Temporal issues

Temporal issues have a significant role in both the disaster management and news-production contexts. In order to minimise losses and overcome the disaster, emergency response is initiated as soon as possible. Therefore, time

limits at the initial stage of the emergencies drive the C&C crews to seek answers to questions such as “what is the type of the incident?” and “where is it?” The content of the information is not rich at the initial stages. Conversely, at the initial stage of breaking news, the correspondent only seeks answers to “what and where?” questions in order to line up the breaking news to the subscribers.

After the initial actions are taken, such as dispatching the pioneering emergency teams to the incident site and line up breaking news on TV or online news portals, uncertainty triggers additional information needs. Information needs arise due to the need for detailing the situation regarding the incident or the content of the news. Additional information-seeking actions facilitate the comprehension of the situation. Information needs rise according to the characteristics of the operating environment and tasks at hand (Byström, 2007).

Emergency responders cannot wait until all the relevant information is gathered by the C&C centre. The results become catastrophic if response is late. For instance, the number of deaths and potential hazards to vulnerable groups will increase. Waiting to gather all relevant information about an event results in losing the advantage of being pioneering in disseminating breaking news.

High time pressure forces the emergency and news staff to limit the information content at the initial stage in both emergency response and breaking news situations. However, additional information actions are taken to gather more relevant information. Gathered information is continuously shared with the relevant teams, which are operating at the incident site or en route to the incident site. This strategy has two advantages: to initiate the response as early as possible, and to avoid information overload through sharing relevant information with relevant emergency teams. Similar to the discourse of Wittenbaum and colleagues, as presented in Section 2.4.3, it is a motivated information-sharing process, which considers the teams’ task goals before sharing information (Wittenbaum et al., 2004). Motivated information sharing considers what to share, how to share, and with whom to share in

order to avoid information overload and shorten the time spent on information processing. Emergency response teams need information at the right time and at the right place (Bao and Bouthillier, 2007). In the news- production context, after the initial breaking news text is disseminated, additional information is needed to detail and interpret the news in order to enrich the news content.

If emergency responders cannot make sense of the new conditions, cannot match them with their past experiences (Klein, 1998) and face uncertainty at any stage of the emergency response, they seek new relevant information and have to find it in little time. In this situation, emergency responders turn to other teams operating at the incident site to communicate the new conditions and potential solutions or turn to the C&C centre to seek information in order to hedge the uncertainty arising out of the changing conditions (please see the feedback loop at Figure 12). For instance, while Fire Crews were supressing a fire at a plastics factory, the weather conditions started to threaten the fire crews (IDM 08). The wind changed direction and the new condition became dangerous for the responders and the people living around. The fire crews had already ensured the safety of the chemical tanks; however, the wind caused the fire to spread and penetrate the tanks. Therefore, the responders turned to C&C to communicate the new conditions and, in turn, C&C communicated with the factory manager about the amount of explosive chemicals. At the same time, the weather forecast department shared the next hour’s weather forecast information. By doing so, the C&C crews made sense of the situation and communicated the information to the emergency responders; hence, the fire suppression tactics were changed.

Seeking and sharing in a collaborative manner enables the AKOM emergency teams to save time where time is vital for emergency response. Agency level and inter-agency level communication facilitate access to needed information in limited time (Bharosa et al., 2010; Kapucu, 2005). If the disaster is large-scale, the importance of the inter-agency level collaborative information behaviour is advantageous in decreasing losses through accessing the relevant information on time. Also, it contributes in

avoiding information overload, which is another time-consuming issue for emergency teams.

Shifting attention to a breaking news-production situation, news of the event or incident is shared with audiences mostly through the CIHAN news centre. Collaboration exists between audio-visual graphics crews, text editors and correspondents during the news dissemination process. The objective of collaboration is to gain the advantage of being a pioneer in breaking news broadcasting. Editors request news materials from the audio-visual graphics department to generate consistency in the news text, graphics and photos to allure the audience while presenting the breaking news. Graphics crews retrieve consistent materials from archives or produce them while text editors are dealing with the redaction of the news texts. This collaborative information behaviour gives temporal advantage to CIHAN through integrating information from various sources in a fast-paced manner (please see Figure 13).

