Ebola coverage: ‘Panic is spreading faster than the virus itself’

How is “the most serious health emergence of modern times” being monitored by the media?

The Ebola virus has been shaping the agenda of media around the world in recent months, resulting in impressive numbers of coverage. From the beginning of May, Cision found over 1.5m references to the Ebola virus in online news items, from 190 countries. But the question is, which countries or areas of the globe are contributing most to editorial coverage of the Ebola outbreak?

Margaret Chan, the director-general of the World Health Organization, in her most recent alert to what she deemed the “the most serious health emergence of modern times”, – particularly evident in West Africa’s poorest countries, with fragile social and political systems – highlighted that “panic is spreading faster than the virus itself”.

Starting with the total number of references to Ebola per country, and considering the news items monitored in each of them, Cision developed an infographic that points out the countries, and areas of the globe, where the virus has had the most significance from an editorial standpoint.

With this global vision, it is possible to learn about the number of articles mentioning the virus in a single country, as well as observe Ebola’s editorial impact, represented through a percentage, in light of total news disseminated in that country, during the same period of time.

Africa is the continent whose online media gave the most prominence to news mentioning the Ebola virus. Of a total of the approximate 6.5 articles disseminated in that area of the globe, 55,461 mentioned the virus. That is to say that 0.84% of coverage – approximately 1% of total coverage – referred to the issue.

When considering the 30 most prolific countries in news stories about Ebola, in online media, analysis found that 25 are African. Countries such as Liberia and Sierra Leone, which are seriously affected by this human tragedy, recorded significant percentages in editorial significance with regards to the virus, ranging from 25 to 30%.

America is the second most productive continent in terms of editorial significance given to Ebola (0.82%). Nevertheless, and despite the high volume of news detected about the virus, 779,390, this number is of little significance bearing in mind the total volume of coverage detected during the period of analysis which is in excess of 94.5m.

Europe and Oceania follow with 0.60% and 0.37%, respectively and finally Asia, presenting a modest 0.19% in terms of editorial significance. Notwithstanding, in the Asian continent, an exception to a certain degree of detachment about the virus, is evident in East Timor’s results: media outlets in that country committed 3.14% of their stories, in online media, to the subject.

Among the 190 countries that disseminated coverage mentioning the Ebola virus, the UK ranks at 123 in terms of editorial significance (0.40%), with 76,760 stories, which ran in online media, during the period of analysis.

This analysis was carried out using Cision’s global motorisation service, by searching the word Ebola, in different languages. In the period from 1 May to 15 October 2014, 255.68 billion articles were captured and a total of 1.5m references to the Ebola virus were registered.