ICEWS was released to the public on April 1st, and the event studies community has had a field day getting to know this early (or late?) holiday present.  The dataset, which was created by Lockheed-Martin on behalf of the Department of Defense, appears to represent the new frontier for historic events data.  I use the adjective “historic” because the Phoenix project performs a similar high-quality feat in near real-time but does not provide events data from before June 20th, 2014.

While ICEWS appears to set a new standard for coverage and signal to noise, one shortcoming is the relative paucity of documentation.  The dataset’s page on Dataverse has a codebook and some information on coding, but the most detailed information on the architecture that created the dataset comes from a report on Michael Ward’s website and a book chapter.  While we know that ICEWS gets its news articles from FACTIVA and the US Government’s Open Source Center, the documentation is not clear on which newspapers from FACTIVA are read and whether all types of media are used.  So I created a quick R script to generate a list of publishers (and assume that only newspapers are used to create events).

To generate a list of publishers, I used all events from 2010 and 2011, those years being chosen simply because I already downloaded them.  While it is possible some publishers are in ICEWS but not during those two years, the list produced appears extensive.  There are 213 publishers during this time, ranging from internationally known ones (BBC, AFP, CNN, All Africa, New York Times, etc.) to ones I have never heard of and probably are not in English (Mural, RIA Novosti, BMI Industry Insights; all articles are machine-translated to English before being coded).  Overall, the sources used appear to surpass GDELT, which makes sense since GDELT does not pay to license its news feeds.  Phoenix’s sources look even more extensive, though I have not compared them directly to ICEWS.

For the script and list of publishers, visit the ICEWS folder on my Github page.  I have pasted the list of publishers below.

——— PUBLISHERS ———–

AAP Bulletins
ACN Newswire
ADPnews Latin America
AE Brazil Newswire
Agence Europe
Agence France-Presse
Agencia Diarios y Noticias
Agencia EFE – Serviço em português
AKIpress
Al Arabiya
Al Día
Al Jazeera English
Al-Bawaba News
All Africa
Anadolu News Agency
ANSA – Spanish Service (BASP)
AP Spanish Worldstream
APANEWS
ARKA – News (Armenia)
Asia Pulse
Associated Press Newswires
Athens News Agency
Australian Associated Press
Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) News
Baltic Daily
Bangkok Post
BBC Monitoring
BBC Monitoring Africa
BBC Monitoring Americas
BBC Monitoring Asia Pacific
BBC Monitoring Caucasus
BBC Monitoring Central Asia
BBC Monitoring European
BBC Monitoring Former Soviet Union
BBC Monitoring Media
BBC Monitoring Middle East
BBC Monitoring Newsfile
BBC Monitoring South Asia
BBC Monitoring Ukraine & Baltics
Black Sea Press
BMI Industry Insights
BNS Baltic Business News
Bulgarian News Agency
Calgary Herald
Canada NewsWire
Cape Argus
Cape Times
Caribbean Update
Central News Agency English News
Channel NewsAsia
China Daily
CNN: Breaking News
CTK Daily News
Daily Dispatch
Daily News
Daily Star
Daily Telegraph
Deutsche Welle
DJ em Português
Dow Jones Australia and New Zealand Report
Dow Jones Business News
Dow Jones Emerging Markets Report
Dow Jones en Espanol
Dow Jones International News
Dow Jones News Service
EFE News Service
El Clarin
El Comercio
El Cronista
El Economista
El Financiero
El Mercurio
El Nacional
El Norte
El Nuevo Día
El Pais
El Pais – English Edition
El Universal
Electric Power Daily
eMarrakech
Esmerk Danish News
Esmerk Finnish News
Esmerk Norwegian News
Esmerk Swedish News
EurActiv.fr
Euronews
Europolitique
FARS News Agency
Folha de São Paulo
Gazeta do Povo
Gazeta Mercantil News
Guardian Unlimited
HINA
Hindustan Times
Horizons
India Today
Indo-Asian News Service
Infoamericas
Infobae
Inter Press Service
Interfax News Service
Investimentos e Notícias (Real Time)
Irish Times
ISI Emerging Markets Africawire
Israel Faxx
IT Market Statistics
ITAR Tass
Jiji Press English News Service
Joins.com
Journal of Southern History
KBS World News – French Edition
Korea Newswire
Korea Times
Kyodo News
L’ Orient-Le Jour
L’Expression
La Nacion
La República
La República (Colombia)
Latin America News Digest
Latin American Perspectives
Latvian News Agency
Le Figaro
Le Monde
Le Progres Egyptien
Le Quotidien
Le Temps
Lithuanian News Agency – ELTA
London Evening Standard
Mainichi Daily News
Market Wire
Middle East and North Africa Today
Mist News
Mural
Nepali Times
New Straits Times
New Zealand Herald
New Zealand Press Association
Noticen: Central American & Caribbean Affairs
O Estado de São Paulo
O Globo
Organisation de la Presse Africaine
Organisation of Asia-Pacific News Agencies
PACNEWS, the Pacific News Agency Service
Philippine Daily Inquirer
PNA (Philippines News Agency)
Polish News Bulletin
Portafolio
Prime-News (Georgia)
Reforma
Resource News International
Reuters – Noticias Latinoamericanas
Reuters EU Highlights
Reuters News
RIA Novosti
Rompres
SAINT (South Atlantic Islands News Team)
SAPA (South African Press Association)
SBS World News Headline Stories
SeeNews
Servicio Universal de Noticias
SITA Slovenska Tlacova Agentura
SourceMex Economic News & Analysis on Mexico
South China Morning Post
Spiegel Online International
Straits Times
Süddeutsche Zeitung
Taipei Times
TASR – Tlacova Agentura Slovenskej Republiky
Telecompaper Americas
Tendências Daily
Thai News Service
The Australian
The Christian Science Monitor
The Courier-Mail
The Economist
The Egyptian Gazette
The Hindu
The Jakarta Post
The Japan Times
The Jerusalem Post
The Korea Herald
The Mercury
The Moscow News
The Moscow Times
The Nation (Thailand)
The New York Times
The Oil Daily
The San Diego Union-Tribune
The Scotsman
The Sydney Morning Herald
The Times of India
The Toronto Star
The Tripoli Post
The Wall Street Journal
The Wall Street Journal Asia
The Wall Street Journal Europe
The Washington Post
The Yomiuri Shimbun (MCT)
Trend News Agency (Azerbaijan)
Turan Information Agency (Azerbaijan)
Ukrainian National News Agency
United News of Bangladesh Limited
Unknown
UPI Energy Resources
USA Today
UzReport.com
Valor Economico
Vietnam News Agency Bulletin
WPS: What the Papers Say
Xinhua News Agency
Yemen News Agency (SABA)
Yonhap English News