Center of Attention — Methodology, Data, and Bibliography
This page documents every measurement in Center of Attention: what was counted, how, from what data, with what known limits — and the full bibliography with archive links. Everything is reproducible from public data with no credentials. Where a choice had to be made, I made the one that worked against the article's thesis.
The anchors below are linked from the article: series · comparators · census · tables-2019 · tables-2024 · decade · scaling · regions · composition · gdp · tv · decay · persistence · themes · tone-by-region · x-layer · wikipedia-calibration · who-is-quoted · framing · bibliography
The method
Dataset. The GDELT Project's Global Knowledge Graph (GKG) — the largest open index of the world's online news — in both its English stream and its Translingual stream (65 machine-translated languages), published every 15 minutes since February 2015. Each record is one news article with GDELT's geocoded location mentions, the outlet's domain, and a document tone score (−10…+10; negative = negative language).
Sampling frame. For each calendar year 2017–2026 (2026 through Aug 18), one 15-minute slot every second day, with the hour of day and minute rotated so all times of day and days of week are represented; both language streams read for every slot. Total: 14,679,657 articles sampled across 10 years (roughly 0.5–1% of everything GDELT monitors, evenly spread). Missing slots roll to the next 15-minute file.
Per-article coding.
- Countries mentioned = the set of countries in GDELT's location field.
- Primarily about X (the strict measure) = X is the country with the most location mentions in the article. This is the measure behind every headline claim: "stories about Israel," not passing mentions.
- Outlet home country = the domain's country-code TLD where it has one
(
.il,.uk,.br…), else GDELT's published 2015–2021 outlet-country lookup, else unknown (<0.01%). - International = the outlet's home country ≠ the country being counted. Israel's totals therefore exclude the Times of Israel, JPost, Ynet, Haaretz, i24, Israel Hayom, Arutz Sheva — and also foreign-based outlets whose coverage is predominantly about Israel (JNS, Algemeiner, WAFA), because the outlet-country lookup assigns them to Israel. That choice deflates Israel's numbers, and the same rule is applied to every country identically.
- Tone = average article tone over international articles; negative share = fraction of articles scoring below −2.0.
Denominators. Population: World Bank WDI (2024), Taiwan from its Ministry of the Interior. GDP: World Bank current US$. Conflict deaths: Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP) GED 25.1 "best" estimates — the conservative, event-verified academic standard (UCDP codes Gaza/West Bank events under Israel). Per-capita rank tables use a ≥5M population floor so micro-states don't dominate; the ≥1M versions are in the raw tables and do not change Israel's rank.
Scripts and raw data. The full pipeline — samplers, aggregation
checkpoints, table generators, TV harvester, decay analysis — is available
on request as a reproducibility package (gkg_sample*.py, report.py,
breakdown*.py, tonereg.py, tv_harvest.py, tv_decay.py, per-year
aggregates and CSV tables). Nothing requires credentials.
Series
Israel's share of all sampled international articles, its world ranks, and its tone, by year. "% any" = share of articles mentioning; "% primary" = share of articles primarily about.
| Year | Israel % any | Israel % primary | World rank, absolute (primary) | World rank, per capita (primary, pop ≥5M) | #2 per capita that year | Israel ÷ #2 | Israel tone | % of articles < −2 | Articles sampled |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017 | 2.30 | 1.13% | #6 | #1 | Ireland | 2.9× | −2.11 | 48% | 2,450,754 |
| 2018 | 2.55 | 1.37% | #5 | #1 | Ireland | 3.4× | −2.54 | 53% | 1,085,714 |
| 2019 | 1.74 | 0.89% | #7 | #1 | Ireland | 2.3× | −2.29 | 50% | 2,233,037 |
| 2020 | 1.30 | 0.51% | #12 | #1 | Sweden | 1.5× | −2.28 | 52% | 742,611 |
| 2021 | 1.43 | 0.56% | #12 | #1 | Ireland | 1.9× | −2.00 | 47% | 1,583,754 |
| 2022 | 1.04 | 0.34% | #16 | #4 | Ukraine | 0.4× | −1.96 | 48% | 1,357,946 |
| 2023 | 2.85 | 1.58% | #5 | #1 | Sweden | 2.6× | −3.29 | 64% | 1,422,825 |
| 2024 | 3.79 | 2.02% | #2 | #1 | Sweden | 3.4× | −3.59 | 68% | 1,796,208 |
| 2025 | 3.07 | 1.63% | #3 | #1 | Sweden | 2.5× | −3.04 | 61% | 1,255,732 |
| 2026 (Jan–Aug) | 3.61 | 0.83% | #9 | #1 | Sweden | 1.2× | −3.13 | 65% | 751,076 |
#1 per capita in 9 of 10 years. The exception is 2022 — the year of Russia's invasion of Ukraine — when Israel ranked #4 (behind Ukraine, Switzerland and Ireland). Stated wherever the 9-of-10 claim appears.
