Wildfire and Social Media: Examining Wildfire Visual Communication Through Tweets

The rise of social media has provided outlets where the public can interreact and share information in efficient and accessible ways, especially during natural disasters. However, there is little known about the way that people are communicating about wildfires on social media, primarily X (formerly twitter). This study aims to answer two questions (1) how do Twitter users in the Wildland Urban Interface react (through text) to various types of wildfire visual content? and (2) how does User Generated Content engagement compare to that of official government agencies or other organizations? Tweets were collected from three communities in California, New Mexico, and Idaho that experienced wildfire in 2022. Images and related text were sorted using two codebooks, and a chi-square test of independence was conducted to analyze image and text relationships. Engagement was analyzed using a two-sample t-test. Results highlight the importance of visual components when communicating about wildfire, and the current state of non-User Generated Content engagement.