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Geosci. Commun., 2, 125–141, 2019
https://doi.org/10.5194/gc-2-125-2019
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Research article
Seismic risk: the biases of earthquake media coverage
Maud H. Devès1,2, Marion Le Texier3, Hugues Pécout4, and Claude Grasland4,5
1Université de Paris, Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris, CNRS UMR 7154, 75005 Paris, France
2Université de Paris, Institut Humanités Sciences Sociétés, Centre de Recherche Psychanalyse Médecine et Société,
CNRS EA 3522, 75013 Paris, France
3Université de Rouen Normandie, UMR CNRS 6266 IDEES, 76781 Mont-Saint-Aignan CEDEX, France
4Université de Paris, Collège international des sciences territoriales, CNRS FR 2007, 75013 Paris, France
5Université de Paris, Géographie-Cités, UMR 8504, 75006 Paris, France
Correspondence: Maud H. Devès (deves@ipgp.fr)
Received: 27 March 2019 – Discussion started: 17 April 2019
Accepted: 6 July 2019 – Published: 15 August 2019
Abstract. The capacity of individuals to cope with threat-
ening situations depends directly on their capacity to antici-
pate what will come next. The media should play a key role
in that respect, but an extensive analysis of earthquake me-
dia coverage by the international news reveals systematic bi-
ases. 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 num-
ber of events: 71% of the news about seismic events was
dedicated to only 3 earthquakes (among the 1559 magni-
tude 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 cover-
age is usually very short. Thus, the news tends to focus on
short-term issues: the event magnitude, tsunami alerts, hu-
man losses, material damage and rescue operations. Longer-
term issues linked to the recovery, restoration, reconstruc-
tion, mitigation and prevention are barely addressed. Preven-
tive safety measures are almost never mentioned. The news
on impacts shows a peculiar appetency for death counts, ma-
terial damage estimates and sensationalism. News on the re-
sponse tends to emphasize the role played by the interna-
tional community in helping the “poor and vulnerable”. The
scientific content of the coverage is often restricted to men-
tions of the magnitude, with the concept of the seismic inten-
sity 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 pre-
vented. 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?
1 Introduction
1.1 Newspapers play a key role in times of disaster
Despite the increasing influence of social media, newspapers
remain major gatekeepers in the process of selection and dis-
semination of the news proposed by press agencies to na-
tional 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). Hence, one can ex-
pect the press not only to inform, but also to provide the
public with the knowledge required to reduce disaster risks
(see, for instance, the media kit created by the Asian Dis-
aster Preparedness Center and the Department of Disaster
Management and Climate Change of the Ministry of Natu-
ral Resources and Environment of Lao PDR, Thanthathep et
al., 2016).
Numerous studies have explored the ability of the news
media to influence public perception. According to McClure
et al. (2001) and McClure and Velluppillai (2013), public ed-
ucation programs and news reports often describe disasters
“in ways that accentuate the extent and severity of damage”,
thus contributing to “fatalistic attributions and judgments that
the damage cannot be prevented”. Improper attribution can
hinder peoples’ preparedness: “When people attribute dam-
Published by Copernicus Publications on behalf of the European Geosciences Union.
126 M. H. Devès et al.: Seismic risk: the biases of earthquake media coverage
age to an earthquake’s magnitude, they invoke an uncontrol-
lable 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), under-
standing how the media reports on disaster situations has di-
rect implications as it shows “how [the] agencies [involved
in disaster risk reduction] could reduce fatalism and facili-
tate preventive action by the way they present information
about earthquakes and other disasters”.
It is not uncommon to hear scientists criticizing the press
for conveying distorted messages (e.g., Smith, 1996; Cocco
et al., 2015; Harris, 2015a, b). Journalists have even been
accused of playing the role of “crisis catalyst” (Boin et al.,
2008). Comparing the news treatment of a real earthquake
with that of a false quake prediction, Smith (1996) con-
cluded that “the interest in drama at the expense of pub-
lic affairs interferes with good scientific reporting”. In gen-
eral, 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). Har-
ris (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 con-
tribute to the oversimplification of scientifically complex ar-
guments and an orientation toward information interpreta-
tions forcing inclination or prejudice for, or against, an argu-
ment, 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 under-
standing of scientific uncertainties and argued that a careful
study of the media coverage would help scientists to commu-
nicate in a manner that reduces the chance of misunderstand-
ing.
1.2 Earthquake media coverage and international news
flow theory
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 ques-
tion: in a globalized world, can we find systematic trends in
how the international news published by daily newspapers
covers earthquake events?
By “international news”, we mean news published by daily
newspapers about foreign countries or, in practical terms,
news published by newspapers through specific RSS flows
entitled “international” or “world”. Many hypotheses about
the rules governing the international news flow were formu-
lated more than 50 years ago (Galtung and Ruge, 1965; Öst-
gaard, 1965) and verified by empirical studies concerning the
unequal salience of countries in the media and the effects
of size, proximity and the preference for elite countries or
negative news (Peterson, 1981; Kim and Barnett, 1996; Wu,
2000). The development of new forms of electronic commu-
nication has not modified the previously observed rules, and
recent works have confirmed that the circulation of interna-
tional news is still very influenced by cultural factors such
as language and physical factors such as the distance be-
tween the location of the media and the location of events
(Segev, 2016; Grasland et al., 2016). However, the salience
of countries is generally manifested over a mixture of hetero-
geneous events, and some authors have focused on subsets
of events that are either mentioned or ignored by the me-
dia. The event-oriented approach is based on a selection of
foreign news related to a specific topic for which it is pos-
sible to define a finite and possibly objective list of events
occurring in the “real” world. One of the most interesting ar-
eas of research from this perspective is the study of the me-
dia coverage of earthquakes, for which objective measures
of the magnitude or victims are regularly published. Thus, it
is possible to analyze the level of newsworthiness according
to the general laws postulated by Galtung and its followers
(Galtung and Ruge, 1965; Harcup and O’Neill, 2001, 2017;
Wu, 2000) and their specific application to earthquake me-
dia coverage (Koopmans and Vliegenthart, 2010). Examin-
ing the news media coverage of more than 900 earthquakes,
Le Texier et al. (2016) showed that the event severity (re-
ported in the press as a moment magnitude, Mwaffected the
volume of media coverage following a power law. Studying
the dynamics of public interest in major earthquakes using
Google Trends, Tan and Maharjan (2018) found that the du-
ration and search peak vary with the death toll and damage
but not with the earthquake magnitude. Earle et al. (2010)
found the same pattern for the 2009 Mw4.3 Morgan Hill
(California) earthquake using Twitter data, from a period of
only a dozen minutes.
This paper goes further in questioning the existence of
systematic trends in how earthquakes are covered by inter-
national news. More specifically, we look into the temporal
dynamics of the coverage (duration, trends) and into the po-
tential existence of a typical framing of “earthquake news”
(i.e., by comparing news content between events and be-
tween newspapers from various countries and languages).
