Abstract
This study examined the influence of a variety of factors on the news coverage of international disasters occurring between 1 January 1996 and 31 December 2013 in 10 representative US news outlets over a 4-week period. The results showed that the severity of a disaster, as measured by death toll and financial losses, was the most consistent and significant factor influencing international disaster coverage in the US news media. Various geopolitical factors, such as trade relations with the United States, distance from the United States, gross domestic product, military expenditure, and political rights, also came into play, but the effects of these varied over time.
Introduction
Disasters have been endemic to the human experience from time immemorial, and despite humanity’s technological advances in recent centuries, they still exact a tremendous toll in human suffering every year. Because disasters are widely distributed throughout the globe, however, most people only experience glimpses of the disasters that occur outside their region indirectly, through the media. Thus, as scholars have noted, for those who have not directly experienced it, a disaster is a media construction (e.g. Cottle, 2013; Joye, 2010b).
When a disaster occurs, local and regional media can be expected to cover it as being of immediate interest to their audiences, and national media as well, out of a sense of connection with their fellow citizens who are affected by it. Disasters occurring in another country, and possibly even on the other side of the world, however, have no such immediate interest. Thus, how the media of one nation cover disasters occurring in other nations is of particular interest to scholars who seek to examine journalistic values, practices, and biases and to investigate what determines the media’s coverage of certain types of events. One obvious hypothesis would be that disasters which are not of local or national significance would receive less coverage, or even none at all, following a fundamental journalistic principle to give priority to issues that are more socially significant than others (Shoemaker and Reese, 1996). Supporting this idea, for example, Joye’s (2010b) content analysis of Flemish newspapers’ coverage of disasters from 1986 to 2006 showed that only about 30 percent of the disasters which occurred were actually covered. This raises the question of how widespread this pattern is in the news media of other nations and of what determines which disasters are covered and to what degree.
The purpose of the present study is to gain a better understanding of what determines international disaster news in the United States in a comprehensive and systematic way. As suggested above, international disasters may be unequally represented by the news media. Several studies have explored this topic (e.g. Joye, 2010b; Van Belle, 2000), but they have been limited in terms of the scope of media, length of time period, and range of factors examined. In addition, the present study focused solely on natural disasters, as such events occur all over the world and their causes are independent of political or social factors, and thus we can eliminate potential confounding factors that may cause other types of disasters, such as those that are due to human actions.
Literature review
International disaster news coverage
In general, people learn about disasters that have occurred in other countries through the media from a spectator’s point of view, not by direct experience (Chouliaraki, 2006; Joye, 2009). Joye (2009, 2010b) argued that for the majority of people living in Western and other developed countries, disasters are ‘a priori foreign news and distant suffering’ (Joye, 2010b: 255). Accordingly, the media play a crucial role in informing people about such events.
Furthermore, international disaster news can evoke compassion among global audiences for distant sufferers. Compared to other topics of international news, disaster news has the unique attribute of emotion, as ‘disasters bring a flood of powerful emotions to the public sphere’ (Pantti et al., 2012: 61). In examining various types of disasters, including wars/terrorist attacks (Chouliaraki, 2006), diseases (severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), Joye, 2010a), and natural/technological disasters (Houston et al., 2012; Joye, 2009, 2010b; Pantti, 2009), researchers have observed that general audiences’ perceptions of a foreign disaster and the degree of compassion they develop toward its victims are dependent on how the media frame the disaster (Chouliaraki, 2006; Cottle, 2013; Joye, 2009, 2015). In turn, the humanitarian interest in those stricken by such disasters can affect public opinion about government policy on disaster aid, as well as determining public support for disaster relief agencies (Chouliaraki, 2006; Pantti, 2009; Van Belle, 2000), and ultimately can help ‘to sustain a sense of global cohabitation as well as care and responsibilities for distant others’ (Cottle, 2013: 232).
