Use of social media for information seeking and sharing during floods in rural Sarawak

Abstract

Purpose: This study aims to examine the information acquired and shared by floods victims in Sarawak, Malaysia, and the individuals’ perception of social media information quality and awareness of social media emergency services.

Design/methodology/approach: The research data were gathered from 118 victims in two flood-ravaged villages with a researcher-administered questionnaire survey. Meanwhile, the research instrument was adopted from Reuter and Spielhofer (2017).

Findings: Resultantly, 93% of the respondents employed social media for information-seeking and sharing during floods. For example, Facebook was the most extensively employed digital platform. The most highly sought and exchanged information involved eyewitness pictures or videos, road or traffic conditions and weather conditions or warnings. Although social media information quality reflected faster obtainability, higher accessibility and enriched content, respondents’ viewpoints of social media information quality regarding accuracy and reliability proved negative. Notably, over half of the respondents were unaware of the two social media emergency services: Twitter Alerts and Facebook Safety Check.

Originality/value: This study denoted one of the rare empirical works that explored social media usage for information-seeking and sharing by the flood victims in Sarawak based on the boundary object perspective.