Comparators
Decade means (each year weighted equally), Israel ÷ country per capita:
| Country | Mean annual share primarily about (%) | Israel ÷ (strict, per capita) | Israel ÷ (any mention, per capita) | Mean tone |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Israel | 1.085 | 1.0× | 1.0× | −2.77 |
| Sweden | 0.473 | 2.4× | 1.5× | −0.98 |
| Ireland | 0.189 | 3.1× | 1.6× | −0.34 |
| Switzerland | 0.262 | 3.7× | 1.7× | −0.56 |
| UK | 1.751 | 4.3× | 2.9× | −0.82 |
| Greece | 0.233 | 4.9× | 2.6× | −0.68 |
| Lebanon | 0.126 | 5.0× | 2.3× | −2.70 |
| France | 1.113 | 6.7× | 3.6× | −0.64 |
| Canada | 0.526 | 8.5× | 4.6× | −0.35 |
| Russia | 1.701 | 9.2× | 6.5× | −1.97 |
| Germany | 0.922 | 9.8× | 4.7× | −0.81 |
| United States | 3.499 | 10.5× | 7.8× | −0.98 |
| Taiwan | 0.188 | 13.5× | 6.4× | 0.04 |
| Saudi Arabia | 0.262 | 14.6× | 8.1× | −1.07 |
| Iran | 0.633 | 15.7× | 12.1× | −2.67 |
| Japan | 0.794 | 16.9× | 10.6× | −0.21 |
| Turkey | 0.448 | 20.7× | 12.2× | −1.56 |
| North Korea | 0.130 | 22.0× | 12.7× | −2.07 |
| Afghanistan | 0.174 | 26.6× | 16.0× | −3.00 |
| Mexico | 0.429 | 33.1× | 20.1× | −0.95 |
| Yemen | 0.076 | 57.8× | 30.7× | −3.07 |
| Egypt | 0.195 | 64.9× | 28.6× | −1.57 |
| Brazil | 0.323 | 71.2× | 39.0× | −0.66 |
| Sudan | 0.067 | 82.3× | 53.1× | −2.56 |
| China | 1.784 | 85.7× | 68.7× | −0.88 |
| Pakistan | 0.189 | 144.6× | 86.3× | −2.25 |
| Myanmar | 0.028 | 208.6× | 125.6× | −2.25 |
| Indonesia | 0.123 | 251.0× | 139.4× | −1.01 |
| Nigeria | 0.097 | 260.1× | 143.2× | −1.33 |
| India | 0.557 | 282.6× | 202.1× | −0.65 |
| Ethiopia | 0.045 | 320.9× | 172.3× | −1.54 |
| Bangladesh | 0.055 | 339.9× | 169.9× | −1.81 |
| DR Congo | 0.007 | 1,820.8× | 641.7× | −2.31 |
The article's holy-geography comparison — Saudi Arabia 1/12, Italy 1/7, Iraq 1/25 of Israel's attention per capita — uses the 2019 quiet-year strict ruler (Israel 1,997.1 primarily-about articles per 1M residents; Saudi Arabia 172.9; Italy 290.9; Iraq 81.4, from 3,750 international articles primarily about Iraq in the 2019 sample and a population of 46.0M), the same ruler as the Taiwan/Japan/South Korea alliance comparison. In the 2024 war year the same gaps widen to 1/33, 1/17 and 1/104. Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt, the comparators in the first published version, stand at 1/5, 1/12 and 1/53 on the 2019 ruler.
The article's year-range formulations ("7 to 16 times more than Canada, 50 - 137x Brazil, 200 - 600x India") are the minimum and maximum of the annual per-capita multiples across 2017–2026 from the per-year tables.
Census
An independent cross-check by a completely different method: GDELT DOC 2.0
full-index keyword counts ((Israel OR Israeli OR Israelis) -sourcecountry:IS, and the equivalent for every comparator) — a census of
all ~60–228M articles GDELT monitored per year, no sampling and no
geocoding. Convergence with the GKG sample: Pearson r = 0.958 across 128
country-years. The census runs slightly below the sample for Israel
(keyword matching misses articles that say only "Gaza," "Jerusalem" or
"Netanyahu"), so it is the conservative floor. Floor numbers: 1,789,703
international articles mentioning Israel in 2019 (of 170.5M monitored);
2,045,808 in 2024 (3.42% of 59.8M); 1,181,010 in Jan–Aug 2026 (3.64%).
