Understanding News Geography and Major Determinants of Global News Coverage of Disasters
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Transcript of Understanding News Geography and Major Determinants of Global News Coverage of Disasters
Understanding News Geography and Major Determinants of Global News Coverage of Disasters
Jisun An and Haewoon Kwak Qatar Computing Research Institute (QCRI)
C+J Symposium 2014
‘Sucked into a hole’
10 most-‐read news at BBC on 17th Oct 2014
Celebrity
Technology
Local newsEnvironment
10 most-‐read news at BBC on 17th Oct 2014
5 out of 10 most-‐read news articles are about foreign disasters.
News outlets keep
reporting foreign disasters.
In a process of
globalisation, a
foreign disaster
can have a political
or economical
impact.
Such emotional
news raise sympathy
for others which can
be a key to drive
more audience to
the news sites.
People suffered
from those
disasters wait for
a global aid to be
recovered.
Which disasters receive more
attention from foreign news media?
Theory of newsworthiness
• Proposed by Galtung and Ruge, 1965
• Frequency, intensity, unambiguity, meaningfulness, consonance, unexpectedness, and continuity of an event
• Some characteristics of an actor (e.g. identity) involved in the event
Effect of national attributes
A guest country
(where a disaster happens)
A host country
(where news media exists)
Effect of national attributes
Population, degree
of press freedom,
geographic size,
economic power, etc
A guest country
(where a disaster happens)
A host country
(where news media exists)
National traits
Effect of national attributes
Population, degree
of press freedom,
geographic size,
economic power, etc
A guest country
(where a disaster happens)
A host country
(where news media exists)
National traits
RelatednessGeographic distance,
shared language,
volume of trade,
past colonial ties
A wide range of national attributes and power
relationship has been examined, but results are
inconsistent, mainly due to cultural difference.
A wide range of national attributes and power
relationship has been examined, but results are
inconsistent, mainly due to cultural difference.
Examine
d inter
nation
al
news co
verage
in a
single
count
ry
Which disasters are most
likely to be ‘globally’ covered?
why news about
disasters?
News geography
Global news coverage
GDELT dataset
Which countries are presented in one country’
international disaster news and to what extent?
Which disasters are most likely to be
‘globally’ covered?
3,574,627 events (666,150 natural and man-‐made disasters)
happening in 205 countries from April 2013 to July 2014
News geography
Global news coverage
GDELT dataset
Which countries are presented in one country’
international disaster news and to what extent?
Which disasters are most likely to be
‘globally’ covered
3,574,627 events (666,150 natural and man-‐made disasters)
happening in 205 countries from April 2013 to July 2014
GDELT dataset
• monitors the world's news media in print, broadcast, and web formats, in over 100 languages
• compiles a list of every person, organization, location, themes (events), etc. from every news report
• stretches back to January 1, 1979 and update daily
• leverages Google Translate for Research to augment human translation
Example
“47 Jihadists were killed” was found in ten different articles that day
• NumArts=10,
• CountType=KILL,
• Count=47,
• ObjectType=”jihadists”,
Fields• DATE
• NUMARTS
• COUNTTYPE
-‐ AFFECT, ARREST, KIDNAP, KILL, PROTEST, SEIZE, WOUND..
• COUNTS
• THEMES
-‐ NATURAL DISASTER, MANMADE DISASTER, …
• LOCATIONS
• OBJECTIVE
-‐ “Christian missionaries” from “20 Christian missionaries were arrested”
• SOURCEURLS
Inferring the country of news media by alexa.com
News geography
Global news coverage
GDELT
Which countries are presented in one country’
international disaster news and to what extent?
Which disasters are most likely to be
‘globally’ covered
3,574,627 events (666,150 natural and man-‐made disasters)
happening in 205 countries from April 2013 to July 2014
Which countries are presented in
one country’ international disaster
news and to what extent?
Examples of cartogram
News geography seen by North America
North America
South Asia
Strong regionalism in reporting foreign disasters
Disasters covered by each region
do not overlap with one another.
