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+--- Thread: Research Droughts and floods attract little media attention (/thread-21105.html)
Droughts and floods attract little media attention - C C - Aug 16, 2026
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1140097
EXCERPTS: : Three factors—spectacular images, a high death toll and strong personal ties—make it more likely that the media in one country will report on a natural disaster in another, according to a study by the University of Bonn, the University of Warwick and Imperial College London, which has now been published in the journal Nature Human Behaviour.
The data also shows that droughts and flooding—two of the biggest effects of climate change—are considered particularly un-newsworthy, which could be one explanation for why many people are still underestimating the impact of the greenhouse effect.
[...] The researchers’ analysis produced three rules that appear to hold true worldwide: The media are particularly likely to report on sudden catastrophes that are accompanied by dramatic images, such as earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, avalanches or forest fires. Second, the more lives these events claim, the likelier it is that they will be covered in other countries.
“The third striking factor is the major role played by social connections with the country affected,” Fetzer says. “Surprisingly, this has nothing to do with geographical proximity or similarity of language. Instead, we found evidence that it’s primarily a question of strong personal ties.”
[...] How similar the two populations are at a DNA level also plays a role. In other words, the more genetic material that people in two different countries share on average, the more likely the media in one country are to cover natural disasters in the other. ... For example, some 1.5 million people emigrated to America from Ireland during the Great Famine of the mid-19th century, meaning that there are closer genetic matches between the people of Ireland and the US today than there would otherwise have been...
[...] many consequences of the greenhouse effect are seemingly having a hard time getting into the international headlines. Droughts are generally only covered by the media in the countries where they hit, for instance, and it is a similar story with floods, which likewise attract less international interest than, say, avalanches or earthquakes. “This makes it easier to ignore the consequences of global heating, at least until they arrive on our own doorsteps,” Fetzer concludes. (MORE - missing details, no ads)