Fig 1.
Interactions between communication elements in the California drought are currently undefined.
Fig 2.
Theory-based presumptive interactions between communicative factors during the California drought.
Fig 3.
The Standardized Soil Moisture Index, or SSI series representative of the geological conditions, was first analyzed in a pairwise manner with each of the media data series.
The aim was to determine a baseline understanding of the pairwise relationships between all variables (soil moisture, Twitter activity, search engine trends and media coverage). Results illustrated which of the three media categories, and to what degree, responded to hydrological conditions.
Fig 4.
Correlation between lagged drought severity and twitter activity.
Table 1.
Drought severity and Twitter activity.
Table 2.
Temporal effect of Google search behavior on Twitter and newspaper coverage.
Table 3.
Temporal effect of Twitter activity on Google search behavior and newspaper coverage.
Table 4.
Newspaper coverage effect on Google search behavior and Twitter activity.
Fig 5.
The drought crisis agenda appears to be set by Twitter.
Google searches reinforce Twitter activity as well as media coverage, although neither of them are directly responsive to drought conditions.