Tables 2019
2019: no war — 83 conflict deaths all year (UCDP). Sample: 457 slots, 2,233,037 articles. 1 of every 112 international articles was primarily about Israel (0.89%).
International articles primarily about the country, per 1M residents (population ≥5M), top 20:
| # | Country | per 1M | Primarily about (intl) | Pop (M) | Ratio to Israel |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Israel | 1,997.1 | 19,975 | 10.0 | 1.00 |
| 2 | Ireland | 878.1 | 4,738 | 5.4 | 0.44 |
| 3 | Sweden | 825.9 | 8,730 | 10.6 | 0.41 |
| 4 | Hong Kong | 780.6 | 5,873 | 7.5 | 0.39 |
| 5 | New Zealand | 729.9 | 3,861 | 5.3 | 0.37 |
| 6 | UK | 671.8 | 46,543 | 69.3 | 0.34 |
| 7 | Switzerland | 545.3 | 4,911 | 9.0 | 0.27 |
| 8 | Norway | 511.6 | 2,851 | 5.6 | 0.26 |
| 9 | Serbia | 453.0 | 2,984 | 6.6 | 0.23 |
| 10 | Greece | 426.5 | 4,438 | 10.4 | 0.21 |
| 11 | Australia | 421.3 | 11,457 | 27.2 | 0.21 |
| 12 | Denmark | 415.4 | 2,483 | 6.0 | 0.21 |
| 13 | Lebanon | 407.3 | 2,365 | 5.8 | 0.20 |
| 14 | France | 395.7 | 27,127 | 68.6 | 0.20 |
| 15 | Belgium | 380.4 | 4,511 | 11.9 | 0.19 |
| 16 | Austria | 367.3 | 3,371 | 9.2 | 0.18 |
| 17 | Spain | 334.3 | 16,331 | 48.8 | 0.17 |
| 18 | Venezuela | 326.4 | 9,272 | 28.4 | 0.16 |
| 19 | Libya | 322.7 | 2,382 | 7.4 | 0.16 |
| 20 | Finland | 322.1 | 1,810 | 5.6 | 0.16 |
Absolute ranking 2019 (primarily-about): US, China, UK, Russia, France, Germany, Israel #7 — ahead of Japan, India, Canada, Brazil, Australia, Mexico, Spain, Italy — with a population smaller than metropolitan Paris's.
Tables 2024
2024: war. Sample: 458 slots, 1,796,208 articles. 1 in 50 of the world's international articles primarily about Israel (2.02%); 1 in 26 mentioning it (3.79%). Absolute rank: #2 on Earth, behind only the United States.
| # | Country | per 1M | Primarily about (intl) | Pop (M) | Ratio to Israel |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Israel | 3,621.7 | 36,225 | 10.0 | 1.00 |
| 2 | Sweden | 1,075.9 | 11,372 | 10.6 | 0.30 |
| 3 | Ireland | 610.1 | 3,292 | 5.4 | 0.17 |
| 4 | Lebanon | 586.3 | 3,404 | 5.8 | 0.16 |
| 5 | Ukraine | 582.1 | 22,040 | 37.9 | 0.16 |
| 6 | Serbia | 574.8 | 3,786 | 6.6 | 0.16 |
| 7 | Switzerland | 495.1 | 4,459 | 9.0 | 0.14 |
| 8 | Greece | 437.9 | 4,556 | 10.4 | 0.12 |
| 9 | UK | 375.1 | 25,984 | 69.3 | 0.10 |
| 10 | Austria | 367.0 | 3,368 | 9.2 | 0.10 |
| 11 | Denmark | 364.2 | 2,177 | 6.0 | 0.10 |
| 12 | France | 327.4 | 22,445 | 68.6 | 0.09 |
| 13 | Norway | 308.3 | 1,718 | 5.6 | 0.09 |
| 14 | New Zealand | 305.5 | 1,616 | 5.3 | 0.08 |
| 15 | Hong Kong | 302.4 | 2,275 | 7.5 | 0.08 |
| 16 | Belgium | 293.1 | 3,476 | 11.9 | 0.08 |
| 17 | Australia | 287.9 | 7,828 | 27.2 | 0.08 |
| 18 | Singapore | 266.0 | 1,606 | 6.0 | 0.07 |
| 19 | Spain | 241.4 | 11,793 | 48.8 | 0.07 |
| 20 | Finland | 236.1 | 1,327 | 5.6 | 0.07 |
Note that even at war, with a 3.4× lead over the runner-up, every other entry in the top 20 is a rich, quiet Western democracy or a war zone with 4–7 times Israel's population.
