Interactive disaster communication on the Internet: A content analysis of sixty-four disaster relief home pages

Disaster relief home pages were content analyzed using a seven-dimensional conceptualization of interactivity. This study provides a theoretical exploration of the concept of interactivity and its potential contributions to the Internet as an increasingly interactive mass medium. It then applies interactivity to the development of disaster communication and tests that framework in the context of disaster relief home pages. Although most sites that were analyzed contained a large amount of news and explanatory content, as well as potential for user response, most did not show high scores in actual responsiveness to user or the other five dimensions of interactivity.