Mountains out of Molehills : a visualization by David McCandless of media scares from the Y2K bug to swine flu.
More interesting are the seemingly perennial hype like violent video games and autism vaccinations. The latter seems to be characterized by mostly spikes corresponding to big news developments; it’s hard to tell anecdotal stories about it without some other novelty to glam it up.
On the other hand, violent video games seem to be a more constant source of stories, due to them usually building off of already-sensational stories of youth violence that happen at a steady clip year-round. But there is a seasonal dip, as the stories drop to near-nothing during the summer; I’m unsure as to why this is the case.
Maybe it’s because video games aren’t conflicting with schoolwork during the summer, so it’s harder to leverage already-existing anxieties to scare parents. Maybe it’s because most scary youth violence that can be blamed on video games takes place at schools. Maybe the local news is too busy scaring us with sharks and warm-weather threats.
I need a few more pretty graphs to confirm/deny any theories. :(
