Following New Zealand's largest recorded earthquake in the last eighty years, New Zealanders have turned in droves to social media to share their experiences and gain information on the natural disaster, according to the market research company Nielsen.

In the days following the earthquake which rocked Christchurch in the early hours of last Saturday morning, more than 27,000 comments were posted on social networking sites such as Twitter and message boards such as Trade Me, as those affected used social media to connect with family and friends.

New Zealanders also made heavy use of video sites such as YouTube, dailymotion.com and Vimeo; and photo sharing sites such as Flickr to upload videos and images of the damage left by the earthquake.

"Immediately following the earthquake, those who were affected were no doubt torn between wanting to contact their family and friends and the need to take stock of damages," observes Tony Boyte, Research Director for Nielsen's online division in New Zealand.

"The dramatic numbers we've seen in social media usage demonstrates the platform's ability to quickly collect and disseminate information. With one quick tweet you can reassure loved-ones that you're OK."

Nielsen summarises some of the key online trends following the earthquake:

27,034 comments were posted on social networking sites and message boards in the six days after the first Christchurch earthquake struck Twitter received the highest overall volume of posts to a public forum, with 7,206 comments related to the disaster

8,170 posts were uploaded to local New Zealand message boards and forums, including Trade Me Message Boards (61%), Old School Forums (3%), Geekzone Forums (3%), Oh Baby Forums (2%) and PC World forums (2%).

Hashtags were widely used to associate posts on Twitter with the earthquake, especially #eqnz (1,741 posts), as well as #christchurch (355 posts) and #christchurchquake (183 posts)

"The social media phenomenon has fundamentally shifted not only the way we consume news and information, but also enabled us to be a large part of the news dissemination itself," notes Boyte.

"The volume of social media activity around the Christcurch earthquake highlights that New Zealanders didn't hesitate to jump online to not only receive the latest updates, but also to add to the spreading of the news through their consumer generated media tools."

* Analysis based on Nielsen BuzzMetrics analysis from Saturday, 4 September through to Thursday, 9 September.