Disaster management and social media use for decision making by humanitarian organizations

In times of a crisis, disasters or extreme events, affected people use social media solutions to share information about the situation. Hence, the use of this information for supporting humanitarian operations is becoming a valuable source to develop a real time understanding about the situation even before they arrive at the ground. From a scholarly perspective, the use of social media management during and after a disaster has hit has been researched, but no special focus has been given to the needs of humanitarian organizations and how their management phases can be supported by social media analytics in real time. In this research, we will identify the few papers that have been concerned with this topic and will apply a theoretical lens from disaster management to investigate viable areas where social media research can support humanitarian organization in the different phases of disaster response.