School of Disaster Management, Stenden South Africa, Port Alfred, South Africa.
Disaster Management and Ethics Research Group (DMERG), Faculty of Pharmacy, Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9696-0473.
J Emerg Manag. 2024;22(7):101-112. doi: 10.5055/jem.0834.
The monthly search volumes for drought were extracted from Google® for South Africa using the Keywordsevery-where.com plugin from January 2004 until June 2022. To identify the potential qualitative drivers for such public interest the following data extracted by the plugin were investigated and analysed: the drought-related keywords, the long-tail keywords similar to drought, and the "people also searched for category" from the South African users. The Google Trends monthly score was extracted for South Africa and the Eastern Cape Province, and specific local municipalities/towns/cities in the province. The aim was to assess the relative significance of the drought interest in comparison to public interest in other search terms. The results of the Kruskal-Wallis analyses of variance by ranks showed that there was a statistically significant difference between individual values of the monthly search volumes for drought in South Africa, as a function of time of data extraction (5 percent level of significance; p-value ≤ 4.7 × 10). The monthly search volumes increased with time, which is based on the results of the Mann-Kendall test at a 5 percent level of significance (p-value ≤ 0.0092). Analyses of the Google Trends scores indicate that the relative interest in drought in South Africa and the Eastern Cape Province increased with time between January 2004 and June 2022 (the Mann-Kendall test at a 5 percent level of significance; p-value = 0.0011). The population's searches for drought were relatively low when compared to other search terms on Google. Drought adaptation of the South African community could be considered a driver of the Google searches for drought, but it is a marginal topic compared to other topics in Google searches. It might be necessary to increase this significance by investigating the "Google-search patterns for droughts" in the areas of Tshikaro, Mafusini, Cofimvaba, and Nxotsheni in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa.
从 2004 年 1 月到 2022 年 6 月，使用 Keywordsevery-where.com 插件从谷歌搜索中提取南非每月干旱搜索量。为了确定这种公众兴趣的潜在定性驱动因素，研究和分析了以下由插件提取的数据：与干旱相关的关键字、与干旱相似的长尾关键字，以及南非用户的“人们还搜索了”类别。提取了南非和东开普省以及该省特定地方市镇/城镇/城市的谷歌趋势月度得分。目的是评估干旱兴趣相对于其他搜索词的公众兴趣的相对重要性。等级方差的克鲁斯卡尔-沃利斯分析结果表明，随着数据提取时间的变化，南非每月干旱搜索量的个体值之间存在统计学上的显著差异（5%的显著性水平；p 值≤4.7×10）。每月搜索量随时间增加，这是基于曼恩-肯德尔检验在 5%的显著性水平下的结果（p 值≤0.0092）。对谷歌趋势得分的分析表明，2004 年 1 月至 2022 年 6 月期间，南非和东开普省对干旱的相对兴趣随时间增加（5%的显著性水平的曼恩-肯德尔检验；p 值=0.0011）。与谷歌上的其他搜索词相比，人们对干旱的搜索相对较少。南非社区对干旱的适应可以被认为是谷歌搜索干旱的一个驱动因素，但与谷歌搜索中的其他话题相比，这是一个边缘话题。通过调查南非东开普省 Tshikaro、Mafusini、Cofimvaba 和 Nxotsheni 地区的“干旱谷歌搜索模式”，可能有必要增加其重要性。
