Quantitative content analysis examines influences on media coverage of natural disasters in Germany, suggesting key predictors.
News coverage on natural disaster events varies in its likelihood and extent due to journalistic selection. Event-inherent news factors can explain this variation. This quantitative content analysis found damage and visuality to be strong predictors of disaster-related news coverage in Germany while geographical proximity does not play a significant role. Results regarding social proximity and classification of disasters as climatological are nuanced. Furthermore, various news outlets exert diverging gatekeeping strategies in relation to natural disasters.
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Beecken et al. (2026) studied this question.
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