Under the threat of global climate change, people are confronted with increasingly frequent natural disasters and various risks. In the past, people used to rely on the information provided by the experts and mass media. However, as the magnitudes of disasters become more extreme and less predictable, such an establishment is apparently becoming ineffective and unreliable. Facing the new challenges in communicating uncertainty during a disaster, how does the society adapt? In the disastrous floods brought by Typhoon Morakot in Taiwan, August 2009, we saw the emergence of a new form of bottom-up communication facilitated by the new communication technologies and social media. This new form became the backchannel during this disaster. The participants also developed several new ways to filter the magnitudes of information toward accuracy through collective gate-watching.
中文關鍵詞
不確定性、正確性、災難傳播、社交媒體、科學傳播、備援頻道
英文關鍵詞
uncertainty, accuracy, disaster communication, social media, science communication, backchannel,