People are moved to act following exposure to media coverage of speci\ufb01c events. For example, the \u201cWerther E\ufb00ect\u201d is the popular term for the observed increase in suicides following media coverage of suicides. Here we develop a \ufb01ne grained method for assessing the e\ufb00ect of news stories on the intentions of internet users. Our method assesses the likelihood that a person was exposed to a given news story via the temporal and spatial distances between the location of the person and the location of the news story and\/or the website where it was published. This analysis of likelihoods allows us to estimate the contribution of a particular news story to a person\u2019s intent, as manifested in speci\ufb01c, intent driven, search engine queries. Data were gathered over a ten-month period and cover both the search engine queries of a large population and the news stories to which this population was exposed. We estimated the contribution of news stories to negative e\ufb00ects (i.e. media coverage of suicides and their e\ufb00ect on queries indicating suicidal intention), and positive e\ufb00ects (e.g. media coverage of disease prompting queries into disease screening). We demonstrate that the contribution of news stories can be assessed at the level of individual users, and we analyzed titles and phrases therein for their e\ufb00ect. Finally, we propose a predictive model to be utilized by media outlets to predict the likely e\ufb00ect of speci\ufb01c stories prior to their publication.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
People are moved to act following exposure to media coverage of speci\ufb01c events. For example, the \u201cWerther E\ufb00ect\u201d is the popular term for the observed increase in suicides following media coverage of suicides. Here we develop a \ufb01ne grained method for assessing the e\ufb00ect of news stories on the intentions of internet users. Our method […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"template":"","meta":{"msr-url-field":"","msr-podcast-episode":"","msrModifiedDate":"","msrModifiedDateEnabled":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"footnotes":""},"msr-content-type":[3],"msr-research-highlight":[],"research-area":[13553],"msr-publication-type":[193716],"msr-product-type":[],"msr-focus-area":[],"msr-platform":[],"msr-download-source":[],"msr-locale":[268875],"msr-field-of-study":[],"msr-conference":[],"msr-journal":[],"msr-impact-theme":[],"msr-pillar":[],"class_list":["post-378218","msr-research-item","type-msr-research-item","status-publish","hentry","msr-research-area-medical-health-genomics","msr-locale-en_us"],"msr_publishername":"WWW","msr_edition":"","msr_affiliation":"","msr_published_date":"2017-4-19","msr_host":"","msr_duration":"","msr_version":"","msr_speaker":"","msr_other_contributors":"","msr_booktitle":"","msr_pages_string":"","msr_chapter":"","msr_isbn":"","msr_journal":"","msr_volume":"","msr_number":"","msr_editors":"","msr_series":"","msr_issue":"","msr_organization":"","msr_how_published":"","msr_notes":"","msr_highlight_text":"","msr_release_tracker_id":"","msr_original_fields_of_study":"","msr_download_urls":"","msr_external_url":"","msr_secondary_video_url":"","msr_longbiography":"","msr_microsoftintellectualproperty":1,"msr_main_download":"378221","msr_publicationurl":"http:\/\/www.yom-tov.info\/Papers\/WertherEffectTempWeb2017.pdf","msr_doi":"","msr_publication_uploader":[{"type":"file","viewUrl":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/The-Werther-Effect-Revisited-TempWeb-WWW-2017.pdf","id":"378221","title":"The Werther Effect Revisited – TempWeb WWW 2017","label_id":"243109","label":0},{"type":"url","viewUrl":"false","id":"false","title":"http:\/\/www.yom-tov.info\/Papers\/WertherEffectTempWeb2017.pdf","label_id":"243109","label":0}],"msr_related_uploader":"","msr_attachments":[{"id":0,"url":"http:\/\/www.yom-tov.info\/Papers\/WertherEffectTempWeb2017.pdf"}],"msr-author-ordering":[{"type":"text","value":"Elad Yom-Tov","user_id":0,"rest_url":false},{"type":"text","value":"Shira H. 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