Digital Traces of Online Self-Organizing and Problem Solving in Disaster

Natural disasters are associated with breakdown of existing structures, but they also result in creation of new social ties in the process of self-organization and problem solving by those affected. In highly-distributed setting of social media, collaborative arrangements must depend on the aspects of work that facilitate (or not) the creation of a shared information space-such as an explicit shared site of work and visible, legible record of the activity. In my dissertation I investigate what organizational structures emerge through problem solving in the context of more or less explicit shared site of work and more or less visible record of activity.