TY  - JOUR
PY  - 2015//
TI  - Performance of social network sensors during Hurricane Sandy
JO  - PLoS one
A1  - Kryvasheyeu, Yury
A1  - Chen, Haohui
A1  - Moro, Esteban
A1  - Van Hentenryck, Pascal
A1  - Cebrian, Manuel
SP  - e0117288
EP  - e0117288
VL  - 10
IS  - 2
N2  - Information flow during catastrophic events is a critical aspect of disaster management. Modern communication platforms, in particular online social networks, provide an opportunity to study such flow and derive early-warning sensors, thus improving emergency preparedness and response. Performance of the social networks sensor method, based on topological and behavioral properties derived from the "friendship paradox", is studied here for over 50 million Twitter messages posted before, during, and after Hurricane Sandy. We find that differences in users' network centrality effectively translate into moderate awareness advantage (up to 26 hours); and that geo-location of users within or outside of the hurricane-affected area plays a significant role in determining the scale of such an advantage. Emotional response appears to be universal regardless of the position in the network topology, and displays characteristic, easily detectable patterns, opening a possibility to implement a simple "sentiment sensing" technique that can detect and locate disasters.<p />  <p>Language: en</p>
LA  - en
SN  - 1932-6203
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0117288
ID  - ref1
ER  -