Decade
All 10 sampled years weighted equally. Israel: mean annual share primarily-about 1.09% of all international articles on Earth; mean tone −2.77. Per capita rank: #1, at 2.4× the runner-up (Sweden). Absolute rank across the decade: #6 of all countries — behind the US, China, UK, Russia and France; ahead of Ukraine (at war since 2022), Germany, Japan, and every country in Asia, Africa and the Americas.
Scaling
Scaled from sample shares to GDELT's full 2019 monitored volume (~170M articles): about 1.5 million international news articles primarily about Israel in 2019 — roughly one story for every 7 Israelis — versus one per 16 Swedes, 24 Swiss, 36 Austrians, 47 Canadians, 340 Brazilians, 1,550 Indians. (The census floor for mentions, 1.79M, is consistent.)
Regions
International articles primarily about Israel vs the summed total of whole regions (2024): Israel 36,225 — sub-Saharan Africa, 48 countries and 1.3 billion people, 17,036 (Israel = 213%); the Arab League's 22 states 28,640 (Israel = 126%); South Asia (incl. India and Pakistan, ~2 billion people) 14,963 (Israel = 242%); ASEAN 12,657 (Israel = 286%). Israel exceeds sub-Saharan Africa's combined total in 2018 and in every completed year since October 7 (2023, 2024, 2025). Full year-by-year tables (both measures) in the raw tables.
Composition
Who produces the world's Israel coverage (outlet home country):
2019 (quiet year), stories primarily about Israel: ~69% from outlets in Muslim-majority countries — the Palestinian territories alone ≈ 58% (WAFA, the Palestinian Authority's official agency, Ma'an and peers) — and ~24% from Western outlets (US ≈ 12%). On the broader mentioning measure the top sources were: West Bank 36.4%, United States 19.0%, Turkey 3.7%, Russia 2.9%, UK 2.1%, Syria 2.1%.
2024 (war), stories primarily about Israel: the composition flips — Western outlets ≈ 60%, Muslim-majority-country outlets ≈ 27%. Top sources on the mentioning measure: United States 20.9%, Turkey 6.6%, UK 5.7%, Greece 4.5%, Egypt 4.5%, Germany 4.2%.
Both readings are stated in the article: in quiet years the permanent floor is substantially the Muslim world's state-dominated press keeping Israel on the page; in war years the West saturates.
GDP
Articles primarily about the country per $1B of GDP (countries with GDP ≥ $100B):
2019: 1. Venezuela (76.9/$B — an economy in collapse), 2. Ukraine (58.7), 3. Israel (36.8), 4. Iran (22.5), 5. Greece (17.3). 2024: 1. Ukraine (115.5 — a country under invasion), 2. Israel (66.8), 3. Venezuela (39.6), 4. Sweden (18.8), 5. Greece (17.8).
The only countries that outrank Israel on this measure, in either year, are Venezuela and Ukraine.
TV
Television measured directly from closed captions: the GDELT Television 2.0 API over the Internet Archive's TV News Archive — the share of all monitored 15-second caption clips mentioning each country's name terms, averaged per day and across stations. Two groups: US cable (CNN + Fox News
- MSNBC; archive from mid-2009) and BBC News (from 2017). The archive feed ends October 11, 2024.
- 2024, US cable: Israel was the most-mentioned country on Earth — 3.26% of all airtime, ahead of Iran (1.22%), Russia (1.20%), Ukraine (1.09%), China (0.64%). Adding "Gaza" (1.02%) and "Hamas" (1.05%) — terms that are also Israel-war coverage — widens the lead.
- 2024, BBC News: Israel was mentioned in 6.0% of all airtime — one broadcast minute in every 17.
- 2010–2016 (pre-sample era): by airtime share per capita, Israel ranked #1 among 21 major countries and conflict zones (incl. Syria, Afghanistan, Ukraine, Iran, North Korea, Russia, China, India, Brazil, Canada, Sudan, DRC, Ethiopia, Yemen, Myanmar) in every single year — extending the measured persistence record to 2010–2026.
- Caveats: caption keyword matching, not geocoding; US cable is driven by US domestic politics (Russia 2017–19 = the Trump-Russia story, not Russia); "India," "Turkey," "Congo" carry name ambiguities that inflate those comparators — i.e., bias against Israel's lead, not for it.
