Sad truth about how the world reacted to Sri Lanka’s bombings

Staff writers news.com.au

People posted photos of their trips to France and tweeted their heartbreak. Billionaires pledged massive sums of money for reparations. Some of our own current and former politicians suggested Australia pitch in too.

But the response to the Sri Lankan bombings on Easter Sunday has been comparatively silent, at least according to Google search trends.

While the two tragedies were very different, the fire that ravaged the cathedral received seven times more searches on Google than the bombings in Sri Lanka, which killed over 300 people, an Al Jazeera SEO analysis revealed.

Worldwide search interest was at least seven times greater for the keywords “Notre Dame” than “Sri Lanka” over the past week.

Within 24 hours of both incidents, search interest in Notre Dame was up to nine times greater than that of the Sri Lankan bombings.

There were only three countries where interest in the terror attacks outweighed that of the fire: India, Indonesia and the United Arab Emirates.

Emotional as the Notre Dame fire was, there were no human casualties. Even the 180,000 bees living in the hives of the cathedral’s roof survived.

Al Jazeera suggested a key factor in this was Notre Dame had a “closer to home” appeal for Western countries, and more Westerners had travelled to France than Sri Lanka and shared a similar Eurocentric culture.

Search phrases relating to raising funds for Notre Dame also peaked, while similar searches for money for Sri Lanka performed poorly after the tragedy.

The death toll in the Sri Lanka attacks has risen to 359 and more suspects have been arrested.

Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the attack, but it’s yet to be proved they were directly involved.