On April 22, 2010, two days after exploding and leaving eleven workers dead, the BP-leased Deepwater Horizon drilling rig sank into the Gulf of Mexico. The Coast Guard initially was relatively optimistic in its assessment of the consequences of the rig disaster. Within a week, however, it became increasingly clear that oil leaks caused by the rig's collapse significantly threaten the regional and national economy and natural environment. This ongoing crisis has the potential to fundamentally change the way of life in coastal communities.
Scholarship to understand the way in which individuals learn about and respond to a disaster of this magnitude is crucial. The purpose of this project is to understand the manner in which people use social networks to obtain information, making social and political decisions in the context of experiencing a major disaster, and to examine the extent to which emotional responses to disaster are structured by these networks of social communication. The intellectual merit of this project is rooted in the recognition that emotions and political knowledge, attitudes and behavior take place in social context.
The key purpose in this study is to examine the social nature of disaster response-that is, how social context influences both how individuals learn about a crisis. The investigators examine how social networks shape emotional reactions and behavioral responses to the crisis. Little research has been conducted regarding how people use social networks to respond to oil spills in particular; however, a number of studies have examined the importance of social context in other disaster related behavior. Two theoretical approaches have emerged in these studies. According to the social cohesion model, intimacy, trust, respect, and mutual regard influence the social flow of relevant information. For example, scholars who study evacuation after hurricanes have found that social ties and social structure significantly influence evacuation behavior (Perry 1979; Drabek and Stephenson 1971). Alternatively, the structural equivalence model (Huckfeldt and Sprague 1991, Burt 1987) argues that it is the pattern of social ties that is most important, not the intimacy and respect present in the relationship. In general, the structural equivalence theory is compatible with an emphasis that ties between primary groups ("weak ties") are at least as important as ties within primary groups. Despite the devastating consequences of oil spills, they are unlike other types of disasters (such as earthquakes or hurricanes) in that they do not force residents to leave their communities in the short-term. This unique crisis provides an opportunity to contrast the influence of close friends and family to the influence of similarly situated neighbors and co-workers in providing information about the disaster and influencing emotional and behavioral responses.
While substantial research has been done on the importance of social context in influencing attitudes and behaviors, that research generally does not examine the role of emotion. Emotion is almost certainly a key factor in conditioning how social context influences attitudes and responses to disaster. The political and social implications of emotion are pervasive, having been empirically linked to numerous political and social behaviors; however, little is known about the social antecedents of emotion. In catastrophic events emotions are rarely felt and displayed in isolation, rather, they should be intimately linked to the reactions of others, especially as individuals seek the solace of others to cope with these aversive events. The investigators expect that emotional reactions will be conditioned by one?s social network, as social connections are one of the primary ways to cope with disaster. They are particularly interested in contrasting the relative power of structural equivalence and social cohesion in conditioning the emotional reaction to disaster.
To examine the role of social ties in the context of a disaster, the investigators will administer a survey to a sample of respondents in two communities in coastal Louisiana. They will also interview discussants named in this survey, following a snowball procedure. Graduate and undergraduates will have an opportunity through this project to develop their research skills in the context of a problem that has significant practical relevance for their region. Despite the consequences of natural and human-caused disasters of this magnitude, research on the ways in which individuals respond is limited, particularly within the discipline of political science. As such, this research is tailored to help us better understand the ways in which social context shapes human reaction to catastrophe. Given the dynamic and unpredictable of this crisis, the results will be of interest to academic scholars, but will also have a broader impact, given their relevance to public officials and others interested in disaster response and management.
The purpose of this project is to understand the manner in which people use friends, family members, coworkers, and others to obtain information, and to make social and political decisions in the context of experiencing a major disaster like the BP oil spill, and to examine the extent to which emotional responses to disaster are structured by these networks of social communication. Very little research in the social sciences has considered social interactions when examining the human impacts of disasters of this sort, and research on socially structured emotional responses is virtually non-existent. In order to determine the social nature of disaster response we conducted an approximately twenty minute survey of 1157 people in affected communities in coastal Louisiana. The Public Policy Research Lab (PPRL), a 52 station CATI lab at Louisiana State University, collected the data in the summer of 2010. The survey includes a question asking respondents for the first names of people they talked with about the spill, and then a series of questions asking about perceptions of these named individuals. We were then able to complete 70 interviews with these named individuals as well. We find that the social networks constructed in response to an oil spill are somewhat different from networks people construct for other purposes. The people mentioned as oil spill discussants are more likely to be "other relatives," and less likely to be "close friends" than are people used to discuss politics or important problems. This result has important implications for the nature of communication during a disaster, since information exchanged with ‘weak’ ties of this sort tends to circulate more widely through the local community. We also find a pronounced negative emotional reaction to the spill, with high levels of response for angry, worried, depressed, and sad, for example. In addition, we find that emotional response to the oil spill is linked to the emotional responses of those who are named as oil spill discussants. These results may have important political implications since research has shown that emotions are integral to how voters reason about political candidates, political issues, and emotions provide the motivational impetus to engage in political behaviors, such as voting. We also find behavioral changes related to the oil spill that could have political implications as well. Individuals tend pay a great deal more attention to the news media, and were also more likely to attend community meetings and contact public officials. Each of these behaviors indicates greater engagement in the political process. Finally, we find pronounced gender differences in virtually all areas of the study. This gender gap is common in social science investigations of attitudes and behaviors, and differences in emotional reaction, efficacy, concern, and party/ideology were expected. But the extent to which men and women differ on almost all aspects of this study is striking, with differences evident even with such characteristics as attention to different media, changes in certain habitual behaviors, and the type of person named as an oil spill discussant in the first place. From a policy perspective, this indicates important nuance in terms of the political ramifications of disaster and the public sector needs to consider the unique ways in which males and females respond to catastrophic events. These findings have been presented at three conferences in the spring of 2011, The project has also served as an important tool to promote teaching, training, and learning. We have given numerous public interviews showcasing the unique characteristics of the data. Christopher Weber and Christopher Kenny were interviewed for a press release by NSF on the 13th of July 2010. The interview appeared online on the 15th. A congratulatory editorial appeared in the local paper (The Baton Rouge Advocate) on the 21st of July, and an interview describing the project and its importance appeared in the same paper on the 29th of July 2010. On the 6th of August 2010 Kate Bratton was interviewed by WAFB television in Baton Rouge. And finally, on the 9th of September 2010, we jointly gave a presentation to the Honors College at Louisiana State University. We have also used the collected data as a pedagogical tool to teach basic and advanced statistical techniques in several graduate level seminars. And finally, a graduate assistant funded by the project was able to get hands-on training in many aspects of the research process, from developing a questionnaire, to manipulating the data, to statistically analyzing the key research questions.
