  Media organisations are essential communication stakeholders in social media
disaster communication during extreme events. They perform gatekeeper and
amplification roles which are crucial for collective sense-making processes. In
that capacity, media organisations distribute information through social media,
use it as a source of information, and share such information across different
channels. Yet, little is known about the role of media organisations on social
media as supposed sense-givers to effectively support the creation of mutual
sense. This study investigates the communication strategies of media
organisations in extreme events. A Twitter dataset consisting of 9,414,463
postings was collected during Hurricane Harvey in 2017. Social network and
content analysis methods were applied to identify media communication
approaches. Three different sense-giving strategies could be identified:
retweeting of local in-house outlets; bound amplification of messages of
individual to the organisation associated journalists; and open message
amplification.
