Scope and coverage in ACLED data
Published on: 16 February 2023 | Last updated: 7 May 2024
The scope of the data
Q: How does ACLED define ‘journalists’?
A: The ‘Journalists’ associated actor includes all civilians who engage professionally in the creation of news media. A non-exhaustive list includes: journalists, media editors, camera operators and photographers, news reporters/broadcasters, etc.
Q: What does ‘disorder involving journalists and media workers’ mean?
A: The ‘Journalists’ associated actor is coded in any event involving media workers. This includes cases in which media workers are specifically targeted (e.g. armed men shoot dead the editor-in-chief of a local newspaper) or events in which media workers are part of a larger group of civilian victims (e.g. a number of civilians are injured by fire during a battle, among them a news reporter). The ‘Journalists’ associated actor may also be found under the Riots and Protests event types, as the term disorder includes all forms of political violence and demonstrations. In cases where media workers are engaged themselves in demonstrations as rioters or protesters, the ‘Journalists’ associated actor will be coded adjacent to either ‘Rioters’ or ‘Protesters’ as the primary actor (based on whether violence was used or not by the demonstrators, per the ACLED Codebook).
Q: Do these data capture all types of violence that media workers face?
A: No. Only political violence is included, meaning that criminal violence is excluded. For example, if a journalist is killed during a domestic dispute, or by criminals during a robbery, they would not be coded as an associated actor. However, ACLED views journalists and other prominent media professionals (such as editors or media owners) as having inherently political occupations and journalists are often targeted for political reasons. As such, the threshold for inclusion when circumstances are unknown is lower than for other groups such as health workers or teachers whose targeting is not always political.
Q: Can these data tell me how many media workers have been targeted?
A: No. ACLED is an event-based dataset, meaning that each entry in the dataset is an ‘event’; events are denoted by the involvement of designated actors, occurring in a specific named location and on a specific day. Even in events in which media workers are targeted (such as in Violence Against Civilians events), an event can involve one or many victims (e.g. “both a reporter and a camera operator were injured when police opened fire on them during a demonstration” would be coded as a single event). The number of events should therefore not be conflated with the number of victims – in the same way that the number of violent events in the ACLED dataset should not be conflated with the number of fatalities. These capture different trends.
Coverage in both time and space
Q: What countries and regions are covered in these data?
A: All countries covered by ACLED – currently 149 countries and territories across Africa, South & Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Southeastern & Eastern Europe & the Balkans, the Caucasus & Central Asia, and Latin America & the Caribbean – are included. Future spatial expansions by ACLED include Western Europe, and East Asia; these new regions and countries will also include this new categorization for all years of coverage, as will any new efforts aimed at historical coding.
Q: Can I do regional comparisons using these data?
A: Yes, with certain caveats. An important point to remember regarding coverage is ACLED’s non-uniform coverage of regions over time. ACLED began as an African data project and hence data covering the African continent span back to 1997 (covered to present). An expansion later to South & Southeast Asia means that data covering those regions for the most part span back to 2010 (covered to present). An expansion then to the Middle East means that data covering that region for the most part span back to 2016 (covered to present). Most recently, further expansions have resulted in the coverage of regions with different temporal scopes. It is imperative to keep this in mind when reviewing trends across regions over time so as not to introduce an artificial spike into the data with the introduction of new regions into the timeline. (Please reference ACLED’s coverage for a full list of regions and their coverage periods.) The time period from 2019 to present is easiest to compare across regions as all regions of ACLED coverage cover this period; for time periods extending back before 2019, it is important for the user to ensure they are comparing countries across periods of time that are equally covered (i.e. do not compare trends from 1997 to present between Burundi [where coverage extends back to 1997] and Syria [where coverage extends back to 2017]).
Q: What time period is covered in these data?
A: Temporal coverage across regions of ACLED coverage varies (see Q&A above). Once ACLED begins coverage of a country, it is continuously covered.
Data accessibility
Q: How can I access these data?
A: These data are publicly accessible via ACLED’s website as a curated data file. The file is updated on a weekly basis, allowing users to monitor these trends in near-real-time for analysis, programming, early warning, advocacy, and more. You will note that all events involving media workers will include ‘Journalists’ as an associate actor in one of the respective columns. Other columns such as the sub-event type and country column can also be filtered for more specific analysis (e.g. media workers engaged in peaceful demonstrations, or media workers involved in disorder in Palestine). For more on accessibility and relevant stipulations, please see ACLED’s Terms of Use and Attribution Policy.
Q: How often are data updated?
A: Data are updated on a weekly basis in conjunction with ACLED’s weekly data release schedule (with new data published every Monday/Tuesday covering the week prior, in addition to any supplemental or updated information). ACLED works to maintain a ‘living dataset’, meaning that in addition to weekly releases of new data covering the week prior, supplementation of historic periods is also ongoing with information from new sources, targeted research, and new partnerships being integrated.
Q: How do I cite these data?
A: Please see ACLED’s Terms of Use and Attribution Policy.
Other
Q: How can I help improve ACLED’s coverage of disorder involving health workers?
A: If you are an organization collecting information on disorder involving media workers and are interested in a partnership with ACLED to help extend coverage of these threats to media workers further, please reach out to us at [email protected].