Scholars have argued, however, that international disasters are unequally represented by the news media. Several studies have detected the privileging of disasters occurring in Western nations or in those with which Western nations are politically, economically, geographically, or culturally associated, with disasters in such nations receiving more extensive media coverage than those occurring in Third World nations (e.g. Adams, 1986; Cottle, 2013; Joye, 2009). According to Cottle (2013), this reporting pattern signifies the Western media’s common journalistic concept of a ‘calculus of death’. Western news media, Cottle argued, tend to evaluate the newsworthiness of disasters through a lens of ethnocentrism and Western interests and thus prioritize disasters that occur in nations whose cultural values, language, ethnic identification, and religious beliefs are similar to theirs. The operation of a calculus of death in journalistic practice results in journalists’ privileging of catastrophes that occur in Western nations over those that occur in Third World nations, even if a Western country’s disaster had a relatively low death count. Accordingly, this unethical journalistic practice ultimately serves to reinforce the global power status quo.
Similarly, Joye (2014) argued that the level of association between audiences (spectators) and distant sufferers in other countries is an important part of the journalistic practice of gatekeeping. In general, Joye (2009) noted that Western involvement plays a crucial role in determining the newsworthiness of foreign disasters. This journalistic inequality eventually influences how audiences view and understand the world (Pantti et al., 2012) and humanitarian behaviors such as donation and volunteering (Chouliaraki, 2006; Cottle, 2013; Joye, 2015; Simon, 1997).
Factors influencing the news coverage of international disasters
In examining the factors that influence the coverage of international disasters, researchers have found that the severity of a disaster, such as the number of people killed (Simon, 1997), and geopolitics (Chouliaraki, 2006; Pantti et al., 2012; Van Belle, 2000) are positively related to the coverage of international disasters. Geopolitics, according to Ó Tuathail and Dalby (1998), have a scope that ranges from physical proximity and political relations to economic and social intimacy, and include complex histories of collaboration, conflict, and colonialism between two nations. These geopolitical relationships serve as a fundamental basis for journalistic practice and influence the scope and direction of news coverage. In this process, news editors attempt to domesticate international disasters through political, cultural, and economic associations and the familiarization of unfamiliar issues so as to avoid compassion fatigue among their audiences (Joye, 2009) while generating cosmopolitan feelings and identification (Joye, 2015).
As regards international news in general, Shoemaker and Cohen (2006) introduced two criteria for the newsworthiness of international events: an event’s deviance and its social significance. Deviance can be categorized into three types: statistical, social change, and normative deviance. Statistical deviance concerns news items that are novel or noticeably deviant from the average (e.g. airplane crashes). Social change deviance indicates events that threaten the status quo of a social system (e.g. public demonstrations for political reform). Normative deviance refers to violations of generally accepted social norms and laws (e.g. crimes, terrorism, or culturally atypical behaviors).
In terms of social significance, Shoemaker and Cohen (2006) identified four types: political, economic, cultural, and public. Political significance indicates an event involving any aspect of a political system (e.g. elections and government actions), whereas economic significance includes economic and business events (e.g. exports/imports and economic growth rate). Cultural significance refers to any type of social institution (e.g. religion and ethnicity), and public significance is related to news items that can either enhance or threaten the public’s well-being (e.g. health, safety, and the environment).
Studies have indicated that international events which deviate from the norm and which occur in nations that are politically and economically important to the United States receive more coverage in the US news media (Shoemaker and Cohen, 2006; Shoemaker et al., 1991). According to Shoemaker et al. (1991), newsworthiness will be highest when an event is both highly deviant and socially significant (e.g. the 9/11 terrorist attacks). When an event has high deviance and low social significance (e.g. Princess Diana’s death), the newsworthiness of the event is still high. However, when an event is less deviant but socially significant (e.g. the passage of legislation), the newsworthiness of the event is only moderate. When both deviance and social significance are low (e.g. everyday events), the newsworthiness of an event is low.
In the present study, we attempted to test the influence of individual factors that have been identified as determining the newsworthiness of international events in the US news media. Although scholars differ on the details, the consensus is that both event-related factors and context-related or social factors influence news coverage. To examine those factors comprehensively, we first identified factors from the literature and then arranged them into three categories based on their characteristics.
