Using machine-coded event data for the micro-level study of political violence

Abstract

Machine-coded datasets likely represent the future of event data analysis. We assess the use of one of these datasets— Global Database of Events, Language and Tone (GDELT)—for the micro-level study of political violence by comparing it to two hand-coded conflict event datasets. Our findings indicate that GDELT should be used with caution for geo-spatial analyses at the subnational level: its overall correlation with hand-coded data is mediocre, and at the local level major issues of geographic bias exist in how events are reported. Overall, our findings suggest that due to these issues, researchers studying local conflict processes may want to wait for a more reliable geocoding method before relying too heavily on this set of machine-coded data.