Skip to content

How to frighten people with impending eruption in a country with no active volcano? The shared responsibility of media and scientists

Alexandru Szakács1, 4, Károly Németh2,3,4

  • Affiliations: 1Institute of Geodynamics, Romanian Academy, Bucharest, Romania; 2Saudi Geological Survey, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia;3Massey University, Volcanic Risk Solutions, Palmerston North, New Zealand; 4HUN-REN Institute of Earth Physics and Space Sciences, Sopron, Hungary 

  • Presentation type: Poster

  • Presentation time: Monday 16:30 - 18:30, Room Poster Hall

  • Poster Board Number: 101

  • Programme No: 7.2.13

  • Theme 7 > Session 2

Abstract

With the advent of new and powerful social media networks and of the emergence of science influencers as an extremely effective science divulgation tools became readily available to spread ideas spontaneously at global, regional and local scale, commonly for the sake of own carrier ambitions. Volcanology and volcanologist are not immune to such temptations. A case study conducted in Eastern Europe may convincingly illustrate this trend. The Pleistocene Ciomadul volcano in Romania whose last eruption occurred ca. 28.000 years ago, was since 2015 the focus of repeated alarming news in the Romanian and Hungarian, as well as in the English-language media (including Smithsonian Institution's and Scientific American's outreach webpages). Starting from scientific papers published, a group of researchers, eager to popularize their work and results, initiated media interviews whose published texts wildly distorted and exaggerated those results in the sense that the volcano is ready to erupt. Titles such as „A volcano in Romania, considered extinct, seethes on the verge of eruption" (in Romanian), "Without warning", "Warning. Ciomadul volcano can erupt again!", "If the Carpathian volcano awakens, that will be devastating" (in Hungarian), "Magma found simmering under an 'extinct' volcano. Here's what that means" (in English) had a strong emotional impact on the people living in the volcano's proximity. These alarming media reports was rarely denied or corrected by the scientists involved. By contrary, despite this experience, they repeatedly fuelled the media portals invoking their newly published papers, some of them including the misleading wording "apparently extinct" in their titles.