Tag Archives: Wikileaks crisis

Wikileaks is Back! Our Media Impact and Reputation Analysis

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Wikileaks is coming back in releasing secret and confidential documents, few weeks after many considered this organization a dead one as they announced cease of operations due to financial struggles.

Now Wikileaks is publishing a selection of messages from the apparently 5 million emails leaked from private intelligence corporation Stratfor.

Publishing and diffusion strategy chosen this time differs from Manning source Department of State disclosures. In that occasion, Wikileaks partnered with few selected leading newspapers, like New York Times, The Guardian or El País. Now they have chosen a widen range of newspapers, some 25, from different countries. In some cases the newspaper chosen is not the leading reference in the country. My perception is that this new strategy will ensure the final publication of the leaked documents. In the previous release, top leading newspapers had too much to lose, creating self-restrain in the diffusion of secrets. This will not be the case this time, as second line newspapers have much to gain by revealing compromising secrets. As for the public opinion impact, it will depend in the quality of the content revealed. If this simply consist in shocking but irrelevant information about leaders, public interest will fad away quickly.

The role of Wikileaks is highly controversial and divisive. Some see its activities as an act of transparency that increases democracy and human rigths standards. Other consider Wikileaks not only as an organization following illegal and unethical practices, but also as an enemy of democracy by publishing highly sensitive issues affecting security and rights of individuals and societies. This strong confrontation of views will undoubtly remain with the ongoing flow of revelations. Polarization will probably exacerbate if it is confirmed that information from Stratfor has been obtained by pure hacking activities performed by Anonymous like activists.

We want to remind the general policy that we follow in this blog: our aim is to show what we find and learn by using empirical media and social media analysis to crisis. We never take a position for or against any of the issues behind the crisis analysed. Our personal position is not relevant for readers. We will not say if we like or dislike what Wikileaks is doing and has done previously. We want to show and share our findings concerning media impact and reputation implications of revelations made by Wikileaks, as we are currently doing for other different reputation crisis.

Besides this always present questioning of legitimacy by many, Wikileaks will be faced to a credibility test. Documents leaked do not com from official and appealing US State Department civil servants, but from a private intelligence corporation. There are some analysis that consider that the source used (Stratfor) is itself quite irrelevant in terms of access to truly sensitive diplomatic information. If the quality of the information of the source is poor, so will be the relevance and credibility of the ‘secrets’ revealed. See for instance the severe attack by Max Fisher, The Atlantic (27 February 2012):

The corporate research firm has branded itself as a CIA-like “global intelligence” firm, but only Julian Assange and some over-paying clients are fooled.

(…) According to Anya Alfano’s email, Stratfor’s target was PETA, the animal rights group, and its client Coca-Cola. Their top secret mission was to find out “How many PETA supporters are there in Canada?” and other tantalizing global secrets that could only be secured through such top-secret means as calling PETA’s press office or Googling it. Alfano concluded her chilling email, “I need all the information our talented interns can dig up by COB tomorrow.”

(…) The group’s reputation among foreign policy writers, analysts, and practitioners is poor; they are considered a punchline more often than a source of valuable information or insight. As a former recipient of their “INTEL REPORTS” (I assume someone at Stratfor signed me up for a trial subscription, which appeared in my inbox unsolicited), what I found was typically some combination of publicly available information and bland “analysis” that had already appeared in the previous day’s New York Times.

(…) Stratfor is not the shadow-CIA that Wikileaks seems to believe it is, but much of the blame for this mistake actually lies with Stratfor itself. The group has spent over a decade trying to convince the world that it is a for-hire, cutting-edge intel firm with tentacles everywhere. Before their marketing campaign fooled Anonymous, it fooled wealthy clients; before it fooled clients, it hooked a couple of reporters.

Wikileaks crisis was at the origin of this blog, as we expected a massive reputation crisis for many leaked political leaders and local political decisions. At this point, we are not sure that the political damages were substantial.

We proposed a number of analysis to provide information concerning the impact of this crisis in terms of media coverage and content analysis. As we count with this information, we are able to compare the extent and impact of this eventual new crisis in comparison with the previous one. We will provide probably in the future some of our results in this blog.

