Leysia Palen
Biographic Data
| ID | 3483068 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Leysia Palen |
| GIVEN NAMES | Leysia |
| FAMILY NAME | Palen |
| SIGNATURE | PALEN L |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Colorado Boulder |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-3903-8041 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 18 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 49 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 17 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1997 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
What the Rise and Fall of Twitter Revealed about Collective Behaviour in Natural Hazards Disaster Response
Introduction The golden age of social media revealed a great deal about the socio-behavioural phenomena of online activity during disaster events arising from natural hazards. The period from 2007 to 2012, when Twitter was new, provided insight into how members of the public—the informal response—naturally and collectively behaved when online social convergence was possible (Palen and Liu). For example, the now-pervasive “hashtag” was a user-driv…
The Social Convergence of Information Disorder: Discovery and Analysis of the “Fertile Ground” of Covid-19 Vaccine Hesitancy
Anti-vaccine advocates have long engaged in a harmful and baseless campaign that ties infertility to vaccines. Preliminary analysis of a large, real-time data collection of Twitter posts that filtered for COVID-19 vaccine and fertility content revealed a surprising moment when, after the vaccines rolled out, anti-vaccine advocates made a new tie to menstrual health not previously seen in anti-vaccine advocacy. We traced the tie to a co-opting of …
Can’t think of anything more to do”: Public displays of power, privilege, and surrender in social media disaster monologues
Disaster events – which can arise from meteorologic, geologic, technologic, or biologic hazards – have long served as sites to investigate socio-behavioral phenomena. Their disruption to and suspen
Achieving Accuracy through Ambiguity: The Interactivity of Risk Communication in Severe Weather Events
Risks associated with natural hazards such as hurricanes are increasingly communicated on social media. For hurricane risk communication, visual information products—graphics—generated by meteorologists and scientists at weather agencies portray forecasts and atmospheric conditions and are offered to parsimoniously convey predictions of severe storms. This research considers risk interactivity by examining a particular hurricane graphic which has…
“Sometimes da #beachlife ain't always da wave”: Understanding People’s Evolving Hurricane Risk Communication, Risk Assessments, and Responses Using Twitter Narratives
This article investigates the dynamic ways that people communicate, assess, and respond as a weather threat evolves. It uses social media data, which offer unique records of what people convey about their real-world risk contexts. Twitter narratives from 53 people who were in a mandatory evacuation zone in a New York City neighborhood during Hurricane Sandy in 2012 were qualitatively analyzed. The study provides rich insight into the complex, dyn…
Safety, sensemaking, and solidarity
On July 22, 2011, at 15:26, a radical right-wing Islamophobe, Anders Behring Breivik, detonated a bomb in the city center of Oslo, Norway, and then killed 69 people and wounded 60 others before the police were able to arrest him on the island of Utøya. This chapter analyzes anonymized mobile phone traffic data in Oslo and around Norway to understand Norwegian mobile phone communication behaviors and see if and how people activated their social ne…
Information science at CU Boulder
opinion Free Access Share on Information science at CU Boulder Authors: Casey Fiesler View Profile , William Aspray View Profile , Lecia Barker View Profile , Jed Brubaker View Profile , Laura Devendorf View Profile , Brian Keegan View Profile , Leysia Palen View Profile , Michael Paul View Profile , Danielle Szafir View Profile , Ricarose Roque View Profile , Rick Robinson View Profile , Amy Voida View Profile , Stephen Voida View Profile Author…
"Voluntweeters": Self-Organizing by Digital Volunteers in Times of Crisis
This empirical study of "digital volunteers" in the aftermath of the January 12, 2010 Haiti earthquake describes their behaviors and mechanisms of self-organizing in the information space of a microblogging environment, where collaborators were newly found and distributed across continents. The paper explores the motivations, resources, activities and products of digital volunteers. It describes how seemingly small features of the technical envir…
Supporting “Everyday Analysts” in Safety- and Time-Critical Situations
The need for quick, timely, and accurate information is critical in emergency events. During mass emergencies, people assemble information from both official and unofficial sources. As digital access expands, people will increasingly incorporate information from digital sources into decision making and assess it against the local circumstances they experience. If we extrapolate what such behavior means for the future, we can see that information …
Microblogging during two natural hazards events: What Twitter May Contribute to Situational Awareness
We analyze microblog posts generated during two recent, concurrent emergency events in North America via Twitter, a popular microblogging service. We focus on communications broadcast by people who were "on the ground" during the Oklahoma Grassfires of April 2009 and the Red River Floods that occurred in March and April 2009, and identify information that may contribute to enhancing situational awareness (SA). This work aims to inform next steps …
The New Cartographers: Crisis Map Mashups and the Emergence of Neogeographic Practice
Crisis situations are ripe for expansion of the neogeographer population and skill set. We qualitatively examine the design and creation of crisis map mashups to describe emergent neogeographic practices in this particular domain. We analyze the circumstances that led to their creation, data selection, and design choices vis-à-vis spatial and temporal information representation. We then discuss the implications of emergent neogeographic practice …
Twitter adoption and use in mass convergence and emergency events