The severity of an event
Employing the concept of deviance (Shoemaker and Cohen, 2006), researchers have found that international events which deviate from the normal situation or from social norms (e.g. disasters, military actions, and protests) are more likely to receive coverage from the US news media (Goodman, 1999). For disasters, scholars have found that the severity of a disaster, as measured by death toll, is highly associated with the amount of news coverage it receives (Gans, 1979; Joye, 2010b; Simon, 1997). For example, in their study of the television and print news coverage of earthquakes that occurred in developing and underdeveloped countries, Gaddy and Tanjong (1986) detected a robust relationship between news coverage and the number of human victims. Others, however, have reported conflicting results. For instance, Adams (1986) found only an insignificant relationship between death tolls from disasters and the amount of news coverage.
Relationship with the United States
As Shoemaker and Cohen (2006) pointed out, if a country has close ties with the United States, the significance of news about that country may increase due to the possible impacts on the United States. Shoemaker et al. (1991) showed that events which occurred in nations politically and economically important to the United States had a higher probability of receiving coverage from the US news media. Relatedly, Kariel and Rosenvall (1984) found that trade relations (i.e. import and export transactions) with the United States was a significant factor in the coverage of international news, as were some country characteristics, such as population and gross national product (GNP). Van Belle (2000) also observed that, after controlling for the magnitude of the events, geographic proximity significantly influenced US news coverage of foreign disasters. Similarly, Dupree (1971) and Rosengren (1977) found that the distance between two nations affected the US news coverage of international events, along with other factors.
Characteristics of the countries
The structural theory of foreign news coverage suggests that a country’s socioeconomic, geographic, and political characteristics play an important role in determining the nature and scope of news coverage of that country (Østgaard, 1965). Based on this theory, Dupree (1971) found 11 factors predictive of international news coverage in the US news media, including GNP, GNP per capita, population, and distance from the United States. Rosengren (1977) partly supported this finding by verifying that the level of trade, the size of the country’s population, and the geographic distance affected the volume of international news coverage. Researchers have also identified political and press freedom as determining factors in international news coverage because government regulation of the media can censor news releases and bar outside countries from gaining access to news sources (Salwen and Garrison, 1989). Ahern (1984) found that combining trade relations, GNP, and political status explained 60 percent of the variance in US newspapers’ coverage of international news.
In addition, news pertinent to the United States or to prominent political issues between the United States and another country tends to be covered more. Chang and Lee (1992) examined the impact of a threat to the United States and to world order as criteria for editors’ selecting international news. They found that editors devoted more attention to topics that involved US security and national interests. Similarly, using the concept of philosophical deviance, Golan and Wanta (2003) found that news events (e.g. elections, disasters, military actions) from countries with a history of military conflicts or hostile relationships with the United States received more journalistic interest than news events from countries seen by US news audiences as having less radical deviance. This journalistic inequality prompted by military factors combined with geopolitical and economic significance has been widely described in previous research on international news coverage (e.g. Joye, 2009; Singer and Endreny, 1993). In the same vein, Swain (2003) determined that military spending – one of the power status factors, along with others such as level of scientific research, gross domestic product (GDP), GNP, population, government type, and number of highways – was a significant predictor in determining the volume of international news coverage in the United States.
Based on the preceding review of literature, we propose the following hypotheses:
H1. The severity of an international disaster (death toll and economic losses) will be positively associated with the coverage of the disaster in the US news media.
H2. The relationship of the disaster-stricken country with the United States (trade relations and geographic proximity) will be associated with the coverage of the disaster in the US news media.
H2a. US trade relations with a disaster-stricken country will be positively associated with the coverage of the disaster in the US news media.
H2b. The geographic proximity of the United States to a disaster-stricken country will be associated with the coverage of the disaster in the US news media. A disaster that occurred in a geographically close country will receive more coverage from the US news media than one that occurred in a geographically distant nation.
H3. The characteristics of a disaster-stricken country (GDP, political freedom, population, and military expenditure) will be positively associated with the coverage of the disaster in the US news media.
In terms of changes in disaster coverage over time, Houston et al. (2012) examined the media coverage of 11 major national disasters that occurred in the United States between 2000 and 2010 and found that disaster topics were typically covered for a shorter time period than general news topics were, although the media in local communities affected by a disaster covered the disaster for longer periods. They also found that 62.8 percent of news coverage occurred in the first 30 days and that early coverage normally focused on the severity of physical damage, whereas later coverage expanded the coverage topics to more humanistic and political dimensions. How media coverage of international disasters changes over time is a topic that has received little scholarly attention. Thus, to gain a better understanding of international disaster coverage, we ask the following question:
RQ. How do the factors that influence the US news media’s coverage of an international disaster change over time?
