Mediating Design Claims
The Social Media and Housing Disaster of the 2017 Halabja Earthquake
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21738420 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Shawhin Roudbari (0000-0003-1964-7069, University of Colorado Boulder, corresponding author), Mehdi P Heris (0000-0002-4418-5030, University of Denver), Mehdi Heris (Postdoctoral Fellow, College of Architecture and Planning, Univ. of Colorado Denver, Denver, CO 80202), Manouchehr Hakhamaneshi (California State University, East Bay), Shideh Dashti (0000-0002-4391-2574, University of Colorado Boulder) |
| Year | 2020 |
| Volume | 21 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Publication date | 2020-05-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Natural Hazards Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1527-6988 • E-ISSN: 1527-6996 |
| Publisher | American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1061/(asce)nh.1527-6996.0000352 |
| OpenAlex | W3005814191 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 14 |
In disasters, social media offers a platform for sharing vital information between affected communities, responders, journalists, designers, planners, and policy makers. In some cases, however, social media seeds contentious political and professional debates. The social media discussions that proliferated around the damage at the Maskan-e Mehr social housing site in Iran immediately following the Halabja Earthquake that struck at the Iran-Iraq border on November 12, 2017, became the center of heated design and policy controversy. This paper analyzed the uses, misuses, and politicization of design expertise. Social media content across three platforms was analyzed and compared with state-of-the-art engineering and planning knowledge. The study found that design experts have active and passive roles in the politicization of disasters. Examples were provided of ways that designers politicize discourse around disasters in both public and political spheres through social media. The impact of their social media engagement in contentious politics and high-level policy was brought to light. The authors suggest an expanded role for design experts and expertise in post-disaster political engagement
Business · Civil engineering · Economic growth · Economics · Emergency management · Forensic engineering · Seismic hazard · Social media · Urban seismic risk · World Wide Web · Computer Science · Disaster Management and Resilience · Engineering · Public Relations and Crisis Communication
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |