Persistence of activity on Twitter triggered by a natural disaster: A data analysis

TL;DR

This paper analyzes Twitter activity following the 2011 Great East Japan earthquake, revealing patterns of user engagement and inactivity over a week through data analysis.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of Twitter user activity and inactivity patterns in response to a major natural disaster, based on a complete dataset.

Findings

Users showed increased activity immediately after the earthquake.

Some users became inactive in the long-term.

Activity patterns reflect public reaction to the disaster.

Abstract

In this note, we list the results of a simple analysis of a Twitter dataset: the complete dataset of Japanese tweets in the 1-week period after the Great East Japan earthquake, which occurred on March 11, 2011. Our data analysis shows how people reacted to the earthquake on Twitter and how some users went inactive in the long-term.