While the largest epidemic of Ebola virus disease (EVD) in history is currently spreading through three West African countries, here in North America we’ve seen 4 cases—only one leading to unfortunate death. Yet, the amount of online news items uncovered by MediaMiser would lead you to believe we’re in the midst of our own epidemic—perhaps one of a different nature: disease sensationalism.
Curious as to how more prolific diseases stacked up against the Ebola coverage, we ran a media analysis on the top 6 deadly diseases plaguing North America today and compared them to the staggering number of media mentions Ebola has received in the US online news between September 1 and October 31, 2014.
Here’s what we discovered:
