The new coronavirus that originated in Wuhan at the end of 2019 has gone from unheard of to being declared a global health emergency in the space of a month. As you might expect, the online attention it received has also exploded in that time, and we wanted to track engagement to coronavirus stories on a week to week basis using NewsWhip data.

Let’s start at the end of December last year. For the sake of consistency, any reference to the times and dates that articles were published are standardized to US Eastern Time.

Week 1: December 2019 / January 2020

Week 1: Summary

Over the course of this week, there were fourteen articles combining for around 1,500 engagements, so there was relatively little pickup outside of local sources and blogs.

Week 2: January 6th – 12th 2020

Week 2: Summary

Although the coronavirus received significantly more press and social traction this week than the one that came before, it still saw relatively low engagements, especially for a newly discovered, potentially fatal disease. This week saw 90,000 engagements on around 1,300 articles, so while it was significantly more, it was hardly a critical mass.

Week 3: January 13th – 19th 2020

Week 3: Summary

This is the week where engagement began to reach a tipping point, topping a million for the week for the first time since it began to be reported on. The number of articles increased to 3,500, but crucially the average engagements per article increased to 350, having been at 70 the week before, which is what drove engagement over a million.

For clarity, the BBC article was actually published just after midnight GMT on January 20th, but as mentioned, this analysis looks at everything through EST for consistency, meaning it counts towards this week’s engagement numbers, albeit only barely. This set the tone for the coverage of the week of January 20th, either way.

Week 4: January 20th – 26th 2020

After the mass success of the BBC article from the week before, the week of January 20th gave way to an explosion of speculation about the origins of the virus and how broad its effects could be.

Week 4: Summary

This was the week that the coronavirus truly hit the heights on panic levels. The number of articles written shot up to almost 65,000 for the week, while average engagements also rose to 571 per article, combining for some 36 million engagements.

Week 5: January 27th – February 6th 2020

Week 5: Summary

This was the biggest week in terms of both articles written and total engagements, with 130,000 and 58 million respectively, though average engagements per article did drop back down to 433.

Week 6: FEBRUARY 3RD – FEBRUARY 9TH 2020

Last week, it returned back to normal. The reporting became less reactionary and a little more sober, looking at the victims and the spread of the disease in a scientific manner, as well as talking about countries giving aid to China in an attempt to combat it.

Week 6: Summary

There have been around 120,000 articles written during the course of this week, which between them garnered around 32 million engagements, significantly less than the previous week. The most engaged of these were all about the same thing; the death of Dr. Li Wenliang, who first sounded the alarm about the impending threat of the coronavirus. He died of the disease on the morning of February 7th. CNN’s article about this news garnered more than a million engagements.

Summary