Section 2 presents the datasets we use and the main steps
we follow for data analysis. First, we analyze the intensity,
time distribution and content of a large corpus of approx-
imately 320 888 news items published by 32 international
news media RSS feeds in 2015. Second, we associate a sta-
tistical analysis of the news frequency with a textual analysis
of the content of the news. Section 3 describes the main re-
sults, and these results are then discussed in Sect. 4. Section
5 concludes the paper.
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M. H. Devès et al.: Seismic risk: the biases of earthquake media coverage 127
2 Materials and methods
2.1 Presentation of the datasets
The datasets run from 1 January 2015 at 00:00:01 to 31 De-
cember 2015 at 23:59:59 UTC. The year 2015 is particularly
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. The geophysical dataset is built from
the online seismic catalogue provided by the United States
Geological Survey (USGS). For each earthquake, we col-
lect the following parameters: hypocenter, magnitude and la-
bel. The media dataset is built from the ANR corpus GE-
OMEDIA, which contains information published by more
than 330 news RSS feeds from 180 media outlets, localized
in 61 countries and written in 10 languages over 3 years
– the information was gathered between 2012 and 2015 as
part of the ANR-12-CORP-0009 project, which was coordi-
nated by Claude Grasland. We selected international news
media RSS feeds based on several criteria: national or inter-
national status of newspapers (broadsheet newspapers), RSS
feed regularity, media localization and the volume of infor-
mation transmitted (see the Supplement of Grasland, 2019).
The final corpus consists of 32 RSS feeds related to interna-
tional news in three languages (English, French and Spanish)
that are equitably geographically distributed, according to the
possibilities offered by the initial database (Fig. 1). Analyses
were completed using R software, notably the “tm” package
for text mining.
2.2 Data cleaning and selection through tagging
Before starting the data analysis, three processing steps were
required (Fig. 2). First, some of the selected RSS news items
were not worth analyzing because they were totally devoid of
information, simply advertising or summarizing a heteroge-
neous set of news of the day. These items were deleted from
the corpus. Second, the initial database continuously collects
RSS items on newspaper websites, and a similar item can be
published several times without changes. Therefore, we had
to delete all of the duplicate items (items with the same ti-
tle and text). During these two processing steps, more than
60 000 news items were deleted. After cleaning, the dataset
contained 320 888 news items. To build the joint corpus (re-
ferred to as EQ-MEDIA in the following), we then enriched
the news media dataset using a two-step tagging process as
follows: (1) the geographical tagging of all countries men-
tioned using word dictionaries and (2) the thematic tagging
of all news mentioning a seismic event using an “earthquake
dictionary”. The first dictionary was tested and validated in
previous research (Grasland et al., 2016). The latter was man-
ually tested on 1 % of the total number of news items to
determine the number of false positives (i.e., items contain-
ing metaphoric references to earthquakes such as a “political
earthquake”). We found a reasonable error rate of approx-
imately 4 %. The rate of false negatives (i.e., missed items)
was even smaller (approximately 2% to 3%). The final num-
ber of news items dedicated to earthquakes over the year
2015 was 4411, which represented 1.37 % of the total num-
ber of news items published during that time period by all the
RSS feeds of the corpus.
2.3 Two levels of analysis: the year 2015 and three
major events
An analysis of the intensity and duration of coverage was un-
dertaken on the whole EQMEDIA corpus. The analysis of the
news content, which required coupled qualitative and quan-
titative approaches, was undertaken on a selection of earth-
quakes. As shown in Fig. 3, the “earthquake news” was not
evenly distributed over time. Three earthquakes garnered the
most attention:
The Gorkha earthquake: Nepal and neighboring countries
witnessed a 7.8 magnitude earthquake on 25 April 2015. It
was followed by many aftershocks, among which one on
12 May had a magnitude of 7.3. These earthquakes killed
more than 9000 people and affected at least 8 million, im-
pacting the main economic and political center of the coun-
try (Katmandu) and causing massive economic losses (half
of the GDP of the country) (CRED, 2017). The first quake
(25 April) was the most devastating. It also triggered land-
slides and avalanches in the mountains, killing hundreds of
people, some of which were foreign tourists whose fates most
interested the news media. The magnitude of the main shock
was similar to that of the 1934 earthquake.
The Ilapel earthquake: an earthquake of magnitude 8.3 hit
the area of Ilapel, Chile, on 9 September 2015, killing at least
15 people and affecting thousands. Chilean authorities or-
dered the immediate evacuation of the coast due to a tsunami
threat. Pacific-wide tsunami warnings were issued, and the
evacuation affected approximately 1 million people.
The Hindu Kush earthquake: an earthquake of magnitude
7.5 hit the Hindu Kush region between Afghanistan and Pak-
istan on 26 October 2015. The earthquake and its aftershocks
killed approximately 400 people and affected thousands in
Afghanistan, Pakistan and the neighboring countries (includ-
ing India and Tajikistan).
2.4 Analyzing the news content
To more closely examine our dataset, we adopted a method
inspired by Cox et al. (2008), who analyzed the print-news
media coverage of the recovery process following a forest
fire. The first step was to conduct a careful analysis of the
content of the news itself to identify thematic patterns but
also possible “textual silences”, defined by Huckin (2002) as
“the omission of some piece of information that is pertinent
to the topic at hand”. As we were dealing with thousands of
news items, this qualitative approach was complemented by
a quantitative analysis based on keywords.
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128 M. H. Devès et al.: Seismic risk: the biases of earthquake media coverage
Figure 1. Corpus of news RSS feeds used, by origin and language.
It was possible but ultimately not relevant to proceed to a
classification of the content of our thousands of news items
with inductive exploratory methods such as cluster analy-
sis (Wilks, 2011) or latent Dirichlet allocation (Blei et al.,
2003). Thus, we chose a deductive approach where we tried
to extract the categories or concepts defined by experts on
disasters from the news media coverage. Following Haas et
al. (1977) and Kates et al. (2006), we define six expected
categories of content: hazards, impacts, emergency response,
restoration, reconstruction and preparedness. The hazards
category refers to the seismic phenomenon itself or to any
hazardous event it can trigger, such as tsunamis or landslides.
The impacts category refers to the immediate effects of these
hazards: human loss, injuries, and damage to buildings and
infrastructure. The emergency response category refers to the
actions taken during or immediately after the earthquake to
save lives, reduce health impacts, ensure public safety and
meet the basic subsistence needs of the people affected. The
rehabilitation category includes recovery and restoration, i.e.,
actions taken to restore basic services and facilities and im-
prove the livelihoods and health, as well as economic, phys-
ical, social, cultural and environmental assets, systems and
activities, of the earthquake-affected community. By recon-
struction, we mean the medium- and long-term rebuilding
and restoration of the critical infrastructure, services, hous-
ing, facilities and livelihoods. Preparedness refers to actions
carried out to establish the capacities needed to efficiently
manage future emergencies. News may refer to one or sev-
eral of these categories of content.
