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

We measure how earthquakes were covered in a global news index from January 2019 to July 2026, using 149,186 de-duplicated earthquake articles, and set that coverage beside 60,920 research papers and 23,946 patent families on earthquakes. Six results stand out: Event peaks. Earthquake coverage shows no stable season. Its peaks come from single disasters. In February 2023, the month of the Turkey–Syria earthquakes, earthquakes took 102.09 of every 10,000 news articles, the highest monthly share in the window. The 2023 annual share (19.81 per 10,000) was 2.63 times that of 2022. Geography. The United States holds the largest raw share of located earthquake news (17.31%) but is under-represented at a lift of 0.36. Myanmar (109.45), Vanuatu (99.7), Turkey (47.78), Morocco (47.11) and Syria (45.66) are the most over-represented countries. By continent, Asia's lift is 2.5 and North America's 0.39. States. Within India, Ladakh (9.05), Manipur (4.91), Assam (4.42) and Jammu and Kashmir (4.07) lead. Within the United States, Alaska (17.14), Hawaii (14.23) and California (4.02) lead. Shifting attention. In 2025 earthquake articles made up 35.42% of located Myanmar news. Thailand's share rose 39.09-fold and Greece's 11.23-fold from 2023 to 2025, while Turkey's fell by 90.76%. Tone and urgency. 76.2% of earthquake articles are negative in tone (all news: 33.6%), and 78.3% are rated critical priority (all news: 42.6%). Research and invention. Earthquake papers made up 8.69 of every 10,000 papers in 2015 and 9.65 in 2025. Earthquake patent families published per year rose 2.86-fold from 2015 to 2024, after a peak in 2021, and China's office held 84.7% of office filings.