Method
Identifying international disasters
Adopting Joye’s (2010b) approach, we used the Emergency Events Database (EM-DAT 1 ) to select international disasters that were relatively sizeable in the number of reported human deaths and the amount of economic loss. As criteria for selecting disasters, we used a death toll of 50 or more and economic damage of US$1 million or more, since these levels of damage would likely necessitate a request at the national or international level for external assistance and would thus be more likely to attract more media attention.
The timeframe covered 18 years of international disasters, from 1 January 1996, when the EM-DAT first began tracking international disasters, to 31 December 2013. This extended time period enabled us not only to acquire sufficient data to generalize our findings but also to avoid choosing a few cases with atypical media coverage. We only examined natural disasters, and thus biological and human-induced disasters were excluded from the dataset.
Independent variables
This study had three independent variables: disaster severity, relationships between the affected country and the United States, and the characteristics of the affected country. We assessed disaster severity by the death toll and the amount of financial losses in US dollars. To identify disaster cases, we first checked the EM-DAT. Then, using data from the EM-DAT and the Center for International Disaster Information (CIDI), we collected information on each disaster’s severity (human death toll and economic losses). If the EM-DAT and the CIDI database did not contain the information, we consulted other resources (e.g. online searches, news searches, and other disaster information sites). When we obtained conflicting data or failed to find the information, we deleted the case from the analysis.
Second, using geographic and economic considerations, we determined the relationship of each disaster-stricken country with the United States. We measured the geographic relationship by the geographic proximity between the capitals of the two countries using an online tool. We defined the economic relationship by the country’s trade relations with the United States, and measured this by the amount of export and import transactions with the United States using the US Department of Commerce database. To account for the possible effects of inflation during the study period, we recorded the dollar values of the amount of import and export transactions at the time of each disaster.
For the characteristics of each disaster-stricken country, we used five indicators that have been repeatedly examined in previous research: population, GDP, military expenditure, political rights, and civil liberties. First, we included population as a measure of a country’s relative size. Second, GDP was included to estimate the general size of a country’s economy. Third, we included military expenditure to gauge a country’s military power, which could potentially be a threat to the security of US citizens. Military expenditure was defined as the percentage of a country’s GDP spent on defense programs. Finally, political rights and civil liberties were used to determine the political freedom of a country. Political rights were assessed with three indicators (electoral process, political pluralism and participation, and functioning of government), and civil liberties were assessed with four items (freedom of expression and belief, associational and organizational rights, rule of law, and personal autonomy and individual rights).
The primary source for population, GDP, and military expenditure data was the World Development Indicators (WDI). If the information was not available in the WDI, we consulted the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) World Factbook, the Economic Intelligence Unit, and FIRST 3.0 as supplemental sources. To check compatibility between datasets, we pulled the data for a given year from each dataset and compared them by conducting simple correlation tests. The results showed that the information in the supplementary data sources was compatible with the primary dataset. For political rights and civil liberties, we used data from Freedom House for political rights and civil liberties and supplemented that with data from EarthTrends. All data were matched with the year when a given disaster occurred; for instance, if a country had a hurricane in 1998, all data were from the records for that year.
Dependent variable
The dependent variable was the number of news stories about an international disaster in major US news media. We included 10 major and influential news media outlets from five media types. First, we selected two national newspapers (the New York Times and USA Today) for their expertise in news coverage and their wide geographic coverage. Similarly, we chose three broadcast television networks (ABC, CBS, and NBC) and three news cable broadcasters (CNN, Fox News Channel, and MSNBC) for their national exposure and expertise in news. We included one radio network (National Public Radio) for its influence on other US media. Finally, we included CNN.com for online news coverage as well as for its news expertise.
