ABSTRACT

South Africa has periods of drought, which lead to water restrictions. Enhanced public awareness and understanding of water scarcity and drought might contribute to the sensible use of water resources. In this article the level and nature of public awareness towards water scarcity and drought in South Africa were determined using Google Trends over a period of 10 consecutive years from 1 January 2009–1 January 2019. Google Trends has real-time datasets, which examines search terms on Google and offers insight into current interests. The data were used to establish the level of public awareness regarding water scarcity and drought. Pre-drought searches were compared to searches done during drought conditions and the correspondence between Google Trend searches and media headlines were identified. People’s searches reflected that they were more environmentally aware during media reported environmental crises.

摘要

南非有干旱时期，导致水资源限制。提高公众对缺水和干旱的认识和理解可能有助于合理利用水资源。在本文中，从 2009 年 1 月 1 日至 2019 年 1 月 1 日的连续 10 年期间，使用谷歌趋势确定了南非公众对水资源短缺和干旱的认识水平和性质。谷歌趋势有实时数据集，用于检查搜索Google 上的条款，并提供对当前兴趣的洞察。这些数据用于确定公众对缺水和干旱的认识水平。将干旱前的搜索与干旱条件下的搜索进行比较，并确定谷歌趋势搜索与媒体标题之间的对应关系。