Downloading disaster: BBC news online coverage of the global financial crisis

The financial crisis that began in autumn 2008 has attracted considerable attention in regard to the role of the media. This article examines both the audience and the content of the coverage of the crisis on the BBC News website, the largest online news provider in the UK. It demonstrates that online news was a significant part of the overall media coverage of the crisis. Online consumption patterns are very different from those of other media, but the claim that online audiences are ‘dumbed down’ or that they were not provided with a sophisticated range of information and analysis is critically examined. The study also questions whether the content of news coverage was as negative as has been suggested. The research is based on unique access to the BBC News web server-logs, which allow researchers to track audiences not only for the online site as a whole, but also for individual stories, and to match that to content analysis. It makes an important contribution to providing evidence-based research to examine the competing claims that have been made about the role of the business media in the financial crisis.