Then, using the ‘Hlead’ (Headlines and Lead Paragraphs) search function of the Lexis-Nexis database, we assessed the media coverage of each international disaster by counting the number of news stories for 4 weeks after the date when each disaster occurred. This 4-week timeframe has been widely used in determining media coverage in the communication literature (e.g. Dan and Iorgoveanu, 2013; Nam et al., 2014) and enabled us to gather most of the news stories about a disaster from its inception to the launch of relief activities. Finally, to address the RQ, we recorded the 4 weeks of news coverage data both as one 4-week period and as four separate weeks. Because the media included in this study were all daily-news based, we converted this daily news into week-based units by summing up 7 days’ news coverage.
Control variables
We controlled for the possibility that a certain disaster type might be associated with more coverage than other types. Using the EM-DAT’s categorization, we identified four types of natural disasters (hydrological, geophysical, climatological, and meteorological disasters), and then dummy-coded them by setting a meteorological disaster as the basis for comparison.
Results
Using our criteria for selecting international disasters, we identified 201 events that occurred in 59 countries between 1996 and 2013. Out of the 201 events, 99 percent (n = 199) generated fewer than 500 news stories each, whereas one generated 790 news stories, and another generated 1130 news stories. Thus, these two events were considered outliers and excluded from the analysis.
Statistical procedure
Because the dependent variable (the amount of news coverage) was a count variable, we used Poisson regression, which is often employed for modeling count data. In general, count variables are non-negative (the lower bound is zero) integers (discrete in nature) with a histogram indicating a rapidly decreasing tail (an overabundance of zero) and show a non-normal distribution. Under these conditions, ordinary least squares (OLS) regression would not estimate the relationships accurately. Following the recommendation of Cameron and Trivedi (2009), we obtained robust standard errors for the parameter estimates to control for a mild violation of underlying assumptions.
After checking the assumptions, we performed a series of Poisson regression analyses. First, we entered the disaster type into the control block using the meteorological type of disaster as a criterion variable. Then, we entered three groups of independent variables into separate blocks. We repeated this process for the 4 weeks together and separately. It should be noted that because of the large units (e.g. millions and billions) involved in the measurements of some variables (e.g. economic loss, GDP, US import/export relations, and population), we adjusted the units to generate more interpretable results. Specifically, we used a thousand as the unit for lives lost and geographic proximity in miles, a million as the unit for population, and a billion dollars as the unit for economic measures (financial loss, US import/export relations, and GDP).
Effects of control variables
The results indicated that the type of disaster in the control block explained significant portions of the total variance in the news coverage of international disasters. In the first week, the control block explained 42.04 percent of the variance. For Week 2, the control block explained 17.47 percent of the variance; for Week 3, it explained 6.55 percent of the variance; and for Week 4, it explained 2.47 percent of the variance. Overall, the control block explained 29.44 percent of the variance for international disaster news coverage for the total 4 weeks.
The total 4 weeks
First, the results showed that the two disaster severity factors – death toll and economic losses – had significant impacts on the news coverage of international disasters: each additional thousand deaths increased the news coverage of an international disaster by 4 percent, and each additional billion dollars of economic loss resulted in a 0.01 percent increase in the news coverage of an international disaster. Therefore, H1 was supported for the total 4 weeks. Among the US relationship variables, only import trade relations with the United States was significant: each additional billion dollars of import trade with the United States was associated with a 1 percent increase in the news coverage of a disaster. Therefore, the results partially supported H2a while rejecting H2b. Finally, among the country characteristics variables, significant influences were detected for GDP and for political rights, but in the opposite direction: the size of a country’s GDP and its degree of political rights were negatively associated with disaster coverage by the US news media. This indicates that the higher a country’s GDP and the higher the political rights index of a country, the less likely the US news media were to cover an international disaster occurring in that country. Therefore, H3 was not supported (see Table 1).
Results of Poisson regression on the impacts of independent variables on news coverage for all 4 weeks.
GDP: gross domestic product; IRR: incidence-rate ratio.
N = 199; the standard value of the IRR is 1: If the value of the IRR is greater than 1, the independent variable is positively associated with the dependent variable. If the value of the IRR is less than 1, the two variables are negatively associated; in the control block, the criterion variable was the meteorological type of disaster.
p < .05; **p < .01; ***p < .001.
