The Australian Broadcast Corporation is an international news outlet founded on July 1, 1932 in Sydney, Australia. The publication is funded orimarily by direct grants from the Australian government and is administered by a government-appointed board. ABC is one of the largest news outlets in the nation covering a range a topics from politics, environment, culture and breaking news. A dataset published by ROHIT KULKARNI on Kaggle lists every headline published on ABC from 2003 to 2020. These headlines provide a look into our past, and how topics are reported in the media. For the purpose of this Data visualization, we'll take a close look at how ABC has reported numerous topics over time and how trends indiciate critical events in society.
The data begins in March 2003. During this time, former President George W.Bush, declares war on Iraq on March 19, 2003. In a national broadcast former President Bush stated “At this hour, American and coalition forces are in the early stages of military operations to disarm Iraq, to free its people and to defend the world from grave danger.”
The following year, in August 2004 the summer olympics return to Athens greece, with added security following the 9/11 terrosrist attack.
Three years later, on Oct. 3, 2007, more than 3,000 gold miners were traqpped underground at the Elandskraal mine in south Africa.
The year 2012 was a big year in the news. In August ABC published 8,923 articles -- the highest number of articles published from 2003 to 2020. Aug was a year of triumphs and devastation across the world. Furing this time, Michael Phelps, Usain Bolt, Serena Williams make sports history adding gold medals to their collection. At the same time, Typhoon Saola kills 82 people and displaces over 150,000 in the Philippines, Taiwan and China. On Aug. 16, Wikileaks founder, Julian Assange is granted asylum in Ecuador. And on Aug. 20, 20 people are killed in a political riot in Caracas, Venezuela.
From 2015 to 2020 news coverage declines steadily. This could indicate business losses for the comapny leading to downsizing in reporters. Regardless, a deeper analysis of this data can show trends in certain topics such as politics, terrosist or natural disasters. We can visualize how often school shootings are reported on and how many follow up stories are dedicated to them. In other words, we can study how topics linger in the media and discourse in society. We can also analyze how the media reports on politics and how the agenda of a publication can affect public opinion.