Abstract
Abstract. The capacity of individuals to cope with threatening situations depends directly on their capacity to anticipate what will come next. The media should play a key role in that respect, but an extensive analysis of earthquake media coverage by the international news reveals systematic biases. Exploring a corpus of 320 888 news articles published by 32 worldwide newspapers in 2015 in English, Spanish or French, we found that the press covers a very small number of events: 71 % of the news about seismic events was dedicated to only 3 earthquakes (among the 1559 magnitude 5+ events). A combination of frequency and content analysis reveals a typical framing of the “earthquake news”. Except for the “Nepal quake”, the duration of the coverage is usually very short. Thus, the news tends to focus on short-term issues: the event magnitude, tsunami alerts, human losses, material damage and rescue operations. Longer-term issues linked to the recovery, restoration, reconstruction, mitigation and prevention are barely addressed. Preventive safety measures are almost never mentioned. The news on impacts shows a peculiar appetency for death counts, material damage estimates and sensationalism. News on the response tends to emphasize the role played by the international community in helping the “poor and vulnerable”. The scientific content of the coverage is often restricted to mentions of the magnitude, with the concept of the seismic intensity being largely ignored. The notion of the “seismic crisis” also seems unclear, with aftershocks sometimes being treated as isolated events. Secondary hazards are barely mentioned, except in the case of tsunami alerts. Together, these biases contribute to fatalistic judgments that damage cannot be prevented. If scientific messages are to be communicated, they should be broadcast a few hours after an event. Why not take the opportunity to familiarize people with the real timeline of seismic disasters?
Highlights
1.1 Newspapers play a key role in times of disasterDespite the increasing influence of social media, newspapers remain major gatekeepers in the process of selection and dissemination of the news proposed by press agencies to national and local audiences (Harcup and O’Neill, 2017)
This study, led by a multidisciplinary team of researchers from geophysics, psychology and geography backgrounds, builds on previous results (Devès, 2015; Grasland et al, 2016; Le Texier et al, 2016) to address the following question: in a globalized world, can we find systematic trends in how the international news published by daily newspapers covers earthquake events?
The year 2015 is interesting as it is the year of the Nepal quake, a major event that was well covered by the international news published by daily newspapers
Summary
Despite the increasing influence of social media, newspapers remain major gatekeepers in the process of selection and dissemination of the news proposed by press agencies to national and local audiences (Harcup and O’Neill, 2017) For risk managers, they remain an important tool for reaching a wide range of people (Cottle, 2014). Devès et al.: Seismic risk: the biases of earthquake media coverage age to an earthquake’s magnitude, they invoke an uncontrollable cause, but when they attribute damage to human design, they invoke a relatively controllable cause” For authors such as Gaddy and Tanjong (1987) or Hiori et al (1985), understanding how the media reports on disaster situations has direct implications as it shows “how [the] agencies [involved in disaster risk reduction] could reduce fatalism and facilitate preventive action by the way they present information about earthquakes and other disasters”. Scientists denounce the tendency of the press to search for “culprits” and “accountability” and for “stirring up old rivalry and exaggerating conflicts” (Harris, 2015a, b). Harris (2015a) showed how the placement of the information in the frame of the pages, the selection of stories, the use of sources, the selection of data, exaggeration, omissions and preferences for certain sources or pieces of information contribute to the oversimplification of scientifically complex arguments and an orientation toward information interpretations forcing inclination or prejudice for, or against, an argument, person or group, putting a particular emphasis on some aspects of the situation. Harris (2015b) concluded that what he calls the “media filter” can influence the public understanding of scientific uncertainties and argued that a careful study of the media coverage would help scientists to communicate in a manner that reduces the chance of misunderstanding
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