This paper offers a descriptive account of Twitter (a microblogging service) across four high-profile, mass convergence events - two emergency and two national security. We statistically examine how Twitter is being used surrounding these events, and compare and contrast how that behaviour is different from more general Twitter use. Our findings suggest that Twitter messages sent during these types of events contain more displays of information b…
Crisis in a Networked World: Features of Computer-Mediated Communication in the April 16, 2007, Virginia Tech Event
Crises and disasters have micro and macro social arrangements that differ from routine situations, as the field of disaster studies has described over its 100-year history. With increasingly pervasive information and communications technology and a changing political arena where terrorism is perceived as a major threat, the attention to crisis is high. Some of these new features of social life have created changes in disaster response that we are…
Finding community through information and communication technology in disaster response
Disasters affect not only the welfare of individuals and family groups, but also the well-being of communities, and can serve as a catalyst for innovative uses of information and communication technology (ICT). In this paper, we present evidence of ICT use for re-orientation toward the community and for the production of public goods in the form of information dissemination during disasters. Results from this study of information seeking practice…
Of Coffee Shops and Parking Lots: Considering Matters of Space and Place in the Use of Public Wi-Fi
The Social Production of Heritage through Cross-media Interaction: Making Place for Place-making
The living relationship between intangible and tangible forms of heritage, as well as natural and cultural heritage, is a situated one, always in place. Information and communications technology (ICT) is opening up new ways of experiencing and thinking about heritage by allowing for cross‐media interaction. By combining different media and technologies, cross‐media interaction supports the social production of heritage and creates ‘infrastructure…
The Inside Text
Groupware adoption and adaptation: Studies of Successful Use
No abstract available
Crisis in a Networked World: Features of Computer-Mediated Communication in the April 16, 2007, Virginia Tech Event
Crises and disasters have micro and macro social arrangements that differ from routine situations, as the field of disaster studies has described over its 100-year history. With increasingly pervasive information and communications technology and a changing political arena where terrorism is perceived as a major threat, the attention to crisis is high. Some of these new features of social life have created changes in disaster response that we are…
The New Cartographers: Crisis Map Mashups and the Emergence of Neogeographic Practice
Crisis situations are ripe for expansion of the neogeographer population and skill set. We qualitatively examine the design and creation of crisis map mashups to describe emergent neogeographic practices in this particular domain. We analyze the circumstances that led to their creation, data selection, and design choices vis-à-vis spatial and temporal information representation. We then discuss the implications of emergent neogeographic practice …
The Social Production of Heritage through Cross-media Interaction: Making Place for Place-making
The living relationship between intangible and tangible forms of heritage, as well as natural and cultural heritage, is a situated one, always in place. Information and communications technology (ICT) is opening up new ways of experiencing and thinking about heritage by allowing for cross‐media interaction. By combining different media and technologies, cross‐media interaction supports the social production of heritage and creates ‘infrastructure…
Supporting “Everyday Analysts” in Safety- and Time-Critical Situations
The need for quick, timely, and accurate information is critical in emergency events. During mass emergencies, people assemble information from both official and unofficial sources. As digital access expands, people will increasingly incorporate information from digital sources into decision making and assess it against the local circumstances they experience. If we extrapolate what such behavior means for the future, we can see that information …
Groupware adoption and adaptation: Studies of Successful Use
No abstract available
The Inside Text
Finding community through information and communication technology in disaster response
Disasters affect not only the welfare of individuals and family groups, but also the well-being of communities, and can serve as a catalyst for innovative uses of information and communication technology (ICT). In this paper, we present evidence of ICT use for re-orientation toward the community and for the production of public goods in the form of information dissemination during disasters. Results from this study of information seeking practice…
Of Coffee Shops and Parking Lots: Considering Matters of Space and Place in the Use of Public Wi-Fi
The Social Production of Heritage through Cross-media Interaction: Making Place for Place-making
The living relationship between intangible and tangible forms of heritage, as well as natural and cultural heritage, is a situated one, always in place. Information and communications technology (ICT) is opening up new ways of experiencing and thinking about heritage by allowing for cross‐media interaction. By combining different media and technologies, cross‐media interaction supports the social production of heritage and creates ‘infrastructure…
Twitter adoption and use in mass convergence and emergency events
This paper offers a descriptive account of Twitter (a microblogging service) across four high-profile, mass convergence events - two emergency and two national security. We statistically examine how Twitter is being used surrounding these events, and compare and contrast how that behaviour is different from more general Twitter use. Our findings suggest that Twitter messages sent during these types of events contain more displays of information b…
Crisis in a Networked World: Features of Computer-Mediated Communication in the April 16, 2007, Virginia Tech Event
