When a crisis happens, who turns to Facebook and why?

Social Media is pervasive, and today it is transforming how individuals communicate with each other and also how people now discover and share information. Regardless of genre, social media, today equate to a powerful, influential, and revolutionary model for exposing and diffusing public opinion. The Web and social media sites in particular, are an increasingly important component of crisis and emergency communication. For crisis communication practitioners to act effectively on behalf of organisations, they must monitor and track both traditional and new media sources for information and issues, and respond accordingly. This paper presents findings from an exploratory study into the use of social media during recent natural disasters in Australia, Japan and New Zealand.