College of Communication and Information, University of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7691-2984.
J Emerg Manag. 2022;19(8):201-215. doi: 10.5055/jem.0554.
There is limited knowledge about how crises are framed on different social media platforms specifically in a non-Western cultural context. This study compares how extreme environmental crises-Hurricane Maria and haze-were framed on Twitter and Weibo. Through word-cloud, co-occurrence, and thematic analyses with Hurricane Maria-related tweets, this study identified two major frames of this crisis: a disaster frame and a political frame. Similarly, by analyzing haze-related posts on Sina Weibo, two major frames emerged: an environmental frame and a health frame. Both crises were largely framed as environmental issues rather than health risks or crises. Such framing helps shape the existence of Hurricane Maria and haze as legitimate facts. The findings also reveal that cultural variances, eg, power distance, collectivist-individualist culture, and uncertainty avoidance, impact crisis framing. This study indicates the importance of designing culture-fit messages and incorporating social media strategies in crisis communication while developing emergency management plans and adds knowledge to the limited literature on social-mediated crisis communication in different cultural contexts. Such knowledge will provide theoretical and practical implications for crisis scholars, emergency management practitioners, and policymakers.
关于危机在特定非西方文化背景下的不同社交媒体平台上是如何被构建的，我们的了解有限。本研究比较了极端环境危机——飓风玛丽亚和雾霾——在 Twitter 和微博上是如何被构建的。通过对与飓风玛丽亚相关的推文进行词云、共现和主题分析，本研究确定了这场危机的两个主要框架：灾难框架和政治框架。同样，通过分析新浪微博上与雾霾相关的帖子，也出现了两个主要框架：环境框架和健康框架。这两个危机主要被构建为环境问题，而不是健康风险或危机。这种构建有助于将飓风玛丽亚和雾霾的存在塑造为合法事实。研究结果还表明，文化差异，如权力距离、集体主义-个人主义文化和不确定性规避，会影响危机的构建。本研究表明，在制定应急管理计划的同时，在危机沟通中设计适合文化的信息和纳入社交媒体策略非常重要，这为不同文化背景下的社交媒体危机沟通的有限文献增添了知识。这些知识将为危机学者、应急管理从业者和政策制定者提供理论和实践意义。
