Networked volunteering during the 2013 Sardinian floods

The article describes how ordinary citizens used Twitter as an emergency-management tool during the heavy floods that occurred in Sardinia, Italy, in November 2013. The case study constitutes an example of digital volunteering in the aftermath of a disaster event. The article applies the connective action framework (Bennet & Segerberg, 2012) for a deeper understanding of the dynamics of self-organized disaster communication activities on social media. Utilizing a dataset of 93,091 tweets that used the hashtag #allertameteoSAR (weather alert in Sardinia), the analysis focuses on: 1) the roles and patterns of influence among the main actors; and 2) the strategies for a peer ‘curation’ and sharing of a disaster-recovery oriented communication. The article highlights the role of Twitter celebrities and engaged ordinary users as digital volunteers and explains how they succeeded in activating bottom-up disaster-relief oriented communication.