Analysis by week
Additionally, to address the RQ, which asked about how news coverage of international disasters changed over time, we conducted a series of Poisson regression analyses for each of the 4 weeks after a disaster occurred (see Table 2).
Results of Poisson regression on the impacts of independent variables on news coverage for Week 1–Week 4.
GDP: gross domestic product; IRR: incidence-rate ratio.
N = 199; in the control block, the criterion variable was the meteorological type of disaster.
p < .05; **p < .01; ***p < .001.
Week 1
In the first week, the two disaster severity factors, death toll and economic losses, were both significantly associated with the amount of news coverage: each additional thousand deaths was associated with a 4 percent increase in news coverage of a disaster, and each additional billion dollars in economic losses was associated with a 0.01 percent increase in coverage. Among the US relationship variables, again, only import trade relations was significant. Among the country characteristics variables, GDP and political rights were significant, but in the opposite direction: the higher GDP a country had and the more political rights people in the country had, the less likely the US news media were to cover a disaster in that country.
Week 2
In Week 2, the impacts of both disaster severity factors, death toll and economic damages, were again significant: every additional 1000 deaths predicted a 4 percent increase in the news media coverage, and every billion dollars of economic losses predicted a 0.01 percent increase in coverage. Among the variables representing the relationship with the United States, both import and export trade relations were significant. However, although the import trade relationship was in line with H2a, the export trade relationship was in the opposite direction. Among the country characteristics, the impacts of GDP and political rights again negatively influenced the news coverage of international disasters, similar to the results in Week 1.
Week 3
Interestingly, in Week 3, two additional variables – geographic proximity to the United States and military expenditure – emerged as significant. In determining the impact of the independent variables, the two disaster severity factors – death toll and economic losses – were consistently significant. Among the relationship variables, the import trade relationship with the United States was positively associated with the amount of news coverage of a disaster. Furthermore, geographic proximity became significant in Week 3, but in the opposite direction, indicating that each additional thousand miles between the two countries was associated with a 35.54 percent increase in news coverage. Moreover, two country characteristics variables were significantly related to news coverage of disasters: the size of a country’s GDP was again negatively associated with news coverage, but military expenditure was positively associated. This finding indicates that the US news media covered more disasters that occurred in countries that had a larger proportion of GDP devoted to military expenditure, whereas the size of the country’s GDP was negatively associated with news coverage.
Week 4
In the fourth week, interestingly, the variance explained by the entire model increased to 41.52 percent, which was significantly larger than that for Weeks 2 and 3. Within the independent variable block, both death toll and economic losses were again positively associated with news coverage. Among the relationship variables, the import trade relationship was also positively associated with news coverage for this week, indicating that the more the United States imported from a country, the more likely the US news media were to still be covering a disaster in that country. Among the country characteristics variables, GDP size and degree of political rights were negatively associated with the US news media’s coverage of that country’s disaster, whereas military expenditure was again positively associated.
Discussion
In the present study, we sought to detect the factors that determine the US news media’s coverage of foreign disasters. Over a 4-week period, disasters with a higher death toll and greater financial losses were more likely to receive media attention. The US news media also gave more coverage to disasters that occurred in countries from which the United States imported more, countries whose GDP was smaller, and countries where political rights were limited. For example, as regards import relations, the 2001 earthquake in El Salvador, where US imports were US$1880 million annually, was covered 10 times, whereas the 2011 earthquake in New Zealand, where US imports were US$3168 million annually, was covered 96 times. As regards GDP size, the 2002 typhoon in Korea, where the GDP was US$576 billion, was covered 3 times, whereas the 2006 typhoon in the Philippines, where the GDP was US$99 billion, was covered 31 times. Finally, in terms of political rights, the 2001 flood in Thailand, where citizens have many political rights, was covered 2 times, but the 2007 flood in Pakistan, where citizens’ political rights are restricted, was covered 10 times.
