Measuring the Gap Between Media Coverage and Public Information Demand: Evidence from the 2026 Lebanon Conflict

ArXi:2604.16417v1 Announce Type: cross This study examines the relationship between media coverage and public information demand during the Lebanon conflict in March 2026. Using a dataset of 11,623 English-language news articles collected from the GDELT database and Google Trends data for searches conducted within Lebanon, the study compares the distribution of news coverage across topics with the distribution of public search interest. News headlines were filtered for relevance and classified into four categories: Conflict, Economy, Living Conditions, and Emigration.