Big Data in a Crisis? Creating Social Media Datasets for Crisis Management Research

A growing body of research in the area of information systems for crisis management is based on data from social media. After almost every larger disaster studies emerge with the focus on the specific use of social media. Much of this research is based on Twitter data, due to the ease of access of this (mainly public) data, compared to (more closed) data, such as Facebook or Google+. Based on the experience gained from a research project on social media in emergencies and our task to collect social media data sets for other partners, we present the design and evaluation of a graphical user interface that supports those stakeholders (such as emergency services or researchers) that are interested in creating social media datasets for further crisis management research. We do not specifically focus on the analysis of social media data. Rather we aim to support the gathering process and how actors without sophisticated technical skills can be supported to get what they want and especially need: relevant social media data. Within this article, we present a practice-oriented approach and implications for designing tools that support the collection of social media data as well as future work.