Social Media Adoption in Urban and Rural Flood Risk Management: Evidence from Nebraska’s 2019 Flood-Affected Regions

Flooding is one of the most devastating natural hazards, causing significant economic losses and threatening public safety. While social media has emerged as a powerful tool for disaster communication, its effectiveness in rural flood risk management remains underexplored. This study evaluates the role of social media in disseminating flood-related information and engaging communities during and after 2019 Nebraska floods. This study incorporates SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) analysis method to examine how the seven core communication functions were utilized for flood risk management at the state, regional, and local levels. The findings reveal that while state agencies dominated social media engagement for flood risk communications, community level participation remained low, highlighting disparities in digital communication access and use. Facebook played the most important role in facilitating two-way communication during flood response, recovery, mitigation, and preparedness since 2019’s Nebraska flood disaster, particularly in rural communities in Nebraska. However, these interactions on Facebook largely remained surface-level, with limited comments and substantive discussion. Additionally, fundraising and volunteer coordination efforts were largely absent from social media. While state and regional agencies maintain YouTube and Twitter (called as X since July 23, 2023) accounts, their activity on these platforms was minimal, with few flood-related videos, low engagement, and almost no audience interaction. Furthermore, county and community-level agencies relied solely on Facebook, lacking official YouTube or Twitter pages.