THE FIRESTORM WITHIN THE FIRESTORM: THE IMPACT OF SOCIAL MEDIA ON CRISIS COMMUNICATION IN THE 2025 CALIFORNIA WILDFIRES

Abstract

This study aims to capture public opinion about the destruction created by the 2025 California wildfires as well as governmental response during this crisis by investigating positive, negative, and neutral sentiment on the social media platform X (formerly known as Twitter). For more than a decade, crisis communication scholars have used sentiment analysis tools to determine how public opinion can inform crisis response and communication strategies. However, few studies have focused specifically on wildfires, which are becoming more frequent and destructive each year. Applying Valence Aware Dictionary sEntiment Reasoner (VADER) within the Orange data mining program of nearly 1300 tweets and a close reading of the 25 strongest positive and negative sentiment scores respectively, this study evaluates how language and sentiment among individuals make sense of the crisis and crisis response within a broader understanding of political commentary and polarization on social media. Results show that there are four major aspects of negative sentiment and political commentary, and two overarching theme in positive sentiment that was not really political in nature.