The Newsworthiness of Brazilian Distress: A Peak Analysis on Time Series of International Media Attention to Disasters in Brazil

TL;DR

This study analyzes international media attention to Brazilian disasters using peak detection in news time series, revealing factors influencing global coverage.

Contribution

It introduces a systematic, country-specific approach to understanding media attention dynamics on Brazilian disasters through peak analysis.

Findings

Identified key periods of heightened international media coverage.

Demonstrated alignment between news peaks and disaster database events.

Provided insights into factors driving international media focus.

Abstract

Media coverage influences disaster response, yet the drivers of international media attention to local events remain unevenly understood. Brazil offers a compelling case: some of its natural and technological disasters occasionally hit the international headlines. However, systematic analyses of what makes these events be discussed abroad are still missing. Addressing this gap requires representative, validated and country-specific news datasets. This paper presents a peak analysis of 2k news about Brazilian fires and landslides in German newspapers from 2000 to 2024. Using time series segmentation to detect news event peaks, we examine the extent to which they can be temporally aligned with observations in national and global disaster databases.