Kayla Rahima Putri Wijanarko  

Public Administration Program, Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, University of Jember, Jember, East Java, Indonesia   

Sukron Makmun   

Public Administration Program, Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, University of Jember, Jember, East Java, Indonesia 

DOI: 

ABSTRACT 

Blitar Regency is a disaster-prone area vulnerable to floods, landslides, and ground movement. Although the disaster risk index shows a downward trend in the last five years, the level of community vulnerability is still relatively high. Geographical conditions and infrastructure limitations require effective mitigation communication strategies to strengthen community preparedness. Previous studies, such as those by Safitri, Khalisah, and Cecilia (2023) and Wardani and Apriliani (2022), confirm that social media plays an important role in disseminating disaster information, but its effectiveness is greatly influenced by the communication strategies employed. The results of the study show that the Blitar Regency BPBD has not optimized the strategic use of social media and is still limited to its informative function. The novelty of this study lies in the integrative analysis between the theories of Gohar (2017) and Grindle (1980) to assess the gap between policy and implementation of social media in disaster mitigation at the regional level   

Keywords: social media, disaster mitigation, public policy, BPBD, digital communication