With its rising use in disaster management, social media plays a bigger role than traditional media in facilitating the adaptation of emergency management in China. Based on an analysis of the response system that emerged following the April 20, 2013 Ya’an Earthquake in Lushan County, we address five questions. First, what roles do social media play in emergency management in China? Second, how do these roles contribute to the adaptation of emergency management policies and practices to the threat of hazards in China? Third, why are social media able to facilitate the adaptation of emergency management functions more quickly than traditional means of disseminating and managing information?  Fourth, what are the drawbacks in the use of social media in the Lushan Earthquake in emergency management? Fifth, how do we improve the performance of social media in emergency management in the future in China? 

This paper employs a theoretical framework drawn from prior research on complex adaptive systems in analyzing the rapid mobilization of multi-organizational response operations following the Ya’an Earthquake. We base this analysis on data collected in China from two social media sites, and coded by students at Nanjing University and validated by researchers at the Center for Disaster Management (CDM), University of Pittsburgh. The data were extracted immediately after the earthquake on April 20, 2013 and downloaded daily for three weeks, to May 11, 2013. This data collection process created a daily record of disaster operations as an empirical basis for content analysis to identify the number of organizations participating in response operations, the interactions among them, and the types of transactions they performed. The data were first analyzed by a team of Chinese graduate students at Nanjing University, and then checked and translated by bilingual researchers at the CDM, University of Pittsburgh. The validated data were further analyzed using network analysis to identify the centrality measures for the interacting groups. Based on findings from the network analysis, policy recommendations are offered to increase adaptation in emergency management systems in the changing, sociotechnical context of China.

The emergency management system in China has changed significantly since its perceived failure in the SARS epidemic in 2003. These intervening years have coincided with the rapid adoption of information technologies in China, and increased usage of cell phones and access to the internet by the citizenry. The change in communications technologies has facilitated the rapid spread of information among the citizenry, and altered relationships between citizens and governmental agencies at the local level.  This change is markedly evident in urgent situations that require rapid response, such as earthquakes. This analysis documents the changing context of actions in response to hazards at the community level, and indicates a pattern of rapidly evolving inter-organizational practice among levels of government in China.  This research results from a collaborative relationship developed by the School of Government, Nanjing University and the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, University of Pittsburgh, initiated following the Wenchuan Earthquake of May 8, 2008.