Media coverage of scientific issues in the aftermath of earthquakes: a comparative research on Emilia 2012 and Amatrice 2016

Abstract

After a large earthquake, broadcast and traditional media play a crucial role, fulfilling complex social and psychological functions, which can alternatively foster or hinder the return to normality of both exposed communities and society at large.

Media are a relevant resource for citizens to cope with disasters. Especially in the first days after the first big shake, scientists are asked by the media to provide scientific assessments of seismic phenomena, to explain both what is happened and what is purported to happen in a next future. As a consequence, geo-scientists visibility and voice across the media is doomed to rise till to become central in media narratives of disasters, providing an unprecedented window of opportunity to disseminate relevant messages about hazard, risk mitigation and resilience.

The urge to make sense of the event thus results in a genuine appetite for scientific knowledge (Wein et al. 2010), stressing the role of journalistic mediation along the whole risk / science communication process, as well as the ability of the media to provide public with steady and authoritative point of references to anchor their understanding of seismic phenomena.

The here presented research considered the media coverage of scientific issues during the Emilia 2012 and Amatrice 2016 seismic crisis, to the extent they were covered by the four most circulating Italian national newspapers: 'Corriere della Sera', 'la Repubblica', 'La Stampa' and 'Il Messaggero’ within the 31 days following the first earthquake shock.

The research considered 248 editions of the mentioned newspapers, and collected and processed data by using content analysis, an empirical methodology that allows analysing media messages as well as other types of communicative texts, in order to formulate statistical inferences on their explicit meaning (Neuendorf 2002).

The comparative analysis of news media coverage of Emilia (2012) and Central Italy's earthquakes (2016) highlights the relationship between physical events and media representation of expert knowledge, highlighting key trends and some significant signs of change in the news frames used to assess and communicate seismic risk.

The newsworthiness of scientific advice is everything but taken for grant: in fact, analysis made emerge two relevant points. First, media coverage of geo-science follows a ‘typical’ life cycle, broadly compatible with hype media theory (Vasterman, 2005). Most of the articles are indeed concentrated in the very first days, rapidly decreasing in the following days till to disappear at the end of the month. Second, the daily amount of news story is significantly defined by three variables: the maximum magnitude of aftershocks in the previous day, the number of days after the ‘zero event’ and the degree of controversy / conflict that arises from scientific evaluation of the ongoing phenomena.

The research has been partially published by the Italian journal ‘Problemi dell’Informazione’, but will be deepened still further in order to give geo-scientists a more comprehensive description of data and of their related implications on their own work.