scholarly content.

The aim of this research is to analyze visual communicative practices that have taken place on Twitter during the earthquake in Emilia Romagna, Lombardia and Veneto on the 20th May 2012. Coding a dataset of 4256 images that spread the first day of earthquake, the work has reached these major findings: 1. Twitter had both and informative and relational function, 2. users on Twitter produced a narration of the trumatical event oriented to the present, contributing to the reestablishment of a symbolic field during a traumatic event such as an earthquake.

Keywords: Big data, visual studies, Twitter, earthquake.

  1. Abruzzese A. (2001), L’intelligenza del mondo. Fondamenti di storia e teoria dell’immaginario, Meltemi, Roma.
  2. Barton A. (1970), Communities in disasters, Anchor Press, New York.
  3. Berger J. (1972), Ways of Seeing: Based on the BBC Television Series, Penguin, London Harmondsworth; trad. it. (2009), Questione di sguardi. Sette inviti al vedere fra storia dell’arte e quotidianità, il Saggiatore, Milano.
  4. Boccia Artieri G. (2009), SuperNetwork: quando le vite sono connesse, in Mazzoli L. (a cura di), Network Effect. Quando la rete diventa pop, Codice Edizioni, Torino.
  5. Boccia Artieri G. (2012), Stati di connessione. Pubblici, cittadini e consumatori nella (social) network society, FrancoAngeli, Milano.
  6. Boccia Artieri G. (2014), Il senso del network. Le scienze sociali computazionali e la sfida dei Big Data, «Salute & Società», n. 3.
  7. Boccia Artieri G., Giglietto F., Rossi L. (2012), Facebook, Twitter & co. Una mutazione possibile per la ricerca sociale, in Fiorentino G., Pireddu M. (a cura di), Galassia Facebook. Comunicazione e vita quotidiana, Nutrimenti, Roma, pp. 73-91.
  8. boyd d., Crawford K. (2012), Critical Questions for Big Data in Information, «Communication & Society», vol. 15, n. 5, pp. 662-679.
  9. Bruns A. (2011), Gatekeeping, gatewatching, real-time feedback: new challenges for Journalism, «Brazilian Journalism Research Journal», vol. 7, n. 2. Bruns A., Burgess J., Crawford K., Shaw F. (2012), #qldfloods and @QPSMedia: Crisis Communication on Twitter in the 2011 South East Queensland Floods, Brisbane: ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation.
  10. Bruns A., Burgess, J. (2013), Crisis Communication in Natural Disasters: The Queensland Floods and Christchurch Earthquakes, in Weller K., Bruns A.,
  11. Burgess J., Merja M., Puschmann C. P. (eds.), Twitter and Society, Peter Lang, New York, pp. 373-384.
  12. Bruns A., Liang Y. E. (2012), Tools and methods for capturing twitter data during natural disasters, «First Monday», vol. 17, n. 4.
  13. Caronia A. (2012), Apocalissi quotidiane: James G. Ballard, in Ragone G. (a cura di), Lo spettacolo della fine. Le catastrofi ambientali nell’immaginario e nei media, Guerini e Associati, Roma.
  14. Cartwright L., Sturken M. (2001), Pratices of Looking. An Introduction to Visual Culture, Oxford University Press, Oxford.
  15. Cattarinussi B. (1981), La sociologia dei disastri in Italia, ISIG, Gorizia.
  16. Chéroux C. (2010), Diplopie. L’image photographique à l’ère des médias globalisés: essai sur le 11 septembre 2001, Le Point du Jou, Paris; trad. it. (2010) Diplopia. L’immagine fotografica nell’era dei media globalizzati: saggio sull’11 settembre 2001, Einaudi, Torino.
  17. Debray R. (1992), Vie et mort de l’image. Un histoire du regard en Occident, Gallimard, Paris; trad. it. (1999) Vita e morte dell’immagine. Una storia dello sguardo in Occidente, il Castoro, Milano.
