Bloggers' Influence in Tsunami Coverage: A BlogPulse Analysis

Bloggers played a critical role in providing timely on-the-scene coverage and disaster information immediately after the Dec. 26, 2004, tsunami devastated vast sections of Southern Asia, and their influence continues with ongoing relief efforts.

That's according to an in-depth BlogPulse analysis of tsunami-related coverage by bloggers.

Now featured as a special section on BlogPulse, the analysis finds that the tsunami elicited far more discussion and interest than other 2004 natural disasters, including the Florida hurricanes and the eruption of Mount St. Helens.

Likewise, the remoteness of the disaster, combined with the ease of blog-publishing tools, gave birth to entirely new blogs dedicated solely to tsunami coverage – blogs that quickly claimed their place among other mainstream blogs.

While some of the same political bloggers who covered the 2004 Presidential election also were heavily involved in spreading news of the tsunami, their top 10 ranks were altered in December 2004-January 2005 by the emergence of four tsunami-only blogs: The Southeast Asia Earthquake and Tsunami Blog, The Diplomad, WorldChanging and Earth News.

Likewise, BlogPulse mapped the visual patterns of blog postings and country-specific blog posts for affected countries, including Thailand, India, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Burma, and Maldives. Before the tsunami, the respective countries were mentioned in anywhere from .1% to .3% of all blog posts. After the tsunami, the major countries were mentioned in up to 1% of all blog posts – a figure that has remained higher through January.

Other findings:

The most-mentioned relief agencies are, in order, the International Red Cross/Red Crescent Societies, UNICEF, Oxfam and Doctors Without Borders. As relief efforts continued into January, more blogger attention turned to UNICEF as agencies began focusing on helping orphans, protecting children at risk of abduction, and reuniting families.

Several blogs provided critical roles in covering the tsunami: first-hand, eyewitness accounts and videos of the tsunami. When mainstream-media news crews couldn't get to the remote countries for several days, bloggers stepped in and provided the first phases of on-the-scene coverage and commentary.

Blogs also filled another role: Accountability. Some blogs helped track where resources were spent and the results of those efforts, while others attempted to focus on other devastated areas of the world (civil war in Sudan; drought-affected Africa, etc.) in order to press the wider issues of international relief, foreign aid and foreign policy.

BLOGPULSE TREND GRAPH OF THE DAY: Because of tsunami-related coverage, the entire Asian contintent continues to receive an inordinate amount of "buzz" in the Blogosphere.