We classify the most frequently used words of the “earth-
quake news” into one of these categories of content and
build two keyword dictionaries: a discourse content dictio-
nary, corresponding to the above categories (Table 1), and
an identity matrix, dedicated to different categories of stake-
holders focused on (or forgotten) by the media coverage (Ta-
ble 2). For this work to be manageable within a reasonable
time frame, we adopt a threshold of a minimum of four oc-
currences in French and Spanish and eight in English (there
are 619 and 478 news items in Spanish and French, re-
spectively, so the threshold remains very low, as it corre-
sponds to words occurring in at least 0.36 % of the news
items. There are 2097 items in English; thus, the threshold
remains the same: it corresponds to words occurring in at
least 0.38 % of the news items). Conjunctions and adverbs
are not considered, and words with common roots are treated
together. We use words that are representative of one and
only one of our categories of discourse (principle of exclu-
sivity) and that do not introduce too many false positives.
Tagging the database using these two keyword dictionaries
allows us to quantify the presence/absence and evolution of
each theme/subtheme/topic. There are limitations to this key-
word approach (the meaning of isolated words is often am-
biguous and related to the context and the position before or
after other words, e.g., Church and Hanks, 1990) but the in-
dependent classification of the news items by the co-authors
indicates good consistency in the coding of themes and sub-
themes and the identification of topics (we reach a maximum
of 12 % of differences for the emergency response category).
3 Results
3.1 “Earthquake news” analysis of temporality
News concentrates on a very small number of earthquakes.
A total of 71.4 % of the news items about seismic events
were dedicated to only three earthquakes (Fig. 3). The
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M. H. Devès et al.: Seismic risk: the biases of earthquake media coverage 129
Table 1. Discourse content dictionary. Contains the keywords used to classify news items into categories of discourse corresponding to the
main phases and topics of disaster risk management. Keywords were identified from a list of most frequent words using different thresholds
for English (EN), Spanish (SP) and French (FR) to balance differences in the RSS feed numbers.
Content
categories
Keywords by themes and topics
Hazards Magnitude
EN: magnitude, Richter
SP: grados, Richter, magnitud(es)
FR: magnitude, Richter
Tsunami
EN: tsunami(s)
SP: tsunami(s), maremoto(s), olas
FR: tsunami(s)
Aftershocks
EN: aftershock(s)
SP: aftershock(s), réplica(s)
FR: aftershock(s), réplique(s)
Other secondary hazards
EN: avalanche(s), landslide(s), flood(s)/flooding
SP: avalancha(s), deslizamiento(s), alud, inundacion(es)
FR: glissement(s) de terrain, avalanche(s)
Impacts Impacts – general
EN: hit(s), struck, felt, shook, shak(e)(ing)(en), rocked, jolt(s)(ed), rattled, shattered, sway(ed), battered, suffered,
toppling, crushed, strike, stricken, impact
SP: impacto, estimacion(es), afectación, sacud(e)(ido)(ida)(idas)(ieron), golp(e)(eó)(ea), golpead(o)(os)(a)(as),
azotó, azotado, sentido, se sintió, afectó, sufrieron, arrasó, temblar, asoló, castigad(o)(a)
FR: frappé(e), touché(s), ressenti(e), ébranlé, secoué
Human impact
Human impact – general
EN: fatalities, casualt(y)(ies), victim(s), affected, stranded
SP: balance, víctima(s), afectados, damnificados, recuento(s), saldo, contabilizado
FR: bilan, victime(s), sinistrés
Human impact – death toll
EN: death(s), kill(s)(ed)(ing), dead, bodies, died, deadly, claimed
SP: muerto(s), muerte(s), mueren, murieron, mortal(es), fallecido(s), fallecieron, cuerpos, cadavers, decesos, mató
FR: mort(s), tué(e)(s), corps, meurtrier
Human impact – injured
EN: injured, wounded
SP: heridos
FR: blesses
Material damage
Material damage – general
EN: rubble, damage(d), collaps(e)(es)(ed) (ing), devastat(ed)(ion), destroy(ed)(ing), destruction, wreckage, debris,
ravaged, ruins/ruined
SP: daños, escombros, dañad(os)(as), destruid(o)(os)(as), perdidas, destrucción, ruinas, caíd(o)(a), destruyó, de-
strozadas, colapso, devastó, devastadas, derrumb(e)(es)(aron)(ado)
FR: dévast(é)(ée), décombres, dégâts, détruit/détruits, effondr(ée)(ées), destructions, gravats
Material damage – on buildings
EN: homes, building(s), houses, structure(s), property
SP: edificio(s), vivienda(s), edificaciones
FR: maisons, bâtiments
Material damage – to infrastructure
EN, FR: no recurrent keywords were found
SP: eléctricas, infraestructuras
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130 M. H. Devès et al.: Seismic risk: the biases of earthquake media coverage
Table 1. Continued.
Content
categories
Keywords by themes and topics
Emergency
response
Tsunami warning
EN: tsunami warning(s), alert(s)
SP: alerta de tsunami, alarma
FR: alerte
Evacuation
EN: evacuat(e)(ed)(ion)(ions), evacuees
SP: evacuad(os)(as), evacuar, evacuación
FR: evacu(ees)(er)(ation)
Aid, search and rescue
General
EN: effort(s), response, respond, operation(s), deployed, aid, rescu(e)(es)(ed)(ing), relief, help(ed)(ing), assist(ance),
helicopter(s), chopper, aircraft, support, send(s)(ing), save(d), distribut(ing)(ion), airlifted, dig(ging), dug, missing,
search(ing), alive, pulled, trapped, recovered +Table 2 “Rescuers”
SP: operación/operaciones, gestión, respuesta, solidaridad, crisis, apoy(o)(ar), ordenó, responder, envoi, enviado(s),
reacción, ayuda, ayudar, ayudas, ayudando, rescate, rescatar, rescatan, rescatado, helicóptero(s), asistencia, socorro,
attender, ofrece, aeronave, búsqued(a)(as) +Table 2 “Rescuers”
FR: operation(s), répondre, secours, aide, sauver, assistance, disparu, chiens, recherchés, sans nouvelles +Table 2
“Rescuers”
Vital needs and supplies
EN: food, hungry, sanitation, water, drink(ing), fuel, blankets, gasoline, suppl(y)(ies), resources, basic, vital, lack of,
goods, need, needed, material, equipment
SP: agua, alimentos, alimentaria, necesidad(es), comida, suministro(s)
FR: de materiel, besoins
Medical care
EN: hospital(s), medical, medicine(s), disease(s), health, outbreak, epidemic(s), treatment, patients
SP: hospital(es), médico(s), salud, medicinas, sanitarios
FR: no recurrent keywords were found
Displacement and temporary shelter
EN: shelter(s), outdoors, sleep, sleeping, homeless, refuge, fled
SP: noche al raso, albergues, tiendas de campaña, desplazados, refugio(s)
FR: camps, fuir, dehors
Cremation
EN, FR: no recurrent keywords were found
SP: funerarias
Recovery,
rehabilitation and
reconstruction
(preparedness)
Recovery/reconstruction
EN: recover(y)(ing), return to, returned, reconstruction, rebuild(ing), reopen(s)(ed), normal
SP: desescombro, reconstrucción, reconstruir, normalidad
FR: reconstruction
No recurrent keywords were found that unambiguously refer to risk assessment, development and land use planning/adaptation and mitigation measures/education and
information/preparedness, contingency planning, consolidate preparations for next disasters.
