*Pipit Fitriyah, Ismi Dwi Astuti Nurhaeni, Andre N Rahmanto, Drajat Tri Kartono

Abstract:

This research examines how crisis communication influences public responses to the risk of megathrust earthquakes, particularly whether digital discourse fosters preparedness or amplifies fear. More specifically, this research looks at how public engagement, risk awareness, and perceived constraints shape behavioural outcomes in disaster contexts, such as a megathrust earthquake, using the Situational Theory of Publics (Grunig, 1997) and Risk Perception Theory (Slovic, 1987). To address these dynamics, a mixed-methods approach was applied: computational text mining and qualitative interviews. To contextualise the digital discourse, semi-structured interviews were conducted with institutional actors (BMKG, BNPB), disaster communication specialists, and community-based organisations. Using Voyant Tools, incorporating Brown and Yule’s (1983) framework to identify thematic patterns through word frequency and co-occurrence analysis, the findings reveal that the corpus consisted of 1,253,214 words, 61,885 unique word forms as well as dominant terms such as “megathrust” (64,160), “gempa” (33,146), and “potensi” (6,553).

Keywords: Crisis communication, risk perception, preparedness, social media, situational theory of publics