Influence of content and creator characteristics on sharing disaster-related information on social media

Identifying the key factors of the disaster-related information propagation process can provide decision support for disaster management. This study characterizes the effects of content types, location, and social capital of social media users on the virality of disaster-related information. We found through the Weibo dataset of the Yiliang earthquake that the virality of different types of information can vary on the basis of the social capital of users who post the information. This study fills the current research gaps by examining the individual and joint effects of the content and creator characteristics on the virality of disaster-related information.