“Nepal quake” was exceptionally well covered, represent-
ing 59.7 % of the news, and the earthquakes in Chile (Ilapel)
and Afghanistan (Hindu Kush) collected 6.1 % and 5.8 % of
the news, respectively. The other events of the year (some of
which are visible as small peaks in the brown curve in Fig. 3)
share the remaining 28.6 % of the coverage.
The curves of coverage intensity exhibit a similar trend for
all earthquakes: the initial peak is followed by an exponen-
tial decrease. This signature has been proved as typical of the
media coverage of dramatic events, characterized by an ini-
tial shock to public opinion (Boomgaarden and de Vreese,
2007). The amplitude of the initial peak is higher in the case
of the “Nepal quake” than in the other cases. The duration
of the coverage is also much longer with a second peak, cor-
responding to the aftershock on 12 May, triggering a new
round of coverage. This may be explained by various fac-
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M. H. Devès et al.: Seismic risk: the biases of earthquake media coverage 131
Table 2. Identity matrix. Contains the keywords used to quantify the presence/absence of different categories of stakeholders. Keywords
were identified from a list of most frequent words using different thresholds for English (EN), Spanish (SP) and French (FR) to balance
differences in the RSS feed numbers.
Content
categories
Keywords by themes and topics
States EN: nation, state(s), government(s), authorities, minister(s), ministry, foreign secretary, foreign office, president,
parliament, royal rulers, embassy, European Union
SP: país, nación, gobierno, autoridades, ministerio, ministro, president(a)(e), exteriores, funcionarios, gabinete,
ispr, fata, europea
FR: pays, gouvernement, affaires etrangeres, autorités, ministère, ministre, Quai d’orsay
UN agencies EN: United Nations, UNICEF, UNESCO, World Food Programme
SP: onu, naciones unidas, Programa Mundial de Alimentos, unesco, unicef
FR: nations unies, onu
International aid EN: international aid, international agencies, aid agencies, humanitarian aid
SP: ayuda internacional, comunidad internacional, organización no gubernamental, ong, cruz roja
FR: aide internationale, croix rouge, humanitaire(s)
Civil security and
defense
EN: police, army, military, marine(s), air force, soldiers, troops, firefighters, Gurkhas
SP: ejército, policía, militares, armada, marina, soldados, Oficina Nacional de Emergencia
Rescuers EN: rescuers, rescue team(s), aid workers, rescue workers, relief workers, volunteer(s), personnel
SP: equipo de rescate, equipos de rescate, servicios de emergencia, rescatistas, socorristas
FR: équipe, secouristes, sauveteurs
Affected
people
Those directly affected
EN: people, rescued, survivor(s), victims, those affected
SP: persona(s), víctima(s), los afectados, damnificados, desaparecid(o)(a)(os)(as), supervivientes, sobre-
vivient(e)(es), rescatad(o)(os)
FR: victimes, survivant(s), sinistrés, rescapes, personnes
Locals
EN: residents, locals, villagers, sherpa(s), guides, Famous locals: Ang Tshering, Bajracharya
SP: población, habitantes, guías
FR: habitants, villageois, population
Vulnerable people
EN: children, child, boy, girl(s), wo(man)(men), famil(y)(ies), teenag(e)(er), teen, bab(y)(ies)
SP: niños, famili(a)(as), muj(er)(eres), jóven, bebe, anciano
FR: familles, adolescent, enfants, orphelins
“Experts” EN: expert(s), US Geological Survey, specialists, scientists
SP: usgs, Centro Sismológico Nacional, especialistas, Servicio Hidrográfico y Oceanográfico de la Armada
FR: usgs, institute américain de géophysique
Private
companies
EN: Google, Facebook, compan(y)(ies)
SP: Google, Facebook
FR: no recurrent keywords were found
tors, including a death toll an order of magnitude higher and
that it affected the economic and political center of a touristic
country (Koopmans and Vliegenthart, 2010). However, de-
spite these differences in intensity and duration, the overall
signature of the “Nepal quake” is similar to the signature of
the Hindu Kush earthquake, likely because both events oc-
curred in similar geodynamical settings (i.e., intracontinental
faulting) and both caused massive impacts (i.e., huge death
tolls and vast material damage). The real question is why the
Chilean earthquake, which only caused moderate impacts,
was so well covered. Occurring in a different geodynamical
setting (i.e., subduction faulting), the earthquake triggered
tsunami waves threatening many countries on the ocean rim.
The release of the tsunami alert explains the level of the in-
ternational coverage in remote countries. All together, these
observations support earlier works showing that the death toll
in itself is not sufficient to predict the volume of media cover-
age, as other factors – such as the physical, political or eco-
nomic distance to the place of publication – also influence
the newsworthiness of disasters (i.e., Adams, 1986; Simon,
1997; and Van Belle, 2000, among others).
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132 M. H. Devès et al.: Seismic risk: the biases of earthquake media coverage
Figure 2. Building the EQMEDIA database.
Generally, the main peaks of intensity are not significantly
different among the English, Spanish and French newspa-
pers. Only small differences are observed, essentially in the
extent of the main peaks or in the secondary peaks. The sim-
ilarity of the results obtained in the three different languages
confirms the robustness of our methodology. It also suggests
the existence of a typical – and global – framing of the “earth-
quake news”, inviting us to dive deeper into the analysis of
content.
3.2 “Earthquake news” analysis of content
3.2.1 News reproduces the categories of content
expected from disaster risk management (DRM)
models
The “earthquake news” content broadly reproduces the se-
quence expected from DRM models but with an important
bias: the duration of coverage is too short (hours to days)
for mid- to long-term issues (weeks to months or years) to
be well covered (Fig. 4). The themes of hazards, impacts
and emergency response are overrepresented compared with
those of recovery, restoration, reconstruction and prepared-
ness:
–77 % of the news items contain a general description of
the impacts of the event, either simply to outline its level
of destructivity or to count fatalities;
–46 % of the news items refer to the hazards, often
to communicate the magnitude of the earthquake but
sometimes to inform about secondary hazards such as
tsunamis, aftershocks and, more rarely, avalanches, mud
slides or floods;
–45 % of the news items refer to emergency response de-
scribing either aid or search and rescue operations (in
the case of the Nepal and Hindu Kush earthquakes) or
the release and lifting of tsunami warnings (in the case
of the Ilapel earthquake);
–and only 5.6 % of the news items refer unambiguously
to recovery,restoration and reconstruction, while none
refer directly to issues of preparedness. These low per-
centages are partially due to the small numbers of key-
words identified for each of these themes, but it is the
low frequency of these themes in the database that pre-
vented us from identifying more keywords.
