Global Database of Events, Language and Tone (GDELT)

The GDELT is the largest open-access spatio-temporal archive for human society. Its Global Knowledge Graph spans more than 215 years and connects people, organizations, locations, all over the world. GDELT captures themes, images, and emotions into a single holistic global network.

GDELT data comes from a multitude of news sources. The extraction process follows techniques from Natural Language Processing and makes use of two ontologies, i.e., Conflict and Mediation Event Observations (CAMEO) [@gerner2002conflict], and Global Content Analysis Measures (GCAM). GDELT provisions multiple streams, in the following we discuss three of them, i.e., Events, Mentions and Global Knowledge Graphs (GKG). Consequently, GDELT information is naturally multidimensional and interconnected due to the usage of complex background knowledge.

GDELT provisions streams of TSV data every 15 minutes. As anticipated, it includes three streams, i.e., Events, Mentions, and Global Knowledge Graphs (GKG).

The Event Stream makes use of the dyadic CAMEO format. The most important information regards the two actors participating in each event, and the action they perform.

The Mention Stream records every mention of an event over time, along with the timestamp the article was published. The mention stream is linked to the Event stream by the Global Event ID field.

The GKG Stream connects people, organizations, locations, themes, news source, and event across the planet into a single massive network. GKG stream is rich and multidimensional. Fields like the GCAM, Themes, or Persons include more than one entry, using a CSV or similar formats.

The following Listing presents an RSP-QL query that mixes all GDELT streams. The query, which is inspired to an GDELT analyses available on the GDELT blog, counts the number of mentions in events that are happening in a particular area of IRAQ, and whose theme is gcam:kill.

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REGISTER RSTREAM <complexstrm> AS
SELECT (COUNT(?newsa) AS ?tot)
FROM NAMED WINDOW <e>  ON gdelt-bq:gdeltv2.events    [RANGE 30MPT 15MPT]
FROM NAMED WINDOW <m>  ON gdelt-bq:gdeltv2.mentions  [RANGE 30MPT 15MPT]
FROM NAMED WINDOW <g>  ON gdelt-bq:gdeltv2.gkg       [RANGE 30MPT 15MPT]
WHERE {
 WINDOW <e> { ?event gdelt:quadClass cameo:4 ; actionGeo_cc ‘IZ’. }
 WINDOW <m> { ?event gdelt:mentions ?newsa. }
 WINDOW <g> { ?newsa gdelt:theme gcam:kill ; gdelt:location geo:iraq. } }
GROUP BY ?newsa