The GDELT Global Knowledge Graph to identify all people mentioned in articles referencing any location in Iran between April and October 2013. A list was compiled of every person mentioned in each article, and all names mentioned in an article together were connected. The end result was a network diagram of all of the people mentioned in the global news coverage of Iran over the last seven months and who has appeared with whom in that coverage. Clustering and community finding were used make the overall macro-level structure of the network instantly clear, teasing apart the clusters and connections among the newsmakers defining Iranian news coverage. The resulting network even correctly captures internal and external affiliation of actors, offering a powerful new approach to rapidly understand a world in constant change.

Read the Full Article in Foreign Policy magazine.