Abstract：
We study the effect of media coverage on individual behavior during a public health crisis. For this purpose, we collect a unique dataset of 200,000 newspaper articles about the Covid-19 pandemic from Sweden-one of the few countries that did not impose lockdowns or curfews. We show that mentions of Covid-19 significantly lowered the number of visits to workplaces and retail and recreation areas, while increasing the duration of stays in residential locations. Using two different identification strategies, we show that these effects are causal. The impacts are largest when Covid-19 news stories are more locally relevant, more visible and more factual. We find larger behavioral effects for articles that reference crisis managers (as opposed to medical experts) and contain explicit public health advice. These results have wider implications for the design of public communications and the value of the local media.
摘要：
我们研究了在公共卫生危机期间媒体报道对个人行为的影响。为此,我们收集了来自瑞典的20万篇关于Covid-19大流行的报纸文章的独特数据集，瑞典是少数几个没有实施封锁或宵禁的国家之一。我们表明，对Covid-19的提及显著降低了对工作场所、零售和娱乐区的访问次数，同时增加在住宅位置的停留时间。使用两种不同的识别策略，我们证明这些影响是因果关系。当新冠肺炎新闻报道与当地更相关时，影响最大，更明显，更真实。对于引用危机管理者（而不是医学专家）并包含明确的公共卫生建议的文章，我们发现了更大的行为影响。这些结果对公共传播的设计和当地媒体的价值具有更广泛的意义。
