USo de twitter en desastres: El terremoto de iquique

Disasters, in the past, were events whose details were known mainly by the informational display of the classical means of mass communication. Today, social networks have taken a leading role in all areas of communication, including the uses that are practiced in events of great impact such as the one that affected the city of Iquique, in the extreme north of Chile, on April 1^st and 2^nd 2014, an earthquake with tsunami alert and a subsequent replica of high intensity that caused human and material losses that deeply affected the life of its inhabitants. The study carried out aimed to explore the role of the messages issued by the users of the microblogging Twitter service, analyzing the content of the tweets for a month from the time the natural phenomenon took place. Using a qualitative content analysis of data methodology, categories emerged around which various types of people's reactions to a disaster situation were identifed. The conclusion allows us to consider Twitter as an eminently informative social medium and a credible source for communication in situations of crisis provoked by destructive natural events. Users use the network mainly to transmit descriptive data over other categories that commonly identify it, as a platform to express opinion, to call for social action and as a network for the manifestation of emotions that arise from the interaction, in reactive stages of people, in situations of emergency and disaster.