ESOC Working Paper #32 - News Media Reporting Patterns and our Biased Understanding of Global Unrest

Publication Year
2022
Publisher
ESOC Working Paper Series
Abstract

News reports of political violence are systematically compiled into large global conflict-event datasets used by academics, governments, and international organizations. These datasets present opportunities to examine the micro-dynamics of conflict but are often systematically skewed. We compare various news-report based datasets to high quality administrative records from Afghanistan, Iraq, the Philippines, South Africa, and Syria to identify sources of systematic missingness in the former. We identify under-reporting related to violence intensity, weaponry, target, perpetrator, and non-deadly violence. In a large replication exercise, we show that media-based data fail to uncover the results reported in leading economics/political science journal articles.

Citation

Shaver, A et al. (2022). News Media Reporting Patterns and our Biased Understanding of Global Unrest (ESOC Working Paper No. 32). Empirical Studies of Conflict Project. Retrieved [date], from http://esoc.princeton.edu/wp32.

Publication Topic
Politics and Public Opinion
Publication Type
ESOC Working Paper