Citation: Morelli, S.; Pazzi, V.; Nardini, O.; Bonati, S. Framing Disaster Risk Perception and Vulnerability in Social Media Communication: A Literature Review. Sustainability 2022, 14, 9148. https://doi.org/10.3390/su14159148 Academic Editor: Baojie He Received: 1 July 2022 Accepted: 21 July 2022 Published: 26 July 2022 Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affil- iations. Copyright: © 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/). sustainability Review Framing Disaster Risk Perception and Vulnerability in Social Media Communication: A Literature Review Stefano Morelli 1,2, * , Veronica Pazzi 2,3 , Olga Nardini 2 and Sara Bonati 4 1 Department of Pure and Applied Sciences, University of Urbino “Carlo Bo”, 61029 Urbino, Italy 2 Departmentof Earth Sciences, University of Firenze, 50121 Firenze, Italy; veronica.pazzi@unifi.it (V.P.); olga.nardini@unifi.it (O.N.) 3 Department of Mathematics and Geosciences, University of Trieste, 34127 Trieste, Italy 4 Department of History, Archaeology, Geography, Fine and Performing Arts, University of Firenze, 50129 Firenze, Italy; sara.bonati@unifi.it * Correspondence: stefano.morelli@uniurb.it Abstract: The paper presents the results of a literature review on how social media can impact on disaster risk perception and vulnerability and how these two aspects are interconnected, trying to understand what factors have consequences especially on informational vulnerability. The paper answers to the increasing requests at an international level to move from a technocratic approach to disaster risk management and reduction to a holistic one, where social perspective is integrated. The paper states that this change of paradigm is relevant, especially considering the role that new technologies in communication and information systems are acquiring in disaster risk management and reduction. What emerges from the literature review is that there is a limited scientific production on the topic and further works are desired, to improve knowledge on how new communication and information technologies can impact on vulnerability and risk perception. Furthermore, the two topics are usually discussed separately. However, the role that risk perception can have in increasing or reducing vulnerability deserves to be better discussed. Keywords: trust; communication flow; social vulnerability; risk perception; resilience; DRM 1. Introduction Since the 1980s, the technocratic approach, dominating the Disaster Risk Management (DRM), was accompanied by the seeking to combine exposure (given by the physical components that can be hit by a hazard) to socio-economic and cultural abilities to cope with risk (the social dimension and resilience of individuals and groups) [1]. In particular, first calls for a vulnerability paradigm in disasters came from different scholars engaged in Third World political ecology, natural hazards, and human ecology studies (see e.g., [2–7]). Despite these calls to a social approach, for years the emergency response system has favored the technological and physical sciences, neglecting the contribution that the social sciences could give in the field of Disaster Risk Perception (DRP) and Reduction (DRR) [5–8] sensu UNISDR (https://www.undrr.org/publication/2009-unisdr-terminology-disaster- risk-reduction, accessed on 10 June 2022). A shift towards the recognition of the importance of a social perspective in DRM has been introduced in the Hyogo Framework 2005–2015 and then in the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030, where a socio-centric and bottom-up approach is suggested. Accordingly, the practices for DRM should be based on an understanding of disaster risk also in the social dimensions of vulnerability and people capacity of reaction. This is based on the idea that risks are not only linked to physical phenomena. They reflect relationships with the environment and are culturally, socially, and psychologically constructed [9]. Thus, it is very important to take a multidisciplinary research approach in DRM (see for example [10–13]). Sustainability 2022, 14, 9148. https://doi.org/10.3390/su14159148 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability