How Do Information Content and Language Style Relate to Disaster Information Dissemination? The Moderating Role of User Involvement

Social media has become an important channel for information exchange during sudden disasters, with implications for both public-sector communication and corporate risk communication. However, limited research has examined how substantive message content and linguistic presentation jointly relate to online dissemination behaviour. This issue is also relevant to corporate risk management, as firms must respond to crises while managing stakeholder perceptions. Drawing on the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) and Construal Level Theory (CLT), this study conceptualizes information richness and relevance as central-route cues, and specificity and interactive language as peripheral linguistic cues. User involvement is introduced as a motivational condition that may change the relative weight assigned to these cues. The empirical analysis uses 51,856 Weibo posts concerning the 2025 Tibet earthquake. OLS results show that all four message characteristics are positively associated with dissemination intensity, and that user involvement strengthens the associations of content-related cues while weakening those of linguistic cues. A supplementary negative binomial regression confirms the positive associations of information richness and interactive language, as well as the key interaction patterns, though the results for information relevance and specificity are less stable. These findings extend crisis communication research by showing that disaster-information dissemination is jointly associated with substantive content, linguistic presentation, and user involvement, and offer practical implications for organizations seeking to design clearer and more adaptive risk communication.