<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">

<p>Digital connectivity enables ordinary people to participate in the social construction of crises. This article explores the crisis responses of common people through the prism of ritual communication in the case of the 2017 Stockholm terror attack. The ritual approach has helped to produce a nuanced understanding of the social functions of patterned and performative communication in crises and conflicts. However, the crisis communication of ordinary people has remained understudied from the viewpoint of ritualisation. Drawing from digital media ethnography and content analysis of a Twitter feed created around the hashtag #openstockholm, it is claimed that the ritualisation of crisis responses illustrates the active agency of ordinary people and contributes to ephemeral social cohesion.</p>
</abstract>

Digital connectivity enables ordinary people to participate in the social construction of crises. This article explores the crisis responses of common people through the prism of ritual communication in the case of the 2017 Stockholm terror attack. The ritual approach has helped to produce a nuanced understanding of the social functions of patterned and performative communication in crises and conflicts. However, the crisis communication of ordinary people has remained understudied from the viewpoint of ritualisation. Drawing from digital media ethnography and content analysis of a Twitter feed created around the hashtag #openstockholm, it is claimed that the ritualisation of crisis responses illustrates the active agency of ordinary people and contributes to ephemeral social cohesion.

Ritualisation of Crisis Communication: Crowd-enabled responses to the Stockholm terror attack on Twitter

Nordicom Review

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Digital connectivity enables ordinary people to participate in the social construction of crises. This article explores the crisis responses of common people...

	Theme	Explanation
1.	Shelter	Offering a safe place to stay and transportation
2.	Pride	Expressions of pride
3.	Sharing info #	Sharing information about #openstockholm
4.	Request for help	Asking others for a safe place to go or transportation
5.	#	Tweeting only #openstockholm (exists alone but also used for the purposes of replying to another user, forwarding a message that offers shelter and sharing a message that spreads information about #openstockholm)
6.	Shelter RT	Retweeting an offer of shelter
7.	Solidarity	Expression of solidarity
8.	Instruction	Sharing information that helps others to know what to do
9.	Comment	General comment of the event
10.	Information	Information about the ongoing event
11.	Anger	Expression of hate and anger
12.	Safety check	Telling others that the sender of the message is ok
13.	Warning	Warning people not to share their personal information online
14.	Own action	Telling others what the sender of the message is currently doing
15.	Spreading rumour	Spreading false information
16.	Refuting rumour	Refuting false information
17.	Other	Irrelevant message
18.	Not available	Tweet is not visible

Ritualisation of Crisis Communication: Crowd-enabled responses to the Stockholm terror attack on Twitter

Published Online: Feb 19, 2019

Page range: 105 - 120

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/nor-2019-0006

Keywords
crisis, ritualisation, connective action, digital media ethnography, Twitter

© 2019 Minttu Tikka, published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Figure 1

Themes of the coding scheme

Ritualisation of Crisis Communication: Crowd-enabled responses to the Stockholm terror attack on Twitter

Published Online: Feb 19, 2019

Page range: 105 - 120

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/nor-2019-0006

Keywordscrisis, ritualisation, connective action, digital media ethnography, Twitter

© 2019 Minttu Tikka, published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Figure 1

Themes of the coding scheme

Keywords
crisis, ritualisation, connective action, digital media ethnography, Twitter