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Sense-Giving Strategies of Media Organisations in Social Media Disaster Communication: Findings from Hurricane Harvey

Media organisations are essential communication stakeholders in social media disaster communication during extreme events. They perform gatekeeper and amplification roles which are crucial for collective sense-making processes. In that capacity, media organisations distribute information through social media, use it as a source of information, and share such information across different channels. Yet, little is known about the role of media organisations on social media as supposed sense-givers to effectively support the creation of mutual sense. This study investigates the communication strategies of media organisations in extreme events. A Twitter dataset consisting of 9,414,463 postings was collected during Hurricane Harvey in 2017. Social network and content analysis methods were applied to identify media communication approaches. Three different sense-giving strategies could be identified: retweeting of local in-house outlets; bound amplification of messages of individual to the organisation associated journalists; and open message amplification.