Decay
For each major eruption of the last five years, daily US-cable airtime
share from event day forward (tv_decay.py; baseline = mean of the 90
pre-event days):
| Case | Peak (share of airtime) | at day 30 (% of peak) | day 90 | day 180 | 1 year | day 540 | 2 years |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Israel (Oct 7, 2023) | 33.9% | 48% | 10% | 12% | 25% | archive ends | — |
| Ukraine (invasion, 2022) | 24.6% | 69% | 13% | 8% | 32% | 4% | 15% |
| Afghanistan (Kabul, 2021) | 26.7% | 27% | 2% | 2% | 5% | 1% | 1% |
| Sudan (civil war, 2023) | 1.5% | 1% | 2% | 1% | 1% | 1% | archive ends |
| Nagorno-Karabakh (2023) | 0.08% | 3% | 1% | 1% | 0% | archive ends | — |
| Israel (May 2021 war) | 6.4% | 10% | 4% | 1% | 4% | 3% | 4% |
| Ethiopia (Tigray, 2020) | 0.03% | — | — | — | — | — | — |
Kabul consumed 27% of airtime on its peak week and was at 2% of peak in 90 days. Sudan's only peak was the week of the American-citizen evacuation; in the following 18 months it cleared 1% of daily airtime on 8 days. Tigray — the deadliest war of the decade — never reached 0.03% of airtime on any day, so a "% of peak" curve for it would be percent of nothing; that absence is the finding. Israel after Oct 7 held above 1% of all cable airtime on 344 of the next 365 days, averaged 5.65% for the full year (higher than Ukraine's first-year 4.94%), and at one year was rising — 25% of peak, with a "quiet-day" floor 27× its own pre-war baseline. The archive ends Oct 11, 2024 (Israel observed to day 371).
Persistence
In print, the same signature. Israel's share of all international articles (mentioning), by calendar year since Oct 7: 2023: 2.85% → 2024: 3.79% → 2025: 3.07% → 2026 (Jan–Aug): 3.61% — every post-war year above the first, no decay. Compare the standard lifespans: Ethiopia's share was flat through its own war (0.19 → 0.23 → 0.16% across 2020–2022 — its deadliest year was its least-covered of the three); Sudan's war moved it from 0.18% to 0.32% for one year, then back down to 0.18% while the war grew worse; Myanmar's coup bump (0.17%) halved within a year. Israel's floor — its share in years when nothing happens (1.0–1.7% mentioning, 0.3–0.9% primary) — is a level other small countries touch only in the worst week of their history.
Per-capita rank, month by month (the chart in the article). For each story, every 30-day window counted forward from the event: the share of all international articles mentioning the country (GDELT DOC 2.0 full-index daily counts; the country's own outlets excluded), divided by population, and ranked against every country of 5M+ people — about 115 countries. Armenia (3.0M) is added to the field so the Karabakh line can be ranked. Israel held #1 in 30 of the 34 monthly windows since Oct 7, and #2 in the other 4. Data through Aug 18, 2026; GDELT's outage of Jun 14 – Jul 2, 2025 (during the Israel–Iran war) lowers that window's counts. This uses the "mentioning" measure, so its ranks are not directly comparable to the strict "primarily about" per-capita tables above.
| Story | Month 1 | Month 3 | Month 6 | Month 12 | Month 24 | Latest | Best | Months at #1 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Israel (Oct 7, 2023) | #1 | #1 | #1 | #2 | #1 | #1 (month 34) | #1 | 30 of 34 |
| Ukraine (invasion, Feb 2022) | #1 | #1 | #1 | #5 | #7 | #10 (month 36) | #1 | 7 of 36 |
| Karabakh (Armenia, Sept 2023) | #2 | #15 | #15 | #20 | #8 | #27 (month 35) | #2 | 0 of 35 |
| Afghanistan (fall of Kabul, Aug 2021) | #1 | #36 | #41 | #48 | #61 | #71 (month 36) | #1 | 1 of 36 |
| Sudan (civil war, Apr 2023) | #38 | #78 | #85 | #87 | #81 | #86 (month 36) | #38 | 0 of 36 |
| Tigray (Ethiopia, Nov 2020) | #99 | #110 | #112 | #109 | #114 | #115 (month 36) | #99 | 0 of 36 |
Themes
Share of international stories primarily about the country carrying GDELT conflict themes (kill / terror / armed conflict / military / massacre / airstrike / hostage / genocide …): Israel 2019: 61% (49% on the narrower kill/terror/armed-conflict set) — the tier of Iran (61%) and Lebanon (55%) — versus 23–29% for Sweden, Switzerland, Canada, UK, Germany and Japan, and 40–42% for Brazil, India and Mexico. 2024: 88% (84%). Israel is written about as a conflict that happens to contain a country; its Western peers are written about as countries.
