Traditional and social media coverage and charitable giving following the 2010 earthquake in Haiti

Media reports on disasters may play a role in inspiring charitable giving to fund post-disaster recovery, but few analyses have attempted to explore the potential link between the intensity of media reporting and the amount of charitable donations made. The purposes of this study were to explore media coverage during the first four weeks of the 2010 earthquake in Haiti in order to assess changes in media-intensity, and to link this information to data on contributions for emergency assistance to determine the impact of media upon post-disaster charitable giving.

Data on newspaper and newswire coverage of the 2010 earthquake in Haiti were gathered from the NexisLexis database, and traffic on Twitter and select Facebook sites was gathered from social media analyzers. The aggregated measure of charitable giving was gathered from the Center for Philanthropy at Indiana University. The intensity of media reporting was compared with charitable giving over time for the first month following the event, using regression modeling.

Post-disaster coverage in traditional media and Twitter was characterized by a rapid rise in the first few days following the event, followed by a gradual but consistent decline over the next four weeks. Select Facebook sites provided more sustained coverage. Both traditional and new media coverage were positively correlated with donations: every 10% increase in Twitter messages relative to the peak percentage was associated with an additional US $236,540 in contributions, while each additional ABC News story was associated with an additional US $963,800 in contributions.

While traditional and new media coverage wanes quickly after disaster-causing events, new and social media platforms may allow stories, and potentially charitable giving, to thrive for longer periods of time.