Some of the findings we got by applying media impact analysis to previous WikiLeaks leaked documents are, for instance:

  • In the initial massive media coverage given to informations concerning political leaders. Some information were politically relevant, while many other were simply shocking reaction to candid judgements about foreign leaders by US State Department officials:

As expected, US President Barack Obama is the leader in charge most affected by Wikileak crisis. He receives a global media attention of 70.4 points. This means that he has generated an amount of news related with Wikileaks that is 70 times higher than the average of news received by all national leaders. Russian Primer Minister Vladimir Putin comes number two, with 26 points of media attention. Third is Italian Silvio Berlusconi, with 23,7 points. Julia Gillard, from Australia, the home country of Julian Assange comes next. All top political and economic powers are present among top 10 countries, except China leaders, who do not even appear among top 20.

We find among top positions leaders from non democratic countries, or from countries in conflict.

Looking at the recent trend, we identify an upward relationship with Wikileaks issues with the leaders of the following countries: Australia, Germany, Cuba, Zimbabwe, Sudan and Yemen.

Heads of State and Governement and Wikileaks (I)

  • We published also the list of American companies that were most affected by Wikileaks crisis, again in term of global media impact. We present below the list of top 20 companies.

See:  American Firms Affected by Wikileaks News

  • Wikileaks revealed messages shown the existence of bad practices affecting in some cases not only politicians, but also private corporations. We choose the case of Chevron, accused of negotiating investments in Iran despite US prohibitions (see Wikipedia references). We applied in that post our news content analysis in diamonds of brand values. News about Chevron related to Wikileaks damaged its brand reputation. See for example, the case of the brand vector associated to ‘Scandal’
  •  We used also Wikileaks impact as means to check how the information is digested by local media in each country. By analysing the media attention given to selected issues in a country by comparising with average international attention, it provides relevant information about local sensitive issues and political problems. We selected the case of Pakistan. See for instance some of the topics that deserved more media attention by Pakistani newspapers than in average

See: Wikileaks Issues Viewed from: Pakistan

  • We checked also the role of Wikileaks in the initial stages of the Arab Spring with the revolts in Tunisia. We showed that many international news providers used leaks aired by Wikileaks to explain the political problems underlying the crisis that eventually produced a change of regime. The figures below shows that when the crisis exploded in terms of international media coverage, by late December, international media impact of news about Tunisia exploded, but the share of them referring to Wikileaks was maintained or increased. We run a similar analysis for Egypt and Tahir Revolution, and we found out that Wikileaks was a much marginal source used by international media for explaining what was happening in crisis in Egypt.

See: Tunisia Crisis as A New Use of Wikileaks Cables: Explaining and Judging

Fukushima Explosion Media Coverage vs Wikileaks: Portraying Fears of an Unknown and Uncontrolled Disaster

Posted on by • Posted in Companies, Countries, Country - Japan, Disasters, Event - Fukushima, Event - Tsunami Japan, Issue - Nuclear Crisis, Debate, Org - Wikileaks • Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , • 14 Comments

We continue with this second post analysis about Wikileaks media profile by comparing it to the initial media coverage of the disaster in Japan.

Yesterday we provided information of how media covered the massive earthquake and consequent devastating tsunami just in the aftermath of it (three hours later), and with an update of the analysis with additional news published during the day. Before analysing the specific topic of this post, we show the new update of how media in English cover the Japanese disaster one day after. At this point, new footages show the exceptional devastation provoked by the tsunamis in Japan, and media attention start to focus on the nuclear problems in several sites, and specially the Tokyo Electric Power nuclear facility in Fukushima. We also know that by now there are few number of people dead as a consequence of the tsunami outside Japan.

As in the precedent post, we focus the analysis on the brand vector “Tragedy”. The results refer to all news published during the 26 hours after the earthquake in our data panel (some 33,000 news in English). We observe that the initial trend identified in the precedent update is confirmed. Additional news about the Japan earthquake are increasing the degree of associtation of the disaster to the components tragedy, catastrophic and horrible. The association with worst tend to decrease.

The main purpose of this post is to evaluate the media coverage given to a new collateral issue produced by the earthquake. The Government launched an energy emergency yesterday, as already mentioned in the precedent post. Fron the initial 2km evacuation order followed today an additional 10km evacuation order. At 3pm local time a huge explosion took place in one of the nuclear reactors. The news widespread quickly. Initial official reactions consider it a problem but under control. A new call for evacutation was immediately applied to 20km around the facilities. The press release by TEPCO by 3 pm did not mention the explosion. But soon later came a video aired by BBC news showing a huge blast in the nuclear facility. Fukushima is some 240 km away from Tokyo.