Crises and disasters have micro and macro social arrangements that differ from routine situations, as the field of disaster studies has described over its 100-year history. With increasingly pervasive information and communications technology and a changing political arena where terrorism is perceived as a major threat, the attention to crisis is high. Some of these new features of social life have created changes in disaster response that we are…
Microblogging during two natural hazards events: What Twitter May Contribute to Situational Awareness
We analyze microblog posts generated during two recent, concurrent emergency events in North America via Twitter, a popular microblogging service. We focus on communications broadcast by people who were "on the ground" during the Oklahoma Grassfires of April 2009 and the Red River Floods that occurred in March and April 2009, and identify information that may contribute to enhancing situational awareness (SA). This work aims to inform next steps …
The New Cartographers: Crisis Map Mashups and the Emergence of Neogeographic Practice
Crisis situations are ripe for expansion of the neogeographer population and skill set. We qualitatively examine the design and creation of crisis map mashups to describe emergent neogeographic practices in this particular domain. We analyze the circumstances that led to their creation, data selection, and design choices vis-à-vis spatial and temporal information representation. We then discuss the implications of emergent neogeographic practice …
"Voluntweeters": Self-Organizing by Digital Volunteers in Times of Crisis
This empirical study of "digital volunteers" in the aftermath of the January 12, 2010 Haiti earthquake describes their behaviors and mechanisms of self-organizing in the information space of a microblogging environment, where collaborators were newly found and distributed across continents. The paper explores the motivations, resources, activities and products of digital volunteers. It describes how seemingly small features of the technical envir…
Supporting “Everyday Analysts” in Safety- and Time-Critical Situations
The need for quick, timely, and accurate information is critical in emergency events. During mass emergencies, people assemble information from both official and unofficial sources. As digital access expands, people will increasingly incorporate information from digital sources into decision making and assess it against the local circumstances they experience. If we extrapolate what such behavior means for the future, we can see that information …
Information science at CU Boulder
opinion Free Access Share on Information science at CU Boulder Authors: Casey Fiesler View Profile , William Aspray View Profile , Lecia Barker View Profile , Jed Brubaker View Profile , Laura Devendorf View Profile , Brian Keegan View Profile , Leysia Palen View Profile , Michael Paul View Profile , Danielle Szafir View Profile , Ricarose Roque View Profile , Rick Robinson View Profile , Amy Voida View Profile , Stephen Voida View Profile Author…
“Sometimes da #beachlife ain't always da wave”: Understanding People’s Evolving Hurricane Risk Communication, Risk Assessments, and Responses Using Twitter Narratives
This article investigates the dynamic ways that people communicate, assess, and respond as a weather threat evolves. It uses social media data, which offer unique records of what people convey about their real-world risk contexts. Twitter narratives from 53 people who were in a mandatory evacuation zone in a New York City neighborhood during Hurricane Sandy in 2012 were qualitatively analyzed. The study provides rich insight into the complex, dyn…
Safety, sensemaking, and solidarity
On July 22, 2011, at 15:26, a radical right-wing Islamophobe, Anders Behring Breivik, detonated a bomb in the city center of Oslo, Norway, and then killed 69 people and wounded 60 others before the police were able to arrest him on the island of Utøya. This chapter analyzes anonymized mobile phone traffic data in Oslo and around Norway to understand Norwegian mobile phone communication behaviors and see if and how people activated their social ne…
Achieving Accuracy through Ambiguity: The Interactivity of Risk Communication in Severe Weather Events
Risks associated with natural hazards such as hurricanes are increasingly communicated on social media. For hurricane risk communication, visual information products—graphics—generated by meteorologists and scientists at weather agencies portray forecasts and atmospheric conditions and are offered to parsimoniously convey predictions of severe storms. This research considers risk interactivity by examining a particular hurricane graphic which has…
Can’t think of anything more to do”: Public displays of power, privilege, and surrender in social media disaster monologues
Disaster events – which can arise from meteorologic, geologic, technologic, or biologic hazards – have long served as sites to investigate socio-behavioral phenomena. Their disruption to and suspen
The Social Convergence of Information Disorder: Discovery and Analysis of the “Fertile Ground” of Covid-19 Vaccine Hesitancy
Anti-vaccine advocates have long engaged in a harmful and baseless campaign that ties infertility to vaccines. Preliminary analysis of a large, real-time data collection of Twitter posts that filtered for COVID-19 vaccine and fertility content revealed a surprising moment when, after the vaccines rolled out, anti-vaccine advocates made a new tie to menstrual health not previously seen in anti-vaccine advocacy. We traced the tie to a co-opting of …
What the Rise and Fall of Twitter Revealed about Collective Behaviour in Natural Hazards Disaster Response
Introduction The golden age of social media revealed a great deal about the socio-behavioural phenomena of online activity during disaster events arising from natural hazards. The period from 2007 to 2012, when Twitter was new, provided insight into how members of the public—the informal response—naturally and collectively behaved when online social convergence was possible (Palen and Liu). For example, the now-pervasive “hashtag” was a user-driv…
Computer Science (15 works) · Political science (9 works) · Public Relations and Crisis Communication (9 works) · Social media (8 works) · World Wide Web (8 works) · Business (7 works) · Disaster Management and Resilience (7 works) · Psychology (7 works) · Data science (5 works) · Social Psychology (5 works)