California's most recent drought - which officially ended this spring - made national, even international news. <
And that saturated coverage may have actually influenced Californians to conserve more water—compared to an earlier drought, from 2007 to 2009, which snagged far fewer headlines.
Researchers tallied all drought-related stories from nine major newspapers from 2005 to 2015. They also counted Google queries, and saw drought-related searches spike as more news appeared.
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Then they analyzed water use in the San Francisco Bay Area. And after controlling for other factors—like weather and unemployment—they found that drought news was significantly linked to a cut in water waste: up to an 18 percent drop per 100 news articles in a two-month period.
The results are in the journal Science Advances. [Kimberly J. Quesnel and Newsha K. Ajami, Changes in water consumption linked to heavy news media coverage of extreme climatic events]
Study author Newsha Ajami, a hydrologist at Stanford University, says more water news—from any source—is good for consumers.
"Obviously it's great the media's covering this, but on a non-drought or non-emergency situation, water agencies can actually step up their education and outreach efforts and create a more sort of two-way communication stream between them and their water users and customers."
So that the next time the state dries up, residents might more readily turn off the tap.
—Christopher Intagliata
[The above text is a transcript of this podcast.]
