New Delhi: Public interest in air crashes is directly linked to the number of people killed and its location, new research by the Oxford Internet Institute (OII) at the University of Oxford has found.
The researchers analysed about 1500 crashes by counting the number of page views and edits of Wikipedia articles about them. They found that public interest started rising only when 50 or more people died in the crash and then it increased linearly with the death toll. There is a direct link to media coverage, which in turn is higher for bigger death tolls, and for the West, especially North America.
The Wikipedia articles included in the study were about aircraft incidents and accidents dating from 1897 to 2016. The paper, published in the Royal Society Open Science, finds that the location of an airline company's headquarters trumps interest in death tolls if they are North American airlines in the English edition of Wikipedia or Latin American airlines in the Spanish edition of Wikipedia.
The researchers say a North American event triggers about 50 times more attention among English Wikipedia readers compared with an African event. In Spanish Wikipedia, a Latin American event triggers about 50 times more attention than an African and five times more than a North American event, regardless of the death toll.
12/10/16 Subodh Varma/Times of India
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The researchers analysed about 1500 crashes by counting the number of page views and edits of Wikipedia articles about them. They found that public interest started rising only when 50 or more people died in the crash and then it increased linearly with the death toll. There is a direct link to media coverage, which in turn is higher for bigger death tolls, and for the West, especially North America.
The Wikipedia articles included in the study were about aircraft incidents and accidents dating from 1897 to 2016. The paper, published in the Royal Society Open Science, finds that the location of an airline company's headquarters trumps interest in death tolls if they are North American airlines in the English edition of Wikipedia or Latin American airlines in the Spanish edition of Wikipedia.
The researchers say a North American event triggers about 50 times more attention among English Wikipedia readers compared with an African event. In Spanish Wikipedia, a Latin American event triggers about 50 times more attention than an African and five times more than a North American event, regardless of the death toll.
12/10/16 Subodh Varma/Times of India
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