Inflation of crisis coverage? Tracking and explaining the changes in crisis labeling and crisis news wave salience 1785–2020
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 22693153 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Stefan Geiß (0000-0002-8978-0095, Department of Sociology and Political Science, NTNU , Trondheim, corresponding author), Christina Viehmann (0000-0001-6673-0987, GESIS—Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences , Cologne), Conor A Kelly (0000-0002-6127-1782, Department of Sociology and Political Science, NTNU , Trondheim) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 75 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 27-41 |
| Publication date | 2025-02-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Communication (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0021-9916 • E-ISSN: 1460-2466 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (OUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1093/joc/jqae033 |
| OpenAlex | W4402656822 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
| References cited | 50 |
Has there been an inflation in crisis coverage in newspapers over the last centuries, and if so, what structural factors drive this change? We utilize computational text analyses along with our own signal detection algorithm to measure the presence of crisis keywords and the emergence of crisis news waves. An analysis of crisis coverage in The Times (U.K., 1785–2020, 183,239 news stories) shows that the share of coverage that uses crisis keywords has increased, though not steadily. The number and salience of crisis news waves tied to discernible events has increased at a slower pace. The hypothesized driving forces—government expansion, mediatization of politics, and the activity of crisis frame sponsors—explain the development well and allow accurate predictions even when ignoring time in the forecasting model. Crisis coverage seems to reflect not so much the problems society faces, but society’s identity, priorities, and outlook on the world.
Cognitive psychology · Crisis communication · Economics · Financial crisis · Inflation (cosmology) · Keynesian economics · Monetary economics · Political science · Public relations · Salience (neuroscience) · Climate Change Communication and Perception · Media Studies and Communication · Psychology · Public Relations and Crisis Communication
Comparing Media Systems
Insiders versus Outsiders
The Rational Public
Identification, Inference and Sensitivity Analysis for Causal Mediation Effects
Trust in News Media
STM
The Oxford Handbook of Political Communication
Degrees of Democracy
A Matter of Perspective? The Impact of Analysis Configurations on Testing the Agenda-Setting Hypothesis
Is Climate Change a Crisis – And Who Says So? An Analysis of Climate Characterization in Major U.S. News Media
The Agenda-Setting-Effects of News Factor Exposure
Four Phases of Mediatization
Does Fatigue from Ongoing News Issues Harm News Media? Assessing Reciprocal Relationships Between Audience Issue Fatigue and News Media Evaluations
The development of discourse presentation in The Times , 1833–1988
The Deleterious Dominance of The Times in Nineteenth-Century Scholarship
British Lobbying in Newspaper and Parliamentary Discourse, 1800–1950
The Times Digital Archive, 1785–2006 (Gale Cengage)
Bridging Collective Memories and Public Agendas
What is News
Paving the way for crisis exploitation
Hva er en krise
Risk society
The structural transformation of the public sphere
The Threshold of Public Attention
Beyond Time and Space
"Mediatization" of Politics
Political communication in and about crises. Potentials of a fragmented field
The Idea of Crisis in Modern Society
Securitization' revisited
The economic crisis as a game changer? Exploring the role of social construction in sustainability transitions
The New World of Crises and Crisis Management
The Rise and Fall of Social Problems
| Unique citing works | 3 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 3 |
| Citation span | 2025 - 2026 (2) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 3 |