Tag Archives: Turkey

Japan Earthquake Initial Media Coverage: Comparison with 2010 Disasters Haiti, Chile and Turkey Earthquakes

Posted on by • Posted in Countries, Country - Chile, Country - Haiti, Country - Japan, Disasters, Event - Tsunami Japan • Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , • 4 Comments

We pursue the specific analysis of the media coverage profile towards the Japan disaster right in the aftermath of the event, where there is a lot of incertitude about the final extent of the damages and casualties. In the Japan earthquake case there is the specificity of the nucelar crisis still active after the explosion in the Fukushima nuclear plant, analysed in our precedent post.

Concerning the update of the media coverage of the Fukushima blast counting with news up to six hours after it happened, our empirical results indicate that the media profile is basically the same as the one presented in the precedent post.

In this post we want to show how international media reacts to the Japanese massive earthquake and tsunamis, in comparison with recent natural disasters, that we have also monitored in the past using the approach developed by MRI Universidad de Navarra. Remember that the main aim is to compare media approach to Japan disaster in comparison with the results that we have obtained concerning the initial revelations of Wikileaks, that have shown in the precedent post.

We want to show to the readers of this blog to which extent media content profile of natural disasters share similar patterns.

We will compare in this post the initial media reaction to disasters, using news published in the same day that the natural disaster happens and, like with the Japanese earthquake and tsunami yesterday, there is a lot of confusion, unconfirmed data, and ongoing events.

First we compare yesterday news about Japan earthquake with the Haiti earthquake of Janauary 13 2010. Even if the magnitude if the quake was 7.0, it was soon clear that there could be a lot of human casualties due to the degree of destruction in the cities.

Both relates of devastating earthquakes share the same media profile concerning the brand vector “Tragedy”. Haiti earthquake exceeded Japan in the components tragedy, catastrophic and horrible, while Japan clearly dominates about the component worst.

The second disaster to be compared is the Chile earthquake in the Maule region, by Febraury 27, 2010. This was also a massive earthquake of 8,8 points, also followed by a deadly tsunami. Chile relate was similar to that of Japan as it was soon pointed out that infrastructure and housing was designed to suffer quakes. This saved a lot of lifes, but at this very early stage there was media conmotion because of the violence of the seism.

Our empirical results show that media coverage given to Chile was roughly identical to the Haiti case. Compared to Japan, Chile coverage insisted more on components tragedy, catastrophic and horrible.

Third example is Turkey earthquake, occurred in March 8, 2010, with a magnitude of 6.1 points. Initial media reaction told about a number of human casualties (57) which were actually lower with official final numbers.

We find again that Turkey earthquake in Elazig is really similar to Haiti and Chile. In comparison to them, there is lower level of association to the components already outlined: tragedy, catastrophic and horrible. They are in fact in line with Japan earthquake media coverage.

The conclusion after this empirical analysis of how media in English has covered three different natural disasters is quite clear: there is a strong common pattern. Natural disaster news seem to follow a common storyline at least at the initial stages right in the aftermath of the catastrophe. This result discards that media coverage profiles generated by the brand vectors proposed by MRI Universidad de Navarra are purely factual or unable to capture the content profile of the news analyzed.

Now we check these results about the common media coverage given to natural disasters by comparing them to other recent tragic events with a human origin. We have selected two cases of tragedies resulting in several deaths in accidents provoked unitentionally. So, we do not compare here a natural disaster against a criminal action resulting in killed people (like the Tuscon shooting or the Libyan Civil War). Our two examples are the Love Parade Stampede in Duisburg, Germany, that caused 21 victims in July 2010 in the one side, and the Polish Air Force crash near Smolensk (Russia), where 96 people died, with the Polish President and other elite from politics and economy, in Aril 2010.

Results concerning the Love Parade stampede media coverage show that the accident was associated to several components of vector “Tragedy”, specially concerning awful and failure. But we can also clearly observe that it does not follow the clear and systematic media pattern followed by all natural disasters events. Except for failure, Japan earthquake association to “Tragedy” is higher than for the Love Parade treatment.

Media coverage of the Polish national tragedy with the Tupolev crash is also associated to “Tragedy”, but again in a different perspective than the natural disasters. The vector most associated to tragedy for the Polish disaster is harm. Again, Japan is more associated than the Polish plane crash to “Tragedy”. Love Parade and Polish crash share points in common, but maintain their own specificities.

Our conclusion after showing these two additional cases of human tragedies is again that the strong common media coverage pattern shown in all natural disaster related news correspond to the internal logic of the storyline of this kind of event, that the methodology that we propose is able to capture.

