Tweet in Unison? Examining Content Coordination and Social Media Engagement during Disasters

Disaster relief organizations (DROs) utilize social media to provide information rapidly and broadly. Many DROs post social media content via multiple accounts within a single platform. Each account represents a distinct operational entity (e.g., national headquarters, local branch) and is managed independently. A natural question is whether this strategy is more effective vs. a strategy where accounts belonging to the same DRO produce content in unison. Our study aims to answer this question by examining how the agreement of content creation decisions (e.g., targeted audience) across a DRO’s accounts leads to a spillover effect onto engagement. Using Twitter data collected in partnership with the Canadian Red Cross, we show that engagement experiences a negative spillover effect when accounts under the same DRO make identical content creation decisions. Interestingly, this spillover is asymmetric between accounts that represent entities situated higher vs. lower in a DRO's organizational hierarchy. We find that the spillover effect is more negative for accounts held by local-level entities of lower rank than national-level entities of higher rank. Moreover, our results reveal that engagement is more adversely affected by the agreement of content creation decisions in the immediate aftermath of a disaster than later on. Our findings provide actionable guidelines for DROs’ internal coordination of content production and, thereby, help DROs better deliver information to those that need it during disasters