The purpose of this research was to describe the meaning of "earthquake" and "tsunami" in two groups with different exposures to the Chilean natural disaster on February 27th, 2010. A non-probabilistic sample of two-hundred-forty subjects from Constitución (n=104) and Punta Arenas (n=136) was selected. The first group was directly exposed to the earthquake and tsunami and the second group was indirectly exposed. Natural semantic network analysis (SNA) evidenced that both groups have the same semantic representation of earthquake and tsunami, using emotional words such as fear, death, destruction, despair, disaster, loss, anxiety, sadness, pain and panic. Additionally, those who directly experienced the phenomenon use more emotional words to define earthquake than those exposed to it vicariously.
Concept; disaster; fear
