Volcanoes in the News, 2019–2026: Event Peaks, Geography and Tone of Global Volcano Coverage, and How It Compares with Research and Invention

We measure how volcanoes were covered in a global news index from January 2019 to July 2026, using 47,980 de-duplicated volcano articles, and set that coverage beside 19,403 research papers (2015–2025) and 322 patent families (2015–2024) on volcanoes. Six results stand out: Single events, not seasons. Volcano news is made of peaks. January 2022, the month of the Hunga Tonga–Hunga Haʻapai eruption, was the largest, at 13.46 articles per 10,000. December 2019 (Whakaari / White Island) followed at 13.23. December and January together hold 26.17% of a typical year's coverage. Falling attention. The annual share was highest in 2021 (5.11 per 10,000) and fell by 34.1% between 2023 and 2025, to 2.55 per 10,000. Geography. By lift, Tonga (191.14), Guatemala (85.26), Iceland (67.1) and Indonesia (49.64) are the most over-represented countries. The United States, the largest source of located articles (25.8%), is under-represented at 0.53. Within the United States, Hawaii (105.6) and Alaska (26.84) lead by lift. Shifting attention. Volcano coverage as a share of Iceland's news fell from 271.92 per 10,000 in 2023 to 63.05 in 2025. In Guatemala it rose from 194.52 to 486.01. Tone and urgency. 57.8% of volcano articles are negative in tone (all news: 33.6%), and 62.6% are rated critical priority (all news: 42.6%). Indonesia's volcano news is 90.9% negative. Research and invention. Volcano papers fell from 2.96 to 2.02 per 10,000 papers between 2015 and 2025. The patent side is small, and China's office holds 79.9% of filings counted by office.