Explicit Disaster Response Features in Social Media: Safety Check and Community Help Usage on Facebook during Typhoon Mangkhut

Although social media has been widely used as disaster infrastructure for information and communication, there are insufficient systematic tools to actively serve users' needs. This paper establishes the concept of EDR (Explicit Disaster Response) features as a solution and describes their potential and future directions. Facebook's Safety Check and Community Help were chosen as the objects of study since they are currently the most developed and representative EDR features. This study investigates usage of, and user experience with, Safety Check and Community Help through in-depth interviews with 15 Facebook users who encountered these features when they were activated during typhoon Mangkhut, which struck Hong Kong in September, 2018. This research reveals that the interviewees regarded Safety Check as being convenient and useful. However, they also felt that there are barriers to using both EDR features in terms of lack of detailed settings, loss of privacy, and trust of information. This study discusses implications of these findings, and offers design directions for future EDR features.