Tone by region
Restricting to Western outlets only, stories about Israel:
- 2019 (quiet): tone −2.2, 49% negative — the register Western outlets applied that year to Russia, Turkey and North Korea (their Canada coverage ran −0.1, Switzerland +0.1, Sweden −0.6).
- 2024 (war): tone −4.42, 78% negative — darker than the same outlets' coverage that year of Russia (−3.3), Iran (−3.7) or Syria (−3.8). One country's Western-press register ran darker still: Yemen (−4.81) — which is why the article's claim is "darker than Russia's, Iran's or Syria's," not "darker than everything."
The negativity is therefore not an artifact of the Palestinian/Arab/ Muslim-world press share: the West's own register is the darkest part of the composite. Western-outlet per-capita ranks (strict): 2019 Israel #3 (behind Ireland and Sweden — i.e., in quiet years Western media cover Israel like a small rich European country, though still 22× Brazil and 112× India per capita); 2024 #1 at 3.8× Sweden (11.5× Canada, 144× Brazil, 662× India), and #2 absolute behind only the US.
X layer
No open census of X/Twitter volume exists, so the article makes no measured platform-total claims of its own. What it uses, each labeled in place: (a) X's own first-party statements (50M+ posts on Oct 7–9, 2023; enforcement totals one and two years in) — the platform's numbers, linked and archived; (b) a disclosed same-hour sampling proxy run on an ordinary news day (2026-08-24): identical "Latest" searches returned Israel/Gaza posts seconds apart around the clock, Sudan posts minutes-to-hours apart, DRC/Tigray/Myanmar posts hours-to-days apart — the same never-off-the-page signature the news data measures; (c) within-account counts over fixed windows for the largest "Palestine"-advocacy accounts (Israel/Gaza posts every few hours vs other-crisis posts days-to-weeks apart) and engagement asymmetry inside single institutional accounts (@hrw's sampled Israel posts: 584–1,314 likes; its South Sudan posts: 33–61). These are proxies with stated windows, not platform statistics, and the counter-examples found (African-crisis advocacy posts by the same accounts) are noted in the article's claims file.
Wikipedia calibration
What people choose to look up, versus what they are fed: English Wikipedia views of each country's article per 1,000 residents, 2019 — Qatar 889 (World Cup bid coverage), Ireland 570, Norway 545, Israel 513, Denmark 482, Switzerland 420, Lebanon 415. Organic curiosity about Israel sits in the ordinary small-rich-country tier; the news volume does not.
Who is quoted
Which organizations are named in the coverage — a test of whether Israel
coverage is unusually sourced to NGOs and UN bodies. Same sample frame as
everything above (phase 1: one 15-minute GKG slot every 4th day, both
streams; 2019: 443,074 articles, 128,010 international primary-country
articles; 2024: 352,806 / 101,203), reading GDELT's
V2EnhancedOrganizations field (else V1Organizations) for each
international article primarily about a country. Buckets by conservative
name lists: human-rights/humanitarian NGOs (Human Rights Watch, Amnesty,
B'Tselem, Breaking the Silence, Al-Haq, PHR, MSF, ICRC/Red Crescent, Oxfam,
Save the Children, NRC, Crisis Group, Euro-Med, PCHR, CPJ, RSF, DCI …); UN
humanitarian/rights bodies (UNRWA, OCHA, UNICEF, WHO, WFP, UNHCR, OHCHR,
Human Rights Council, special rapporteur); any UN body (adds the Security
Council, General Assembly, ICJ, ICC); a health ministry. Shares are of
international articles primarily about the country; "West" = Western-based
outlets. (gkg_orgs.py; full tables with intervals in ORGS_TABLES.md.)