  18. Dynes R., De Marchi B., Pelanda C. (1987), Sociology of disasters: contributions of sociology to disaster research, FrancoAngeli, Milano.
  19. Earle P. S., Bowden D. C., Guy M. (2011), Twitter earthquake detection: earthquake monitoring in a social world, «Annals of GeoPhysics», vol. 54, n. 6, pp. 708-715.
  20. Faccioli P., Lo Sacco P. (2010), Nuovo manuale di sociologia visuale. Dall’analogico al digitale, FrancoAngeli, Milano.
  21. Gemini L. (2008), In viaggio. Immaginario, comunicazione e pratiche del turismo contemporaneo, FrancoAngeli, Milano.
  22. Gemini L. (2015), Visual Networking. Appunti sulla dimensione visuale dei media sociali, in Boccia Artieri G. (a cura di), Gli effetti sociali del web. Forme della comunicazione e metodologie della ricerca online, FrancoAngeli, Milano.
  23. Gillmor D. (2006), We the Media: Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People, O’Reilly Media, Sebastopol, CA.
  24. Glaser B., Strauss A. (1967), The Discovery of Grounded Theory: Strategies for Qualitative Research, Aldine, Chicago; trad. it. (2009), La scoperta della Grounded Theory. Strategie per la ricerca qualitativa, Armando Editore, Roma.
  25. Grady J. (1999), Le potenzialità della sociologia visuale, in Faccioli P. (a cura di), In altre parole. Idee per una sociologia della comunicazione visuale, FrancoAngeli, Milano.
  26. Harper D. (2012), Visual Sociology, Routledge, New York. Hermida A. (2010), From TV to Twitter: how ambient news became ambient Journalism, «Journal of Media and Culture», vol. 13, n. 2, testo disponibile in: http://journal.media-culture.org/au/index.php/mcjournal/article/viewArticle/220.
  27. Hughes A., Palen L. (2009), Twitter Adoption and Use in Mass Convergence and Emergency Events, «Proceedings of the 2009 Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management Conference», ISCRAM 2009.
  28. Johnston L., Marrone M. (2009), Twitter user becomes star in US Airways crash, «New York Daily News», testo disponibile in: http://articles.nydailynews.com/2009-01-15/local/17914601_1_airways-crash- plane-users.
  29. Lazer D., Pentland A., Adamic L., Aral S., Barabasi A. L., Brewer D., Christakis N., Contractor N., Fowler J., Gutmann M., Jebara T., King G., Macy M., Roy D., Van Alstyne M. (2009), Social science. Computational social science, «Science», vol. 323, n. 5915, pp. 721-723. DOI: 10.1126/science.1167742
  30. Lerman K., Ghosh R. (2010), Information contagion: An empirical study of the spread of news on Digg and Twitter social networks, «Proceedings of the4th International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media (ICWSM)», Washington.
  31. Liu S. B., Palen L., Sutton J. Hughes A. L., Vieweg S. (2008), In Search of the Bigger Picture: The Emergent Role of On-Line Photo Sharing in Times of Disaster, «Proceedings of the 5th International ISCRAM Conference», ISCRAM. Washington, DC.
  32. Liu S. B. (2010), Grassroots Heritage in the Crisis Context, «Proceedings of the 28th International Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems» – CHI EA ‘10.
  33. Luhmann N. (1996), Die Realität der Massenmedien, Westdeutscher Verlag, Opladen; trad. it. (2000) La realtà dei mass media, FrancoAngeli, Milano.
  34. Mendoza M., Poblete B., Castillo C. (2010), Twitter Under Crisis: Can we trust what we RT?, «Proceedings of the First Workshop on Social Media Analytics (SOMA ‘10)», July 25, 2010, Washington, DC.
  35. Mirzoeff N. (1999), An introduction to Visual Culture, Routledge, New York-London; trad. it. (2002) Introduzione alla cultura visuale, Meltemi, Roma.