In time-pressured environments, in the existing information behaviour literature, triggers of collaborative information behaviour have been categorised in four different areas: lack of domain expertise, need for immediate access to relevant information, fragmented information sources and complex task needs (Karunakaran et al., 2013; Reddy and Jansen, 2008; Reddy and Spence, 2008). The findings presented here, however, suggest that lack of domain expertise and complex task needs are a sub-set of fragmented information sources, and that these two triggers are a sub-set of the need for immediate access of relevant information (Figure 11).

Collaborative information behaviour enables emergency responders to access relevant information sources rapidly [incident site live-stream videos, weather forecast database, disaster database, disaster plans, static maps, people, traffic load, hospital slots, experts (case-based) etc.]. The organisational coordination structure of AKOM and ICT tools, used during large-scale disasters, give a temporal advantage. This advantage supports AKOM in significantly reducing the losses caused by large-scale disasters.

Figure 11 Triggers of collaborative information behaviour (adapted from Karunakaran et al., 2013; Reddy and Jansen, 2008)

Time pressure prevents emergency responders from filling the information gaps after they make sense of the situation (Figure 12 Collaborative information behaviour in the AKOM context). Time spent in seeking information will result in a late response. Conversely, response without adequate information will result in low sense-making of the situation. In both cases, this could increase the losses arising out of the emergency. This problematic situation, however, is encountered in almost every disaster. To overcome the time pressure barrier for effective emergency response, inter- agency or agency level collaborative information behaviour is an advantage in gathering relevant information from various sources through the information-processing actions of different staff and institutions, as discussed in the activity systems and data analysis chapter (see Chapter 4). According to the research findings, hedging the time barrier via collaboration echoes the existing literature (Karunakaran et al., 2013; Reddy and Jansen, 2008; Sonnenwald et al., 2008; Sonnenwald, 2006)

As interpretation of the CIHAN case findings indicates that breaking news tasks are not perceived to be as complex as AKOM’s fast-paced tasks. This is because the information to be absorbed, decision to be made and the people to be communicated categories have been rated with a lower score than the AKOM tasks. Time pressure, however, is still the main issue in accessing relevant information and in disseminating the news. For breaking news- production, the activating mechanism or trigger is the information need about

the events or incidents alone. Because of the nature of CIHAN’s tasks, there is no need to integrate the information from various sources to broadcast breaking news. Equally, it is not likely that fatal consequences take place, such as death or catastrophic hazards, except in unusual circumstances. An example can be found in broadcasting weather news that enables people to take action against the possibility of life-threatening floods. There is no need to access experts (domain) at the initial stage of breaking news. Domain expertise information and various information sources are only used during documentary or daily news production (Onal, 2008; Onal, 2007).

Parallel information-seeking by different teams exists for geographically distributed events, such as national elections. Continuous information- seeking and sharing exists among freelance correspondents, CIHAN’s local elections centre and CIHAN’s news centre. The number of freelance correspondents is high. Several correspondents are responsible for each elections venue and continuously seek balloting results and share it with CIHAN’s local elections centre. The CIHAN elections centre shares the pooled information with the CIHAN news centre and results are entered into the elections database to be presented on TV. This strategy gives a time advantage to CIHAN. Similar to an emergency response situation, CIHAN overcomes the time pressure barrier through collaborative information behaviour while broadcasting continuous breaking news about geographically distributed events.

The contrasting factor between the AKOM and CIHAN cases is the need for sense-making (Figure 13 Collaborative information behaviour in the CIHAN context). The structure of the task is already determined and correspondents’ tasks are routine in the CIHAN case. With effective collaboration, tasks become structured and only case-based alterations are needed to carry out the task quickly. Conversely, uncertainty is high at every stage of a disaster. Information needs are determined after sense-making. The tasks are ill- structured and genuine decisions need to be made in a timely manner to avoid catastrophic results. Therefore, data analysis indicates that collaboration is necessary for almost every case in the disaster management context in order

to make sense of the situation and identify its information needs in a timely manner.