Japan V. Japan Earthquake Media Impact by Cities

Japan IV. Fukushima Nuclear Crisis Media Coverage Evolution

Japan III. Japan Earthquake Initial Media Coverage: Comparison with 2010 Disasters Haiti, Chile and Turkey Earthquakes

Japan II. Fukushima Explosion Media Coverage vs Wikileaks: Portraying Fears of an Unknown and Uncontrolled Disaster

Japan I. Japan Earthquake and Tsunami Vs Wikileaks: Media Coverage of Disasters

Newspapers and Wikileaks: Case Le Monde

Posted on by • Posted in Countries, Org - Wikileaks, Rep Issue - Newspapers • Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , • 1 Comment

Another branch of analysis offered by the revelation of secret US State Department by Wikileaks organization is the impact on newspapers reputation and visibility. The way the organization has used to reveal the secrets, in alliance with some selected local newspapers with international audience, and not in a fully open way to all newspapers offers us an additional piece of analysis.

We show in this post the impact of this alliance with one of the selected newspapers: the French nrespaper Le Monde. Evidently, we also count with the equivalent information with all other affected newspapers: Der Spiegel, El País, The Guardian and New York Times, even if the latter was not formally in the list of the allied newspapers.

First two graphs show the percentage of the citations that Le Monde has received by other newspapers abroad in Europe that directly referred to any Wikileaks issue.

We show two different measures in time. The first one covers news published within the period between the start of the affaire and 23 December 2010. The second one refers to citations received between mid December 2010 and mid January 2011.

The results show that in our initial measurement, Wikileaks news largely dominated references to Le Monde in media in Europe. It supposed more than two thirds of all news in countries like Turkey, Ukraine, Hungary or Portugal. Prevalence was also massive in Italy or Russia. In the other extreme, German and Spanish newspapers refer the less to Wikileaks when mentionning Le Monde: in both countries Le Monde contributions are subject of wide analysis, but this special behaviour is also probably due to the fact that these two countries counted with local newspapers (Der Spiegel, El País) showing revelations linked to US State Department cables.

Three weeks later, the picture is substantially different. The highest level of prevalence by mid January is just below 30% of all news referring to Le Monde. The impact in many countries is just in the line of 10%. Right now, Wikileaks is still an issue for Le Monde international visibility, but not more a crucial one. Many other subjects attract international journalists when referring to Le Monde. The strong association between Le Monde exclusives on Wikileaks is clearly weakening. In a sense, our results also provide an indication of international influence and prestige of Le Monde journalist contributions, as currently in many countries up to 90% of references to Le Monde are unconnected with Wikileaks, even if it is still an open media affaire.

Next graph refers to Le Monde exposure in Latin American countries. Average rate of Wikileaks prevalence is substantially higher than in European countries in both measurements, about 70% by December and 20-40% in January. We expected to find these results, as non European country media should be less “usual consumer” of Le Monde news, and so Le Monde exposure and visibility is strongly reinforced due to the Wikileaks shared exclusive. Apparently, Venezuela is the country in the region more sensitive to Wikileaks revelations.

The following graph contains a selection of countries from other continents. We find a similar path that observed in Latin American countries in Indonesia, Australia and India. Quite surprisingly to us, we find a quite low level of Wikileaks prevalence in Israel media coverage, among the lowest in all our sample. Israel media behaves apparently like European countries, and reproduces a number of news and informations from Le Monde that are unrelated with Wikielaks affaire.

We present now the behaviour of Le Monde and Wikileaks news as treated by media from the United States, the country subject to the leaks. In order to facilitate the intepretation, we compare US behavior to the average of Europe and Laton America behavior.

Our results clearly suggest that US media follows a specific path in relation with references to Le Monde news. December measure shows a prevalence of Wikileaks news about a 63% level, which does not rank among top values in international comparison. The difference comes by the fact the US is the only country in the world where the prevalence is almost not eroded three weeks later, as it still presents a level of 48% of Wikileaks related references when mentioning Le Monde news. It ranks among top in the world (with Venezuela and some other countries) and, as mentionned, presents the lowest level of decrease between two periods.

How dependent is Le Monde international media exposure from Wikileaks news? We can offer a first answer to this question as we know that the media impact of Wikileaks news has decreased substantially in January in comparision with December peaks, as we showed in a previous post. Taking into account this information, we compare the total number of international mentions received by Le Monde in December 2010 and January 2011, using a value 100 for December figures. We organize information by continents.

According to our results, Le Monde benefited of an increase of some 100% of international citations compared to more normal times (January 2011) in Latin America and Europe. By contrast, in the United Stated, the directly affected country by Wikileaks, the level of local media attention to Le Monde news even increases in January. Of course, as time elapses and media interest on Wikileaks news still decreases, we will obtain a more clear picture of the direct impact of Wikileaks exclusive on Le Monde international exposure.