What We Have Learned about the Characteristics and Differences of Disaster Information Behavior in Social Media—A Case Study of the 7.20 Henan Heavy Rain Flood Disaster

As a significant human behavior, disaster information behavior may operate as a catalyst for affecting the evolution of disaster occurrences in social-ecological systems and the sustainability of social systems. Yet little research has been carried out on this subject, particularly on the information behavior of major natural disasters. Based on the case of the 7.20 Henan heavy rain flood disaster, this study constructs an information behavior composite index from the four dimensions of temporal, spatial, content, and behavioral agents and statistically identifies and quantifies the characteristics and differences of disaster information behavior in social media. The results are as follows. (1) Disaster information behaviors have an obvious life cycle with three phases, essentially following the “formation-development-extinction” process; disaster areas, near-disaster areas, and economically and technologically developed areas exhibit higher levels of information behavior. (2) A total of 47% of the content is related to the case, while 53% is unrelated; the most related microblogs (43.88%) were about “Disaster response/relief”. (3) Females (54.19%) engage in more information behavior than males (45.81%) and they also exhibit more positive behavior; the 20–29-year-old age group is dominated by positive and neutral comments with the highest level of information behavior, whereas the lowest level of information behavior occurs in the 50+ age group; neutral and irrelevant comments in the 30–49-year-old age group dominated. This case study enables a scientific understanding of the necessity of information dissemination for disaster prevention and mitigation and further demonstrates the hazard, psychological distance, societal, and individual factors that all affect how disaster information behaves and performs differently.