| Year | Country | n (intl) | HR-NGO % | UN-humanitarian % | any UN body % | Health ministry % | West: any UN body % |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | Israel | 3,895 | 1.1 | 0.8 | 8.6 | 1.7 | 7.3 |
| 2019 | Ukraine | 2,024 | 0.2 | 0.1 | 6.0 | 0.0 | 12.1 |
| 2019 | Russia | 5,731 | 0.3 | 0.1 | 1.4 | 0.1 | 1.0 |
| 2019 | Iran | 2,177 | 1.5 | 0.1 | 6.8 | 0.1 | 7.6 |
| 2019 | Syria | 1,486 | 2.2 | 0.5 | 9.0 | 0.0 | 9.0 |
| 2019 | Lebanon | 472 | 1.5 | 0.0 | 4.4 | 0.0 | 4.3 |
| 2019 | Sudan | 322 | 8.7 | 1.9 | 18.9 | 2.8 | 25.7 |
| 2019 | Yemen | 345 | 5.2 | 4.6 | 24.1 | 1.7 | 30.3 |
| 2019 | Ethiopia | 475 | 0.8 | 4.2 | 12.8 | 0.4 | 14.2 |
| 2019 | Myanmar | 80 | 6.2 | 0.0 | 18.8 | 0.0 | 26.8 |
| 2019 | DR Congo | 50 | 18.0 | 24.0 | 28.0 | 4.0 | 47.8 |
| 2019 | China | 8,782 | 0.3 | 0.2 | 1.4 | 0.1 | 1.4 |
| 2024 | Israel | 7,258 | 2.2 | 2.0 | 13.5 | 4.1 | 13.9 |
| 2024 | Ukraine | 4,313 | 0.1 | 0.1 | 2.0 | 0.2 | 2.1 |
| 2024 | Russia | 5,375 | 0.3 | 0.1 | 2.7 | 0.3 | 3.5 |
| 2024 | Iran | 1,443 | 1.4 | 0.3 | 7.1 | 0.3 | 7.5 |
| 2024 | Syria | 805 | 1.4 | 0.1 | 4.6 | 0.0 | 4.6 |
| 2024 | Lebanon | 774 | 0.5 | 0.3 | 9.9 | 6.2 | 13.9 |
| 2024 | Sudan | 167 | 3.6 | 10.8 | 35.9 | 3.0 | 36.2 |
| 2024 | Yemen | 162 | 3.1 | 0.6 | 14.8 | 0.0 | 24.2 |
| 2024 | Ethiopia | 75 | 4.0 | 2.7 | 8.0 | 0.0 | 6.7 |
| 2024 | Myanmar | 57 | 3.5 | 0.0 | 5.3 | 0.0 | 8.6 |
| 2024 | China | 5,147 | 0.1 | 0.3 | 2.0 | 0.2 | 1.8 |
Reading. Per article, Israel coverage names NGOs and UN bodies far less often than coverage of Sudan, Yemen, DR Congo or Myanmar — the neglected crises are covered mainly when an agency forces them onto the page — and far more often than coverage of Russia's war: in 2024 a UN body appears in 13.5% of international Israel articles (Western outlets 13.9%) against 2.0% for Ukraine and 2.7% for Russia, i.e. 5–7×; the international courts (ICJ/ICC strings ≈ 600 in the sample) and the Security Council (≈ 500) are the most-named non-state bodies in Israel coverage, while Human Rights Watch and Amnesty together appear in about 1 in 45 articles (2.2%). In absolute terms the picture inverts: NGO-sourced Israel stories outnumber NGO-sourced Sudan stories about 26:1 (157 vs 6 in the 2024 sample). A health ministry is named in about 1 in 25 Israel articles (1 in 18 Western ones) — a floor under the finding that 98% of casualty-citing articles used the Gaza ministry's figures, since most articles cite no casualty figure at all.
Limits. GDELT's organization extraction is noisy (stray tokens appear),
the name lists are conservative, so shares are floors; small-n countries
carry wide intervals (given in ORGS_TABLES.md).
Framing
How often the genocide frame appears in coverage of each country, over
time — the penetration of the vocabulary. Same phase-1 frame for 2019,
2021, 2023, 2024 and 2025; for each international article primarily about a
country, whether GDELT's theme fields (V1Themes + V2EnhancedThemes)
carry the GENOCIDE theme. A theme flag fires on any article whose text
carries the frame — including reports of the accusation and rebuttals of
it — so this measures the prevalence of the frame in the conversation about
each country, not its endorsement. (GDELT has no apartheid theme, so that
word cannot be counted this way.) (gkg_terms.py; FRAMES_TABLES.md.)
