Title

News Media Reporting Patterns and our Biased Understanding of Global Unrest

Author(s)

Andrew Shaver Andrew Shaver (University of California, Merced )

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.

Creation Date

2022-10

Section URL ID

Paper Number

32

URL

https://esoc.princeton.edu/WP32

File Function

Jel

H56, D83, F51

Keyword(s)

Afghanistan, Iraq, Philippines, South Africa, Syria

Suppress

false

Series

12