Studying geo-conflict and cooperation over time using media reports: A case study using temporal geographical maps

Abstract

Studying global conflict and cooperation between countries, can help us in understanding the evolution of their relationship overtime. In this work we use data from the GDELT (Global Database of Events, Language, and Tone) project, which identifies actors and actions from news stories all over the world. We use this dataset to identify the strength of verbal and material instances of cooperation and conflict between all pair of countries over time. We present a framework to visualize this temporal relationship using an interactive temporal geographical map framework. The framework allows its user to choose a country as a central context, and then play its relationship timeline with all the other countries. Some interesting patterns which we observe are: US war in Afghanistan and Iraq, killing of Osama bin laden. Furthermore, we observe that verbal cooperation between countries is a norm as reported in news stories. We believe these interactive visualizations can help public in understanding the regular relationships between countries, with an occasional conflict cases between a few countries.

The work was presented at the following venues: * iSchool Research Showcase 2017 - https://ischool.illinois.edu/research/showcase * Illinois GIS Day (Runner-Up Research Quality) - http://gisday.illinois.edu/mapsandpostersWinners2017.html