Share of international articles carrying the GENOCIDE theme, % (n):
| Country | 2019 | 2021 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Israel | 0.2 (3,895) | 1.0 (1,828) | 4.5 (5,573) | 10.3 (7,258) | 13.0 (5,024) |
| Sudan | 9.0 (322) | 3.1 (194) | 3.5 (511) | 10.8 (167) | 6.0 (250) |
| Myanmar | 15.0 (80) | 7.7 (272) | 4.5 (66) | 1.8 (57) | 0.0 (70) |
| China | 0.1 (8,782) | 1.3 (5,674) | 0.3 (5,938) | 0.3 (5,147) | 0.1 (5,174) |
| Yemen | 0.3 (345) | 1.0 (191) | 1.5 (133) | 1.9 (162) | 0.6 (179) |
| Syria | 0.6 (1,486) | 0.0 (445) | 0.1 (700) | 1.0 (805) | 0.7 (760) |
| Ukraine | 0.6 (2,024) | 0.4 (1,090) | 0.9 (5,796) | 0.3 (4,313) | 0.2 (4,344) |
| Russia | 0.1 (5,731) | 0.4 (4,129) | 0.8 (6,286) | 0.5 (5,375) | 0.5 (4,997) |
| Iran | 0.5 (2,177) | 0.1 (724) | 0.7 (838) | 1.5 (1,443) | 0.9 (843) |
Israel: 0.2% of international articles in 2019 (Western outlets 0.6%); 0.6% in 2023 before October 7 and 5.7% after it; 10.3% in 2024 (Western 8.8%); 13.0% in 2025 (Western 11.1%). Comparators, 2024: Sudan 10.8% of 167 articles (a US-determined genocide, January 2025 — the same per-article share in about 40× fewer stories: ≈18 vs ≈748 in the sample); Myanmar 1.8% (US-determined genocide, 2022); China 0.3% (Uyghur genocide determination, 2021).
Israel, monthly, with the institutional calendar (share of international Israel articles carrying the theme; all outlets / Western outlets):
| Month | n | all % | West % | Event |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023-09 | 121 | 0.8 | 1.8 | |
| 2023-10 | 1,977 | 3.4 | 2.2 | Oct 7; Segal essay (13 Oct) |
| 2023-11 | 1,557 | 7.6 | 6.3 | |
| 2023-12 | 809 | 7.3 | 6.1 | South Africa files at the ICJ (29 Dec) |
| 2024-01 | 692 | 15.8 | 14.0 | ICJ provisional-measures order (26 Jan) |
| 2024-02 | 542 | 13.1 | 11.3 | |
| 2024-03 | 721 | 8.9 | 8.6 | Albanese report (26 Mar) |
| 2024-04 | 936 | 8.1 | 8.5 | |
| 2024-05 | 753 | 14.1 | 12.6 | ICC prosecutor's application (20 May) |
| 2024-06 | 579 | 8.3 | 5.9 | |
| 2024-07 | 534 | 6.9 | 4.7 | |
| 2024-08 | 407 | 9.3 | 6.9 | |
| 2024-09 | 514 | 6.4 | 5.4 | |
| 2024-10 | 957 | 8.5 | 5.9 | |
| 2024-11 | 351 | 14.8 | 14.4 | |
| 2024-12 | 272 | 11.4 | 8.1 | Amnesty (5 Dec) and HRW (19 Dec) reports |
| 2025-01 | 418 | 10.5 | 8.0 | |
| 2025-02 | 400 | 6.5 | 4.9 | |
| 2025-03 | 481 | 9.6 | 7.1 | |
| 2025-04 | 303 | 15.8 | 10.5 | |
| 2025-05 | 423 | 11.1 | 10.8 | |
| 2025-06 | 206 | 18.4 | 13.5 | |
| 2025-07 | 486 | 16.0 | 14.2 | |
| 2025-08 | 577 | 15.1 | 11.5 | IAGS resolution (31 Aug) |
| 2025-09 | 688 | 17.3 | 18.1 | UN Commission of Inquiry finding (16 Sep) |
| 2025-10 | 576 | 12.2 | 9.7 | |
| 2025-11 | 256 | 11.3 | 9.6 | |
| 2025-12 | 210 | 10.5 | 9.0 |
The share roughly doubles in the month South Africa files at the ICJ and the court issues its order (Dec 2023 7.3% → Jan 2024 15.8%), rises again with the ICC prosecutor's application (Apr 8.1% → May 14.1%), and peaks in the month of the UN Commission of Inquiry's finding (Sept 2025 17.3%; Western outlets 18.1%).
Bibliography
Every source cited in the article, with its Internet Archive snapshot. Sources were verified at fact-check (Aug 24, 2026): every quoted phrase was matched verbatim against the cited page or an integrity-equivalent copy (publisher PDF, author-posted preprint, PubMed/UNC/LSHTM copies of the same papers, Wayback snapshots).
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One cited X post (the May 2024 Blockout organizing post) cannot be publicly archived — X login-walls its post pages against all archivers — so a verbatim copy of the post (full text, author, date, metrics as read) is preserved in the author's records and quoted exactly in the article.
Author: Jeremy Musighi. Article: Center of Attention. Prior investigations: The Invisible Weapon · Aiding & Abetting.