All coefficients are positive, but less than 0.5.
Strong regionalism in reporting foreign disasters
The unique interest of each region makes it difficult for research
relying on a single country or region to obtain external validity.
News geography
Global news coverage
GDELT
Which countries are presented in one country’
international disaster news and to what extent?
Which disasters are most likely to be
‘globally’ covered?
3,574,627 events (666,150 natural and man-‐made disasters)
happening in 205 countries from April 2013 to July 2014
Which one would be more likely to be covered by more counties?
Which one would be more likely to be covered by more counties?
“A baby killed by her mum”
“200 people killed by flooding in Malaysia”
or
Which one would be more likely to be covered by more counties?
“A baby killed by her mum”
“200 people killed by flooding in Malaysia”
or
Why would one be covered more than the other?
“200 people killed by flooding in Malaysia”school girls
Why would one be covered more than the other?
“200 people killed by flooding in Malaysia”school girls2000
Why would one be covered more than the other?
“200 people killed by flooding in Malaysia”school girls2000 USA
Why would one be covered more than the other?
“200 people killed by flooding in Malaysia”school girls2000 USA
Would this then get more coverage?
Determinants of global news coverage
We build a hierarchical (mixed-‐effect) multiple regression model where
Dependent variable:
Number of countries covering a disaster
Determinants of global news coverage
We build a hierarchical (mixed-‐effect) multiple regression model where
Dependent variable:
Number of countries covering a disaster
Independent variable:
1) the attributes of a nation e.g., GDP, population, etc
2) the attributes of a disaster e.g., disaster type, the number of affected people, etc
3) logistics of news gathering e.g., whether INAs report a disaster or not
Candidate independent variables
National variables: GDP (gross domestic product) per capita, GNI (gross national in-‐ come) per capita, military expenditure, population, land size, population density, merchandise exports (US$), merchandise imports (US$), number of scientific journal publications, unemployment rate, foreign aid received (US$), Internet use (per 100 people), mobile cellular subscriptions (per 100 people), homicide rate (per 100,000 people), index of press freedom, the world giving index, and the political stability index.
Disaster variables: a disaster type, a fine-‐grained subtype of a disaster, the unexpectedness of a disaster, the number of people involved in the disaster, the type of people’s involvement in the disaster (denoted as count type), and the type of people affected by the disaster (denoted as object type).
Logistic of news gathering variable: one binary variable to show whether a disaster is reported by any of international news agencies (Agence France-‐Presse (AFP), Associated Press (AP) and Reuters)
Determinants of global news coverage
We build a hierarchical (mixed-‐effect) multiple regression model where
Dependent variable:
Number of countries covering a disaster
14 independent variable:
1) the attributes of a nation e.g., GDP, population, etc
2) the attributes of a disaster e.g., disaster type, the number of affected people, etc
3) logistics of news gathering e.g., whether INAs report a disaster or not
1 control variable: A country a disaster happened
• Disasters in countries with
high population tend to be
more globally covered.
• Disasters happening in
politically unstable countries
receive more global attention.
• The more people killed or
affected by a disaster, the
more countries the disaster
will be covered in.
• Kidnap is one of the disaster
types that gets the most
attention from other
countries.
• Some types of disasters are more
likely to be chosen than others. For
example, Aftershocks and Flooding
types tend to be reported in more
countries than the other types.
Three national variables, which are log(population),
mobile subscription, political stability, explain 3.1% of the
variance.
Disaster variables are added to the first model
The characteristics of
a disaster themselves explain an
additional 4.3% of the variance.
INAs covered explains an additional 18% of the variance!
Summary
• GDELT, a valuable resource to study news flow around the world
• A strong regionalism in reporting disasters
• A prominent role of INAs in global news coverage of disasters
Future Direction
We are keen to collaborate with you!
Thanks!
@JisunAn @haewoon
Qatar Computing Research Institute (QCRI)