  36. Mitchell W. J. T. (2005), What Do Pictures Want? The Lives and Loves of Images, University of Chicago Press, London-Chicago.
  37. Murray S. (2010), Digital Images, Photo-Sharing, and Our Shifting Notions of Everyday Aesthetics, «Journal of Visual Culture», 2008, 7.
  38. Oh O., Kwon K. H., Rao H. R. (2010), An exploration of social media in extreme events: Rumor theory and twitter during the Haiti earthquake, «Proceedings of the 31st International Conference on Information Systems», Saint Louis, MO, December 12-15.
  39. Palen L., Liu S. B. (2007), Citizen communications in crisis: anticipating a future of ICT-supported public participation, «Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems», pp. 727-736, ACM.
  40. Qu Y., Huang C., Zhang P., Zhang J. (2011), Microblogging after a major disaster in China: a case study of the 2010 Yushu earthquake, «Proceedings of the ACM 2011 conference on Computer supported cooperative work», ACM. Quarantelli E. L. (2006), Catastrophes are Different from Disasters: Some Implications for Crisis Planning and Managing Drawn from Katrina, testo disponibile in http://understandingkatrina.ssrc.org/Quarantelli.
  41. Quarantelli E. L., Dynes R. (1977), Response to social crisis and disaster, «Annual review of sociology», III, pp. 23-49.
  42. Ragone G. (a cura di) (2012), Lo spettacolo della fine. Le catastrofi ambientali nell’immaginario e nei media, Guerini e Associati, Roma.
  43. Robinson S. (2009), ‘If You Had Been with Us’: Mainstream Press and Citizen Journalists Jockey for Authority over the Collective Memory of Hurricane Katrina, «New Media & Society», vol. 11, n. 5.
  44. Rose G. (2007), Visual Methodologies. An Introduction to the Interpretation of Visual Materials, Sage Publications, London.
  45. Schneider S. M., Foot K. A. (2002), Online action in campaign 2000: An exploratory analysis of the US political Web sphere, «Journal of broadcasting & electronic media», vol. 46, n. 2.
  46. Shklovski I., Burke M., Kiesler S., Kraut R. (2008), Technology Adoption and Use in the Aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, «American Behavioral Scientist», 53, pp. 1228-1246.
  47. Strauss A., Corbin J. M. (1998), Basics of Qualitative Research: Techniques and Procedures for Developing Grounded Theory, Sage, London.
  48. Sutton J. N., Hansard B., Hewett P. (2011), Changing channels: Communicating tsunami warning information in Hawaii, «Proceedings of the 3rd International Joint Topical Meeting on Emergency Preparedness and Response, Robotics, and Remote Systems», Knoxville, Tennessee.
  49. Sutton J. N., Palen L., Shklovski I. (2008), Backchannels on the Front Lines: Emergent Uses of Social Media in the 2007 Southern California Wildfires, «Proceedings of the 5th International ISCRAM Conference», ISCRAM, Washington, DC.
  50. Tufekci Z. (2014), Big Questions for Social Media Big Data: Representativeness, Validity and Other Methodological Pitfalls, «ICWSM ‘14: Proceedings of the 8th International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media».
  51. Vieweg S., Hughes A. L., Starbird K., Palen L. (2010), Microblogging During Two Natural Hazards Events: What Twitter May Contribute to Situational Awareness, «Proceedings of the ACM conference on Computer Human Interaction (CHI)».
  52. Zuliani A. (2008), Indagine sulla percezione del rischio nei cittadini dell’area di Marghera, «PdE», n. 4.

Giovanni Boccia Artieri, Laura Gemini, Manolo Farci, Elisabetta Zurovac, Immagini per il presente. L’evento catastrofico nei Twitter online (visual) data in "SOCIOLOGIA DELLA COMUNICAZIONE " 49/2015, pp 55-82, DOI: 10.3280/SC2015-049005