In the latest addition to our map series using CartoDB, we plot all worldwide news coverage monitored by GDELT 2.0 from February 19, 2015 through June 2, 2015 that discusses drones and unmanned aerial vehicles in any context, from civilian to military. Note that due to the ubiquity in discussion of drones with respect to modern conflict, drones are often mentioned in casual conversation and a tremendous amount of drone mentions in the news are casual once-off mentions unrelated to the rest of the article. Thus, here we require drones to be discussed at least twice in the article – this considerably reduces casual mentions of drones, but comes at the cost of missing other coverage. You will still see a higher-than-usual false positive rate in the map below, including articles that do not appear to mention drones at all, due to micro headline update inset bars not being properly removed from processing in all cases. However, if you click around on the map below, you will find an incredible diversity in how drones are being used and perceived throughout the world today.
Mapping Drones: Three Months of Global Discussion of Drones