Except for GDP, the findings of this study are in accord with previous research on international news coverage in general. As Shoemaker and Cohen (2006) noted, international events that deviate from the norm and those that occur in countries which are politically and economically important to the United States receive more attention in the US news media. Consistent with this, we found that disasters which deviated statistically more from the norm in terms of death toll and economic losses were likely to receive more news coverage. The findings of this study are also consistent with previous research that found a positive relationship between trade relations and the coverage of international news events. Interestingly, the US media gave more coverage to disasters that occurred in countries with low GDPs. This finding can be explained by the longer aftermath of a disaster in such countries, as their limited financial resources led to delays in disaster relief and recovery efforts. Another interesting finding is that political rights had a negative influence on disaster coverage, indicating that the US news media gave more coverage to disasters that occurred in authoritarian countries where political freedom was limited. This finding can be explained by the concepts of philosophical deviance and political significance. According to Golan and Wanta (2003), news events (e.g. disasters) occurring in countries which have a history of military conflict or hostile relationships are likely to receive more journalistic attention than events occurring in nations with less notable deviance. Another possible explanation is that countries with limited political freedom are likely to be developing or underdeveloped countries, which are more vulnerable to the effects of natural disasters, and therefore the damage might be greater or last longer.
Additionally, we examined whether these factors change over time. In the first week of a disaster, we found that the same five factors – death toll, economic damage, import relations, GDP, and political rights – that were significant over a 4-week period were also significant. When disaster coverage continued into the following weeks, we observed somewhat different patterns. In Week 2, economic relationships with the United States became noticeably salient. In addition to the five determinants that were significant in Week 1, US exports emerged as a significant factor; the US news media gave more coverage to disasters that occurred in the countries from which the United States exported less. In Week 3, although the impacts of export relations and political rights were no longer significant, geographic proximity and a country’s military expenditure emerged as salient determinants, in addition to death toll, economic losses, US imports, and GDP size. In Week 4, the impact of geographic proximity was no longer significant, but a country’s military expenditure remained salient, and political rights again became salient. Among the significant factors in Weeks 3 and 4, military expenditure was particularly notable; this can be a proxy for a country’s international power and could impact the United States’ national security.
In sum, our findings indicate that, despite some variations over time, the US news media’s international disaster coverage is impacted by the internal factors of disasters per se (Simon, 1997), as well as by various geopolitical factors (Harcup and O’Neill, 2001; Mody, 2010; O’Neill and Harcup, 2009). According to Pantti et al. (2012), news coverage of international disasters is decided based on what audiences should know and how news should be presented from a geopolitical understanding of the disaster-stricken country. Thus, journalistic practice inherently complies with a geopolitical interpretation of global power relations and tends to prioritize disasters occurring in countries that are more geographically associated with the media’s home country, or disasters occurring in major power players in the current world order, rather than in less powerful nations. Consequently, the news media play a key role in reinforcing the global power status quo among their audiences. The factors and trends we found indicate what the US news media pay closer attention to and how they carry out their watchdog functions within their geopolitical understanding of the world.
Our findings are also aligned with the concepts of deviance and social significance (Shoemaker and Cohen, 2006), suggesting that the newsworthiness of international disasters follows the same journalistic principles as does international news coverage in general – that is, the more severe a disaster is in terms of human loss and financial damage, the more likely it is to attract journalistic attention from the US news media. In addition to this statistical deviance factor, different types of social significance factors also come into play, such as economic significance (e.g. GDP size, trading relationship with the United States), political significance (e.g. political rights), public significance (e.g. military expenditure), and geographic proximity.
Our results showed that some factors which previous studies found to be salient in international news coverage either were not significant (e.g. civil liberties and population) or were significant in the opposite direction (e.g. export relations, geographic proximity, and political rights). This incongruence can be explained by the difference between general events and natural disasters. Typically, general news events (e.g. elections, economic crises), including human-made disasters (e.g. terrorist attacks), are caused by political, socioeconomic, and cultural factors. The causes of natural disasters, in contrast, are independent of geopolitical factors, making some geopolitical factors less likely to have an impact on news coverage. Another interesting finding is that the variance explained by the control block (type of natural disaster) diminished from 42.04 percent in Week 1 to 2.47 percent in Week 4. This finding may indicate a transition of journalistic attention from a disaster itself to the aftermath of the disaster, then to an understanding of the country’s geopolitical relationship with the United States and to various country characteristics as event coverage continues.
