2002 Volume 42 Issue 1 Pages 66-82
The present study examined through a quantitative analysis of newspapers how fast people forget natural disasters and accidents which caused considerable damage. We reviewed several empirical studies, finding out a longterm trend, which approximated to a form of an exponential curve, describing how people lose their concern in the events. However, the reanalysis of these data revealed two major factors which affect this fading out process. Firstly, a series of events interfere with each other so that the following event may lead people to forget the preceding one. Secondly, the wearing out processes slow down every time the monthly or annual anniversary of the event comes. Furthermore, we demonstrated how, besides media coverage analyses, some collective behavior variables, such as passenger decrease after major airplane accidents, may be helpful in measuring collective forgetting.
