Abstract:

Twitter data was acquired from a service provider to investigate the role of social media during and after the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill. In particular, historical Twitter data was accessed using a geospatial query tool. The query rules were built with a set of keywords and filtered by date. Using a combination of human coding and machine-learning processes, the twitter datasets were examined to get insights into online communications related to the oil spill. This dataset contains the description about the data acquisition process, the search strategy and keywords, and the dates of the historical Twitter datasets related to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, along with a detailed summary of the methodology being used for data analysis.

Suggested Citation:

Beedasy, Jaishree, Thomas Chandler, Tim Slack, Antonia Samur-Zuniga. 2019. Understanding resilience attributes for children, youth, and communities in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill study, social media component. Distributed by: GRIIDC, Harte Research Institute, Texas A&M University–Corpus Christi. doi:10.7266/n7-x639-n053

Publications:

Beedasy, J., Samur Zúñiga, A. F., Chandler, T., & Slack, T. (2020). Online community discourse during the Deepwater Horizon oil spill: an analysis of Twitter interactions. International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, 51, 101870. doi:10.1016/j.ijdrr.2020.101870

Purpose:

As part of the project's mixed-methods approach, the purpose of this effort is to get a better understanding of topics related to the oil spill that were trending on social media, in this case Twitter, across time and to get insights into the communications related to disaster response, online networking and support, impact on public health, economy and the environment. The overall objectives of the project include: Understanding the public health and social impacts of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill with a focus on children and their families and identifying attributes of children and families associated with resilience to negative disaster impacts, as well as attributes of children and families associated with vulnerability to negative disaster impacts.

Data Parameters and Units:

Tweets related to the oil spill. Topics trending on Twitter during and after the spill.

Methods:

For the year 2010 relevant postings for a period of four months were searched, from the day of the explosion on April 20, 2010, to August 20, 2010. The tweets on this specific oil spill incident had started to wind down around mid-August. For the years following the oil spill event from 2011 until 2016, there were small spikes in content related to oil spills around the anniversary date in April in almost every year, and therefore tweets from April 1 to May 10 were retrieved.

Individual Files: