Changes in water consumption linked to heavy news media coverage of extreme climatic events

With a new web-scraping and search algorithm and real water utility data, Stanford PhD student Kimberly Quesnel and researcher Newsha Ajami have shown a relationship between media coverage of the recent historic California drought and household water savings in their paper, "Changes in water consumption linked to heavy news media coverage of extreme climatic events" published in Science Advances.

Publication Details

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Changes in water consumption linked to heavy news media coverage of extreme climatic events

Stanford News Story
Stanford researchers find link between media attention to drought and household water savings

Media Coverage 

• "When stories about drought spike, people use less water"
grist, October 27, 2017

• "More ink, less water: News coverage of the drought prompted Californians to conserve, study suggests"
LA Times, October 27, 2017 

• "Drought News Might Help Cut Water Waste"
Scientific American, October 27, 2017

• "Californians used less water with drought in the news"
Futurity, October 26, 2017

• "A flood of drought news can reduce water waste"
High Country News, October 25, 2017

• "Study: Media Coverage of Drought Spurred California Water Conservation"
Water Deeply, November 17, 2017