It is interesting to note that the big aftershock on 12 May in
Nepal triggered a new cycle of information. Although char-
acterized by a peak of smaller intensity, the news content fol-
lowed a similar sequence to that triggered by the main shock.
Figure 5 shows the temporal distributions of these themes.
The Nepali and the Afghan earthquakes have similar signa-
tures: content on hazards comes first, followed soon after
by content on impacts; content on response comes next; and
content on recovery, rehabilitation and reconstruction comes
later – when it comes at all. The Chilean earthquake has a
significantly different signature, which is due to its tsunami-
genic character. The news focuses first on the hazards includ-
ing tsunamis, which means that the content on the response
(tsunami warnings) appear much earlier.
3.2.2 The typical “earthquake news”
To give a sense of the framing of “earthquake news”, in the
following, we build an (artificial but well-informed) example
of the evolution of the news content over time after an event.
Of course, there are variations due to elements of context, but
our guess is that the main trends would remain comparable.
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M. H. Devès et al.: Seismic risk: the biases of earthquake media coverage 133
Figure 3. The media coverage intensity (number of news items published per day) for the year 2015 is dominated by three events: the Nepal
quake, an earthquake in the area of Ilapel, Chile, and an earthquake in the Hindu Kush region, Afghanistan.
Figure 4. Temporal distribution of the media coverage for the three well-covered earthquakes of the year 2015. The color scale allows for
comparison of the duration of the media coverage with the expected duration of the different phases of disaster risk management models.
Imagine that an important earthquake occurs. ..
–Within a few hours
The news focuses on the description of the seismic haz-
ard and, when relevant, passes on information about
tsunami warnings. The news first reports that an earth-
quake has been felt, providing the approximate lo-
cation of the impacted area (often a country, some-
times a region or a city). Many recall the magnitude
of the event, e.g., “USGS: Magnitude 7.5 earthquake
strikes Afghanistan” (USA today, 26 October, item
10366718), “Un terremoto de 7.9 grados sacude el cen-
tro de Nepal”1(Faro de Vigo, 25 April, item 6369528)
and “Un séisme de magnitude 7.5 a secoué lundi le mas-
1“7.9 magnitude earthquake rocks central Nepal”
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134 M. H. Devès et al.: Seismic risk: the biases of earthquake media coverage
Table 3. Percentage of news items mentioning a theme or topic. NB: one news item can include several themes and topics.
sif de l’Hindu Kush”2(Le Monde, 26 October, item
10368842).
It quickly becomes clear that the event is worth men-
tioning because it had noticeable impacts, e.g., “La
ONU advierte dramático impacto tras nuevo temblor en
Nepal”3(El informador, 13 May, item 6774985) and
“Scores of people were killed when a 7.5-magnitude
2“A 7.5 magnitude earthquake shook the Hindu Kush massif on
Monday”
3“UN warns of dramatic impact after new earthquake in Nepal”
earthquake centered in Afghanistan rocked neighbor-
ing Pakistan and rattled buildings as far away as India.”
(USA Today, 26 October, item 10371195).
The combination of the location and magnitude is of-
ten use to “label” the event and distinguish it from other
such events. After a few days, “big” events are known
by their “nicknames”, and the magnitude is mentioned
less often. A few hours after the main shock, journalists
named the earthquake in Nepal the “Nepal earthquake”,
and it soon became the “Nepal quake”, e.g., “5 things to
know about the Nepal earthquake” (The Star, 25 April,
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M. H. Devès et al.: Seismic risk: the biases of earthquake media coverage 135
Figure 5. Temporal distribution of the DRM categories in the media coverage of the three main earthquakes in 2015. The height of the boxes
is proportional to the number of news items (for each earthquake). The beginnings and ends of the boxes correspond to the first and third
quartiles, respectively. The white lines inside the boxes correspond to the median values.
item 6376436) and “Nepal quake: 7.9 magnitude tremor
hits near Kathmandu” (The Guardian, 25 April, item
6370804). However, only a few earthquakes become fa-
mous enough to be called by nicknames; the Chilean
and Afghan earthquakes of 2015 did not, and the news
settled for recalling the country and magnitude of the
main shocks.
Interestingly, the initial phase of coverage is also the
phase with the most scientific content. The extensive
use of the notion of magnitude, although often made at
the expense of the notion of seismic intensity, testifies
to the successful transfer of a geophysical notion to the
general public. We should also outline here that after-
shocks are sometimes treated as singular events by the
press, with the notion of a seismic crisis remaining un-
clear to many. Among the most cited expert bodies, the
USGS is the most visible internationally, as it provides
immediate information about the earthquakes. Region-
ally important centers such as national meteorological
agencies and emergency operations centers, among oth-
ers, can also be cited.
Secondary hazards are barely mentioned in the news,
except for tsunamis. In Chile, the news conveyed the
information about tsunami warnings very well, men-
tioning the primary and the secondary hazards and
the authorities’ response to it at the same time, e.g.,
“Tsunami warnings in Chile and Peru as 8.3 quake
hits” (Daily Telegraph, 17 September, item 9501990)
and “The tsunami warning from New Zealand’s Min-
istry of Civil Defence & Emergency Management after
a big quake off Chile will affect a night surfing event.”
(The Age, 17 September, item 9504366).
–A few hours to few days after the event
The peak of coverage is reached within a few hours to a
day after the event, with many updates of the same news
including more and more precision or detail. Earth-
quake events become “breaking news” or “top stories”
and are simultaneously disseminated on different RSS
feeds. Most news talks about impacts, especially hu-
man losses. The description of the impacts is the theme
that attracts the most coverage: 76.7 % of the news of
our corpus focuses on the description of the impacts
(81 % for the three considered earthquakes), 34.3 % fo-
cus on human losses and only 17.3 % on material dam-
age. Messages about human impacts adopt a factual
tone and evolve following a rather systematic pattern.
For illustration, we provide an example of the treatment
by The Guardian of the “Nepal quake”. The news starts
by mentioning the occurrence of an event with fatalities,
e.g., “Fatalities as earthquake hits Nepal” (The Daily
Telegraph, 25 April, 09:19, item 6371294). Within a few
hours, the regular update of the human losses starts, e.g.,
“Nepal earthquake: more than a hundred people dead”
(The Guardian, 25 April, 12:04, item 6371816), “Nepal
earthquake: nearly 700 people dead” (The Guardian,
25 April, 13:42, item 6373501) and “Nepal quake: more
than 1,000 people dead after tremor near Kathmandu”
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136 M. H. Devès et al.: Seismic risk: the biases of earthquake media coverage
(The Guardian, 25 April, 17:44, item 6381853). As the
hours go by and the numbers continue to rise, concur-
rent topics begin to emerge, stories become more per-
sonalized and the news starts referring to distinct cate-
gories of victims (famous people, nationals, vulnerable
people and so on), e.g., “Nepal quake kills more than
1,000 and spreads terror on Everest” (The Guardian,
26 April, 00:23, item 6382569), “Google executive
Dan Fredinburg filmed at Everest base camp before
death” (The Guardian, 26 April, 16:49, item 6396313)
and “Népal: le bilan des victimes françaises pourrait
s’alourdir”4(Le Parisien, 3 May, item 6542461). Aid
and rescue operations and life conditions start attract-
ing interest, e.g., “Nepal earthquake: rescue continues
as death toll exceeds 2,500” (The Guardian, 26 April,
18:18, item 6397229) and “Nepal earthquake: thou-
sands seek shelter as death toll exceeds 2,500” (The
Guardian, 27 April, 02:04, item 6402976). As the days
go by, the death toll appears less frequently, with the
news reporting official numbers only when those are up-
dated, e.g., “Nepal earthquake death toll exceeds 4,000
with many still missing. More than 4,000 are confirmed
dead and 6,500 injured. . .” (The Guardian, 28 April,
item 6430398). Proportionally, there is a lack of interest
in injuries and general health issues (with psychological
issues even more strongly ignored).
During the phase of coverage dedicated to impacts,
we observe a tendency toward sensationalism. Almost
half of the news items use adjectives such as “devas-
tating”, “powerful”, “catastrophic”, “enormous”, “dra-
matic”, “monster” or “violent”, emphasizing the ex-
tent of the devastation. Surprisingly, terms referring
directly to emotions (such as “fear”, “desperation”,
“panic” and “courage” among others) remain rare. For
example, “Nepal’s second monster quake” (The Aus-
tralian, 12 May, item 6749166), “As rescue efforts were
hampered by bad weather, dramatic details emerged
about the devastation at the base camp in the wake of
an avalanche” (The New York Times, 28 April, item
6423784), “Nepalíes cavaron con sus manos para sacar
a sobrevivientes de montañas de escombros. Pánico. Lá-
grimas. Miedo. Todos estos sentimientos se conjugaron
ayer como parte de la jornada trágica que vivieron los
miles de nepalíes que habitan Katmandú, y es que tras
el fuerte terremoto de 7.8 grados en la escala de Richter
que dejó en el país al menos mil 475 muertos [. ..] los
sitios históricos están completamente devastados”5(La
4“Nepal: the death toll in France could increase”
5“Nepalese dug with their hands to remove 25 survivors from
mountains of debris. Panic. Tears. Fear. All these feelings were ex-
perienced yesterday as part of a tragic day for the thousands of
Nepalese living in Kathmandu, as a strong earthquake of 7.8 de-
grees on the Richter scale left at least 1475 dead [. ..] the historical
sites are completely devastated.”
chronica de hoy, 26 April, item 6387254), “vías de co-
municación completamente sepultadas por corrimien-
tos de tierra y rocas”6(La chronica de hoy, 27 Octo-
ber, item 10394058), “En el barrio de Gongabu, com-
pletamente arrasado, fallecieron 500 de las 8.000 vícti-
mas del terremoto”7(El Pais, 13 May, item 6779435)
and “Reportage dans des villages coupés du monde, dé-
vastés par la catastrophe, où les secours peinent à arriver
comme l’aide des autorités.”8(Le Monde, 28 April, item
6434796).
–Within a few days following the event
The focus slides from impacts to response operations. A
total of 45.2 % of the news of our corpus refers to this
category (Table 3). In the case of a tsunami alert, the
theme of response operations appears earlier in the cov-
erage, as the news passes on information about warn-
ings and, if relevant, mass evacuations. In the absence
of a tsunami threat, the news focuses on aid and search
and rescue operations, e.g., “Rescue teams dig for Nepal
quake survivors” (USA Today, 27 April, 6401498),
“Rescuers were struggling to reach quake-stricken re-
gions in Pakistan and Afghanistan on Tuesday as of-
ficials said the combined death toll from the previous
day’s earthquake rose to 339.” (The Times of India,
27 October, item 10393016) and “FRANTIC rescue ef-
forts to save people trapped under rubble are taking
place after a 7.9 magnitude earthquake hit near Nepal’s
capital, Kathmandu.” (Daily Telegraph, 25 April, item
6372184). In these cases, evacuation and displacement
are generally under-reported.
First, the messages adopt a general tone, becoming more
specific when the international community starts send-
ing help, e.g., “China’s rescue team pulls first survivor
out of debris after Nepal quake” (China Daily, 27 April,
item 6409965), “The burly Californian and fellow mem-
bers of a disaster response team deployed by the U.S.
Agency for International Development were looking,
against all odds, for collapsed buildings that might still
have people trapped alive[.. . ]” (The Los Angeles Time,
1 May, item 6499637) and “Turkish rescue workers in
Kathmandu, Nepal pulled a man alive from the rub-
ble of a destroyed building on Monday.” (USA Today,
27 April, item 6414192).
We note the tendency of the international news to glo-
rify the contribution of the international community to
6“Communication routes completely buried by landslides of
earth and rocks”
7“The neighborhood of Gongabu – completely wiped out – 500
of the 8000 people died in the earthquake”
8“Report from villages cut off from the world: devastated by
the disaster, with relief efforts as well as help from authorities are
struggling to arrive”
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M. H. Devès et al.: Seismic risk: the biases of earthquake media coverage 137
help the “poor and vulnerable”, e.g. “As world lead-
ers and global charities tried to grasp the scope of an
earthquake that devastated Nepal, they offered condo-
lences for the nearly 1,400 people killed and readied
emergency aid for the survivors. Mountaineering groups
struggled to check on climbers, and Nepalese abroad
did their best to reach families in the stricken area.”
(The Times of India, 26 April, item 6382872) and “With
the help of Los Angeles firefighters, rescuers Thursday
pulled a teenage boy from the wreckage of a nine-story
Katmandu hotel that collapsed around him five days ago
when an enormous earthquake shook Nepal.” (The Los
Angeles Times, 30 April, item 6494627).
