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Bill Tancer is the general manager of global research at Hitwise and a weekly columnist for Time Magazine.
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Cyclones and Earthquakes -- Two Countries, Two Different Responses
May 21, 2008 10:40 AM
The first two weeks of May saw catastrophic natural disasters in the Myanmar Cyclone on May 3, 2008, and the Sichuan Earthquake in China on May 12, 2008. We've witnessed massive spikes in visits to online charitable sites immediately following the Thai Tsunami in 2004 and Hurricane Katrina in 2005. In May 2008, visits to the 282 charitable sites tracked by Hitwise indicated nominal increases in traffic in light of the devastation in Asia.
Despite the low volume of visits to charitable sites, there were significant increases in searches for "cyclone," "earthquake," "China," "Burma" and "Myanmar" over the last two weeks. There was a clear difference in the sites visited after Chinese earthquake searches versus those surrounding the devastation in Myanmar. over one-third of "China earthquake" searchers over the last four weeks clicked through to online news sites followed by online reference sites like Wikipedia.org.
Myanmar and Burma searches reveal that U.S. Internet users were geographically challenged in placing the country on a map. Over 60% of searches on "Myanmar" visited reference and educational sites. The most common search phrase containing the country's name over the last weeks was "Where is Myanmar." Sadly what was missing in search data was any measurable interest in donations or aide to the stricken region. Perhaps our lack of interest in giving aide to the latest disasters can be traced to Myanmar's refusal of aide, consumer sentiment or perhaps our lack of familiarity with the rest of the world.
May 21, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (2)
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Great column -- sad reflection on us!
Posted by: Daisy Whitney | May 21, 2008 12:40:52 PM
Well, I'm not surprise some Americans are geographic illiterite. I'm not a whiz in geography, but least I knew where Burmar is on the world map. Some Americans do not even know where are their neighboring states on the map!
As for why there were little charitable donations, big duh there. Burmar's rulers pretty much quench people's desires to contribute to a government that no doubt wouldn't give that aid to their people. China already is a super power and the TV images and news pretty much made people think they can easily handle themselves better than the USA ever did with the Katrina disaster. Plus US citizens now are being pinched by rising gas and food prices, thus very few are donating these days. In the end, there is no surprise why there are few donations toward Burmar and China disaster charities.
(Not to mention some people are now wary of scams popping up around these disasters.)
Posted by: GWP | May 22, 2008 7:04:44 AM
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