Social media, vulnerability, and risk perception: three main points for geological disaster management

Social media have the potential to significantly influence the disaster risk understanding of natural events of climatic and geological origin, e.g., earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and landslides. Given their considerable diffusion, nowadays they represent a valid support during emergency management processes thanks to their multiple uses in all the different phases of the disaster cycle. The presented results have been achieved carrying out a literature review in the framework of the European H2020 project LINKS ('Strengthening links between technologies and society for European disaster resilience') which aims to strengthen the link between technology and society to improve resilience in four European countries associated with five different risk scenarios. The aim of this research was to investigate how social media influence and impact vulnerability and risk perception and how the increased use of social media as a communication tool during a disaster is shaped by the way the two concepts interact and are conceptualised.