This study contributes to the field in several ways. First, this study advances the theory of international news coverage (Cottle, 2013; Joye, 2010b; Shoemaker and Cohen, 2006) by including various geopolitical determinants and time considerations. Particularly, the extension of the timeframe over a 4-week period enabled us not only to determine the changes of journalistic practice over time but also to obtain a more comprehensive understanding of geopolitical influences on international disaster coverage. This method will be a useful reference for studies with similar approaches, such as those examining the long-term effects of agenda-setting or inter-media agenda-setting research. In addition, the findings of this study offer a glimpse into the journalistic patterns of the US news media in covering global disasters. Although some geopolitical factors were significant, they were not all significant in the same ways reported in the literature. Instead, we detected strong effects of the human and economic impacts of the disasters: the US news media regarded loss of human life as the most salient factor in disaster coverage. For instance, even when the economic losses were considerable, the US news media gave less coverage to the events if they had less significant human losses. When a larger death toll was reported, the events received greater coverage, regardless of the degree of economic damage.
As a pioneering effort, this study has several limitations. First, we used the EM-DAT to identify international disasters. Although this database is a reliable and widely referred-to resource for international disasters, different databases may contain other events not identified in the EM-DAT. Second, we used two criteria (a death toll of 50 or more and economic losses of US$1 million or more) in selecting disasters to explore; the inclusion of smaller disasters might reveal different patterns of journalistic practice. Third, we identified the factors for international disaster coverage by determining which ones had been used in previous studies. Other political, socioeconomic, and cultural characteristics of a country and other disaster-related factors certainly exist. Fourth, because we only examined coverage by US news media, the findings may not be generalizable to other countries. Fifth, our study determined the US news media’s journalistic practice in regard to international disasters by quantifying news coverage of it. Although this quantitative approach enabled us to examine the overall news coverage pattern, it did not allow us to understand qualitative aspects of journalism practices. Finally, possible spurious correlations could exist among some variables. For instance, political freedom, despite some exceptions, may correlate with the degree of a country’s economic development. If so, it could be socioeconomic status, rather than political freedom, that actually influences the US media’s coverage of a disaster in that nation.
This study was an exploratory attempt to identify the factors that influence international disaster coverage in the US news media. Further research is needed for a more comprehensive understanding of international disaster coverage. A direct extension of the present research would be to examine the differences in media coverage by considering more media types (e.g. local news media) and other disaster types (e.g. human-caused and biological) over a longer time period. In particular, the inclusion of disasters caused by humans (e.g. terrorist attacks) may lead to different results, as political, economic, and cultural dimensions are likely to be more closely intertwined with such disasters. In addition, although the findings of this study are generally congruent with those of previous research, the results did not show significant impacts for some factors that have been identified in previous research as significant in international news coverage, such as political freedom, population, and geographic proximity. Among these factors, geographic proximity in particular has consistently been found to be a significant determinant (e.g. Joye, 2010b). Thus, we suggest that future research revisit the impact of this geographic factor in global disaster coverage and examine its role using qualitative research methods that can capture a more nuanced understanding, such as in-depth interviews with reporters and ethnographic research on the newsroom.
Future research should also examine a wider range of factors. For instance, the coverage of a given disaster is likely to be impacted by the number of catastrophic events, including natural disasters, human-caused tragic incidents (e.g. terrorist attacks), and other threatening crises (e.g. economic recessions), as well as the occurrence of notable international events (e.g. the Olympic games) during the same time period or in the same geographic area. Exploring other context-related factors – such as the resources that the media invests in different countries, time-sensitive factors (e.g. the season when a disaster occurs), and the historic relations, as well as the political and cultural closeness, between the two nations involved – would also be illuminating. Finally, according to previous research in media system dependency theory, under conditions of uncertainty due to social crises such as disasters or terrorist attacks, the mass media are likely to serve as an important information source for the general public (Ball-Rokeach and DeFleur, 1976), and people will have a tendency to exhibit dependency on individual media (Loges, 1994). Therefore, a study on media differences, such as those among print, broadcast, and online media, in regard to international disaster coverage would yield meaningful findings, not only in identifying the factors influencing news coverage of different media but also in understanding the news coverage patterns of each media type over time.
Footnotes
Author Note
Sun Young Lee is now affiliated with University of Maryland.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.