The Australian bushfires in 2019–20 triggered massive amounts of charitable giving from the community. This study applied agenda-setting theory to examine if and how disaster news coverage influenced public donations in response to the crisis. A survey of 949 Australians found that people perceived news coverage of the event to be a strong influence on the amount they donated to bushfire appeals, over and above past giving levels. Furthermore, media coverage was more influential in participants' charity selection than both peer influence and direct communications from the charities. Next, a textual analysis of international news coverage of the event (N = 30,239 unique articles) was conducted. Compared to a control corpus of text, news coverage of the disaster used words related to ‘money’ and ‘support’ at disproportionately high frequencies. Together, the studies suggest that the media plays an agenda-setting role in determining how and to what extent people give to disaster appeals.

中文翻译：

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国际媒体报道促进对气候灾难的捐款

2019-20 年的澳大利亚丛林大火引发了社区的大量慈善捐赠。本研究应用议程设置理论来检验灾难新闻报道是否以及如何影响应对危机的公共捐款。一项针对 949 名澳大利亚人的调查发现，人们认为该事件的新闻报道对他们为丛林大火呼吁捐款的金额有很大影响，超过过去的捐款水平。此外，媒体报道对参与者选择慈善机构的影响大于同行影响和来自慈善机构的直接沟通。接下来，对该事件的国际新闻报道（N = 30,239 篇独特文章）进行了文本分析。与文本的控制语料库相比，灾难的新闻报道以不成比例的高频率使用与“金钱”和“支持”相关的词。