Transition of Social Interest in Large-Scale Earthquake Disasters through Trend Analysis Based on Newspaper Article Data

Abstract

This study observes transitions in social interest in past large-scale earthquake disasters over time, based on time-series trends in the volume of newspaper coverage by newspaper page name. In this study, we conducted a trend analysis based on the number of newspaper articles and the number of words in each newspaper page name from 1995 to 2020 for the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake and the Great East Japan Earthquake. The results showed that the volume of articles on the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake declined sharply one month after the occurrence of the earthquake. The local and society pages showed similar trends of increase and decrease, eventually leveling off. On the other hand, the decrease in the volume of articles for the Great East Japan Earthquake was less variable and more gradual than that for the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake, and a similar pattern of trends was observed for many page names In this presentation, details and discussion of each result are reported.