Rescue operations are also an occasion for relating per-
sonal stories, if not miraculous ones, e.g., “Google ex-
ecutive Dan Fredinburg filmed at Everest base camp be-
fore death” (The Guardian, 26 April, item 6396313) and
“Boy found alive 5 days after Nepal quake” (The Age,
30 April, item 6481498). Such stories can take different
forms depending on context. In Nepal, one finds sev-
eral stories about “children saved from the rubble” (The
Guardian, 30 April, item 6480552). In Afghanistan, sto-
ries focus on “twelve girls caught in a stampede while
trying to escape from their school” (Daily Telegraph,
26 October, item 10367166).
At this stage, the duration of coverage plays an impor-
tant role in the richness of the content of the news. The
coverage of the “Nepal quake” is longer and richer: the
living conditions, internal displacement, epidemic risk
and mass cremation are all issues that are not at all ad-
dressed in the coverage of the other earthquakes.
–A few days to few months after the event
The coverage intensity has faded out, impeding the
proper coverage of long-term issues (Fig. 4). Few news
items refer to recovery, which tends to cover distinct
temporalities, from a few days to several months (Ta-
ble 3), e.g., “Nepalese villagers clean up four days af-
ter a monster earthquake killed more than 5,000 peo-
ple in the Himalayan nation” (USA today, 29 April,
item 6462063) and “The International Federation of
Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies warned on Fri-
day that longer-term support is needed to help shat-
tered communities recover six months after a magnitude
7.8 earthquake struck Nepal.” (China Daily, 10 October,
item 10361489)
The theme of reconstruction is dedicated to more per-
manent repairs and rebuilding. There are enough news
items referring to this theme for us to identify a few key-
words, but the coverage remains poor (Table 3). There
are again different temporalities. In the short term, the
news reports that people are rebuilding their homes. In
the longer term, the news reports the reopening of pub-
lic infrastructure such as schools, hospitals and histori-
cal buildings as a sign of returning to normal life, e.g.,
“Survivors in quake-hit Pakistan seek help to rebuild
homes” (Times of Malta, 28 October, item 10408082)
and “Hundreds of thousands of Nepalese children have
returned to school in Nepal for the first time since two
earthquakes last month killed more than 8,700 people
and injured 23,000. . .” (The Guardian, 31 May, item
7161853)
–A window of communication for scientists
According to Haas et al. (1977), the second and longer
phase of reconstruction corresponds to the continuing
assessment of hazards and risks and structural and non-
structural improvements to reduce the impact of fu-
ture events (i.e., mitigation and adaptation measures as
well as prevention). This phase lasts many years, dur-
ing which attempts are made not only to recover but to
improve the state of living, and society devotes some
attention to the construction of memorials or the insti-
tutionalization of a narrative memory of the event. We
could not find enough news items referring to mitiga-
tion, adaptation and prevention to identify keywords.
There are, however, a few items referring to a narra-
tive dimension: the ones that place the event in a coun-
try’s history. For example, “El terremoto fue el sexto
mayor movimiento telúrico en la historia de Chile y el
de mayor intensidad en el mundo durante 2015.”9(El
Universal, 17 September, item 9516610).
A few news items also mention the lessons learned
(or not learned) from past events, e.g., “Nepal earth-
quake: learn lessons or more will die in future disasters,
warns expert” (The Guardian, 29 April, item 6460947)
and “How Nepal can avoid the mistakes of Haiti” (The
Guardian, 12 May, item 6745299).
By doing so, the press contributes to maintaining a form
of knowledge about existing risks. This contribution to
the collective memory often happen just after the main
shock (or after large aftershocks). It is also a time when
the press listens to experts, and so it might be a good
window for communication. People are looking for el-
ements to make sense of what has just been going on.
This time window could be used to reinforce prepared-
ness in the general population, as news about a disas-
trous earthquake – even located far away – may momen-
tarily alter the feeling of safety among readers (Wood et
al., 2012).
3.2.3 The figures of “earthquake news”
The identity matrix allows for the identification of the cate-
gories of actors that are the most present in the news. A total
of 44.2 % of the news mentions the people affected by the
9“The earthquake was the sixth largest telluric movement in
Chile’s history and the most intense in the world in 2015”
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138 M. H. Devès et al.: Seismic risk: the biases of earthquake media coverage
earthquake. The exact terminology varies with time: “those
affected” start as “victims” to become “rescued”, “survivors”
and then “locals” or “villagers”. A total of 6 % of the news
refers explicitly to vulnerable people.
A total of 27.7 % of the news mentions state representa-
tives who are responsible for organizing the public response,
but regional and local public services are absent (Table 3).
Surprisingly, only 8% of the news refers to civil and mili-
tary security services and 7.7 % to rescuers in general. Only
3.8 % of news sources mentions UN agencies; 2.5 % refer
to international aid; and 5.4 % refer to experts, specialists or
scientists, mostly during the initial phase of coverage after
the main shock and after the big aftershock in the case of the
Nepal quake. The private sector is rarely mentioned, except
Google and Facebook due to their people finder tools. Other
figures emerging from the “earthquake news” are “famous
unknowns” whose stories serve to exemplify the experience
of the people affected. The news sometimes refers to famous
personalities, either because they are among the victims or
due to their generous donations. It is interesting to observe
that local communities and their representatives are almost
absent from the news. This confirms one classical rule of
newsworthiness regarding the preference for elite people and
celebrities (Galtung and Rudge, 1965; Harcup and O’Neill,
2001, 2017).
4 Discussion
Studying earthquake coverage at the global scale, we reach
different conclusions to authors such as Rovai and Ro-
drigue (1998). Among the 7136 earthquakes of magnitude
4.5+occurring in 2015, we indeed observe significant dif-
ferences in coverage: most events are not reported by the
news media, except a few that are particularly well covered.
However, once events are covered, we observe an astonish-
ing homogeneity in the news content. There are, of course,
variations in the way journalists treat the information – edito-
rial choices and cultural proximity to the impacted countries
are both parameters influencing the duration and content of
the coverage – but these variations remain small. Our results
suggest that there is a typical framing of the earthquake in
the international news.
This framing seems to introduce major biases in the repre-
sentation of the seismic risk. A first bias is linked to the short
duration of the coverage. Analyzing Google Trends, Tan and
Maharjan (2018) confirm our empirical observation that the
peak in public interest after destructive earthquakes follows
an exponential temporal decay. The same tendency was ob-
served for smaller events by Earle et al. (2010). Our results
complement these findings, showing that the international
online journals follow the same tendency. However, we go
further than previous studies in exploring the consequences
of that exponential decay on the news content. It focuses
the information on short-term issues such as the description
of the hazard and of its impacts and emergency operations.
The mid-term and long-term issues of recovery, restoration,
reconstruction, adaptation, mitigation and preparedness are
largely under-reported.
This finding outlines the necessity for scientists to commu-
nicate, whenever possible, within a few hours following the
occurrence of an earthquake, especially big events that are
the most capable of catching a large audience. Of course, the
need for reactive communication should not result in unpre-
paredness. Having a knowledge of the content and the evolu-
tion of typical earthquake news can help design typical com-
munication tools that could be quickly adapted on a case by
case basis once an event has occurred. Designing scientific
messages, one should pay particular attention to counterbal-
ance the known biases.
