Global online social response to a natural disaster and its influencing factors: a case study of Typhoon Haiyan

Abstract The global public interest in a natural disaster event will help disaster-stricken areas obtain post-disaster international relief and assistance. However, knowledge gaps still exist in regard to global online social responses and their socioeconomic influencing factors. We used big social media data regarding the 2013 Super Typhoon Haiyan to explore global online social responses and to investigate the socioeconomic factors influencing this behavior based on the Geographical Detector (Geodetector) model and geographically weighted regression (GWR) model. The results show that global online social responses have little relation with geographical distance and follow the disaster’s development. In addition to the most response in the disaster-affected countries, Western countries and neighboring countries have more online social response to the disaster than other regions. Among all the influencing factors, economic factors have the strongest effect on public interest both before and after the typhoon’s landfall. Our findings indicate that online social users are of great potential for volunteers and donors.