Disaster Data Assemblages: Five Perspectives on Social Media and Communities in Response and Recovery

In this paper I bring together inter-disciplinary concerns from emergency management, crisis informatics and media studies to offer five critical perspectives on social media in disaster response and recovery. I argue social media become part of 'disaster data assemblages' that have heterogeneous economic, political, institutional and technological properties. These assemblages emerge from time-critical situation awareness procedures and through the help of volunteer technical communities. They have import for big data knowledge and data ethics, and continue to influence disaster recoveries in subtle ways. However, epistemological problems arise when relating the response and recovery phases of a disaster data assemblage. I considering new ways to think about social and mobile media in recovery that go beyond both the language of data, and the currently popular focus on 'communities of practice'.