Communicating about the hazards, for instance, it would
be important not to insist on including information about
the magnitude but to find simple words to pass on the no-
tions of seismic intensity and seismic crisis. As discussed in
a previous paper (Le Texier et al., 2016), the term of mag-
nitude is commonly used as a synonym for intensity by the
news media. However, the notion of intensity is the only one
that allows for the introduction of the notion of differential
damages, which is required to understand the importance of
mitigation and preparedness (earthquake-resistant construc-
tion, site effects and so on). Another topic that is absent
from news media narratives is that of the location of the next
event. Coulomb stress triggering theory can help answer that
question, at least probabilistically speaking. Thus, it could
be interesting to communicate on the dynamics of the seis-
mic phenomenon, notably to help design adequate prevention
measures (it might shake elsewhere the next time! It might
shake again several times after the main shock!). Regarding
impacts, our analysis supports the statement from McClure
et al. (2001) that the representation of the seismic risk that
is built by the press emphasizes the immediate and overly
destructive nature of the event, occulting the real timing of
such disasters: a time to anticipate and get prepared, a time
to protect, and a time to recover and reconstruct. We agree
with authors such as Lamontagne et al. (2016) and Wood et
al. (2009), who stated that scientific messages should encour-
age people to take preparatory actions and get them prepared
for potential losses, describe to them the timeline of the dis-
aster cycle and teach them ways to diminish losses.
Although unprecedented, we are aware that our study also
has some caveats. The use of keywords to quantify themes
and topics provides robust conclusions but is not completely
satisfactory. We tried to get around these limitations by pres-
electing words from a list of the most frequently used terms.
A further step is to engage with more complete techniques of
text analysis, combining inductive and deductive approaches.
We could, for example, use machine learning methods such
as word2vec (Le and Mikolov, 2014) for the simplification of
the collection of keywords and the quantification of the dif-
ferent steps of the news coverage. However, this tool would
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M. H. Devès et al.: Seismic risk: the biases of earthquake media coverage 139
complement but not replace the qualitative analysis of the
content we undertook in this study.
One of our working hypotheses was to demonstrate the
existence of a global framing of earthquake news. To reach
this goal, we chose to work on the international news, but
it would be important to undertake a similar analysis on the
national and regional press as well as social media. A recent
work by Jamieson and Van Belle (2019) suggested, for in-
stance, that the level of development of the disaster-stricken
community influences the nature of news coverage in other
at-risk communities: “if an earthquake occurs in a commu-
nity with a high level of development, the news coverage is
much more likely to draw lessons for their community, and
less likely to emphasize differences that prevent policy learn-
ing”.
Another interesting lead to explore would be to study the
evolution of the public state of mind as they read the news.
This could allow for more careful selection of the informa-
tion to provide and when to provide it (see Wein et al., 2016,
for an example).
5 Conclusion
“Most people do not experience disasters first-hand, but rely
on mediated depictions of distant events.” (Jamieson and Van
Belle, 2019). This is why it is of utmost importance to study
the narratives built by the news media when reporting about
distant disasters. In this paper, we explore the news media
coverage of seismic events in the international news dur-
ing the year 2015, analyzing 320 888 news items published
in English, Spanish or French by 32 RSS feeds distributed
worldwide. Among the 7136 earthquakes of magnitude 4.5+
occurring that year, three were predominantly covered: the
sadly famous “Nepal quake” that hit the valley of Kathmandu
in April, an earthquake in Chile that shook the area of Ilapel
in September and an earthquake in Afghanistan that struck
the Hindu Kush in October. We compare the duration and
content of the news media coverage of these three major
earthquakes with classical models of disaster risk manage-
ment.
In doing so, we demonstrate (1) that there is a typical
framing of the news regarding earthquakes in the interna-
tional news, and (2) that this framing introduces major bi-
ases in representation, impeding the proper appropriation
of the seismic risk by the public. The news content faith-
fully follows the succession of phases predicted by the DRM
scheme, describing the hazard before reporting on its ef-
fects and the response of the communities impacted. How-
ever, an important bias is introduced by the very short dura-
tion of coverage: only the first phases of the DRM scheme
are covered, whereas the issues of recovery, restoration,
reconstruction, adaptation, mitigation and preparedness re-
main largely ignored. We also observed the following biases:
(i) the news tends to concentrate on the description of im-
pacts and, among them, more specifically on human losses.
This focus is associated with the pervasive use of sensational-
istic terms describing a landscape of devastation, which may
contribute to fatalistic judgments that the damage cannot be
prevented. (ii) The second theme of interest – the second in
terms of coverage intensity but the first in terms of timing –
is that of hazards. The communication is centered on the no-
tion of magnitude, with the concept of seismic intensity being
ignored. Aftershocks can occasionally be treated as isolated
events, testifying to a lack of understanding of the concept
of the seismic crisis and, except for tsunamis, secondary haz-
ards are barely mentioned. (iii) The third theme of interest
is that of the emergency response. The focus is on alerts and
evacuations in the case of tsunami warnings and on aid, and
search and rescue otherwise. Other issues such as safety mea-
sures, temporary housing, water or electricity cuts and so on,
as well as longer-term issues are barely mentioned.
On the basis of that analysis, we discussed leads to im-
prove the scientific communication on earthquakes. Taking
advantage of the short window of interest that follows big
earthquakes, scientists should familiarize people with the real
timeline of a seismic disaster cycle. .. which tends to last
longer than the interest of the news media.
Data availability. This paper benefited from the GEOMEDIA
database produced and maintained by the International College of
Territorial Science (http://www.gis-cist.fr, last access: 1 Novem-
ber 2018). Earthquake parameters were obtained from the USGS
Comprehensive Earthquake Catalog (ComCat), which was searched
using https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/search/ (last access:
1 November 2018).
Author contributions. MHD was responsible for the conceptual-
ization of the study, project administration, methodology and writ-
ing the original draft of the paper, as well as the writing, revision
and editing the final paper in concert with all co-authors. MHD,
MLT and HP were responsible for data curation and investigation.
MLT and HP undertook the formal analysis. MLT and MHD carried
out the validation. HP and MHD were responsible for the figures,
and MHD created the tables. CG provided access to the GEOME-
DIA database.
Competing interests. The authors declare that they have no con-
flict of interest.
Financial support. This research has been supported by the Uni-
versité de Paris, Centre des Politiques de la Terre. It is IPGP contri-
bution number 4031.
Review statement. This paper was edited by Jon Tennant and re-
viewed by Lisa Matthias and Iain Stewart.
www.geosci-commun.net/2/125/2019/ Geosci. Commun., 2, 125–141, 2019
140 M. H. Devès et al.: Seismic risk: the biases of earthquake media coverage
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