Mindful or mindless? How and why virtual communities fail to contain information pollution across different disasters

People visit virtual communities to find trusted information (i.e. verifiable, accurate and reliable information) during disasters. Virtual communities are open spaces where people interact and share information. However, virtual communities often suffer from information pollution (including too much information and false or contradictory information) which decreases peoples’ ability to find trusted information. Oddly, some virtual communities will develop useful practices for combatting information pollution during one disaster, but subsequently fail to effectively employ the same practices or adapt them in subsequent disasters. We conducted a longitudinal, exploratory cross-case study to better understand how and why this occurs. Using the lenses of organisational mindfulness/mindlessness, we find three factors: (i) organisational forgetting, (ii) blaming, and (iii) social fracturing that may cause virtual communities to act mindlessly and prevent them from containing information pollution during a disaster. Practically, virtual communities may avoid mindlessness by (i) codifying past successful practices and adapting them, (ii) monitoring the rhetoric of blame and building trust in authorities, and (iii) avoiding inconsequential debates and promoting shared values.