A temporal approach to online discussion during disasters: Applying SIR infectious disease model to predict topic growth and examining effects of temporal distance

Discussions on social media during major disasters are robust and often have multiple frames of reference. Temporal perspectives, however, are still lacking in current understandings of social-mediated discussions during disasters and crises, but incorporating temporal perspectives can significantly enhance environmental scanning efforts as prescribed in the issues management framework. The purpose of the current research is twofold: to apply and validate the SIR (Susceptible-Infectious-Recovered) model to examine topics’ growth over time on social media and to understand how future orientation of social media users (an indicator of temporal distance) affects their construal of a disaster through supervised machine learning. We based our analysis on Twitter discussions during the Texas winter storm in 2021. Results of the study show great fit of the SIR model for topic growth, and that temporal distance affects users’ construal of the event in line with core predictions of construal level theory. Theoretical, methodological, and practical implications on social-mediated discussions related to climate change-induced and -intensified disasters and issues management are discussed.