Understanding peacefulness through the world news
Vasiliki Voukelatou, Ioanna Miliou, Fosca Giannotti, Luca Pappalardo

TL;DR
This paper demonstrates that news media data from GDELT can effectively predict the Global Peace Index using machine learning, offering insights into the factors influencing peacefulness worldwide.
Contribution
It introduces a novel approach to measure peacefulness through digital news data and explainable AI, enhancing understanding of peace dynamics at a global level.
Findings
GDELT news data can predict GPI at a monthly level
Explainable AI identifies key variables influencing peace
Analysis reveals country-specific peace profiles and drivers
Abstract
Peacefulness is a principal dimension of well-being and is the way out of inequity and violence. Thus, its measurement has drawn the attention of researchers, policymakers, and peacekeepers. During the last years, novel digital data streams have drastically changed the research in this field. The current study exploits information extracted from a new digital database called Global Data on Events, Location, and Tone (GDELT) to capture peacefulness through the Global Peace Index (GPI). Applying predictive machine learning models, we demonstrate that news media attention from GDELT can be used as a proxy for measuring GPI at a monthly level. Additionally, we use explainable AI techniques to obtain the most important variables that drive the predictions. This analysis highlights each country's profile and provides explanations for the predictions, and particularly for the errors and the…
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Taxonomy
TopicsCOVID-19 epidemiological studies · Agricultural risk and resilience · Infrastructure Resilience and Vulnerability Analysis
MethodsShapley Additive Explanations