This is the contextual framework at the moment we checked and identified the news about the Fukushima nuclear explosion. There is a lot of incertitude, but also a lot of fears about the implications of this event. Panic word is emerging, altogether with Government calls to tranquility. We count with 900 news about the explosion, published till 11h30 am ECT. Our aim is to compare this very initial stage of media coverage of the Fukushima nuclear plant problems, and to compare it with global media coverage given to the Japan earthquake, and then also to the initial media coverage given to Wikileaks revelations.

Media coverage at this point makes difficult to disentangle the specific profile of how media is considering the Fukushima blast against the treatment given to the Japan earthquake, as they are intrinsically connected and share common press articles. All in all, marginal differences suggest the the Fukushima affaire is more associated than overall news about the Japanese disaster in “Tragedy” components related to harm and failure. The Japan earthquake predominates concerning horrible and worst.

We compare now the media coverage to Fukushima explosion against Wikileaks. As just mentioned, media profile of the nuclear explosion is very similar to the Japan disaster. Probably in the few next hours the nuclear explosion will acquire its own specific media profile. With the results at this point, and comparing it to news published about Wikileaks during the first month (December 2010), we first analyse differences concerning the brand vector “Scandal”. Wikileaks is more associated in general to scandal, even if some media voices start to critisize TEPCO role and conduit in past security nuclear alerts.

The brand vector “Tragedy” is at this point more strongly associated to Wikileaks than to Fukushima concerning the vector components tragedy and failure. Worst and harm are somehow more linked to Fukushima.

Results with new information will be more relevant, depending of course on the direction taken by the events after the blast in the nuclear facility. At this initial moment, reflecting an stage of doubts, questions and fears about something potentially extremely harmful, we conclude again by comparison that the media coverage given to Wikileaks related news and content was substantilly negative in terms of reputational impact.

Japan VIII. Wikileaks on Fukushima and the Japan Nuclear Crisis. Measurement of the Initial Media Storyline.

Japan VII.

Japan VI. Fukushima Second Explosion Media Perception Compared to First Blast

Japan V. Japan Earthquake Media Impact by Cities

Japan IV. Fukushima Nuclear Crisis Media Coverage Evolution

Japan III. Japan Earthquake Initial Media Coverage: Comparison with 2010 Disasters Haiti, Chile and Turkey Earthquakes

Japan II. Fukushima Explosion Media Coverage vs Wikileaks: Portraying Fears of an Unknown and Uncontrolled Disaster

Japan I. Japan Earthquake and Tsunami Vs Wikileaks: Media Coverage of Disasters

Japan Earthquake and Tsunami Vs Wikileaks: Media Coverage of Disasters

Posted on by • Posted in Countries, Country - Japan, Disasters, Earthquake, Event - Tsunami Japan, Org - Wikileaks • Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , • 3 Comments

(update below, with data 12 hours after the earthquake)

I could not restrain to consider and then check to which extent Wikileaks revelations and all related issues are portrayed by the media as a disaster, a tragedy. Just few hours ago (first draft of this post is written at 12:45 pm, CET) the devastating 8.9 magnitude earthquake hit Japan. Dead toll is now raising and an international alert of a massive tsunami is active. In this moment we know only about the impact of the tsunami in the coasts of Japan. More damages are feared when the tsunami wages will reach other countries. Only few minutes ago we knew that there is an energy emergency alert as a nuclear site is under fire as a consequence of the earthquake.

This is the present context of all what we know and all what the media is showing in the news and written articles. Our aim is to show which is the media profile of the news about the Japan quake and the Japan tsunami at this very early stage, against the media coverage given to Wikileaks in the first wage of revelations, during the first month of continious leaks about US diplomatic cables (note: by mistake, we are showing if fact not the initial media profile of Wikileaks, but the most recent news about Wikileaks, during February 2011).

Our data refers to the first 5.700 news published in English about the eartkquake, up to 9:30 am, ECT, March 11 2011 (three hours after the earthquake).

With this post we show the similarities and the differences in terms of media reputation of Wikileaks againts a major disaster like the Japan earthquake and tsunami. We show the three more relevant brand vectors associated to disasters and catastrophes: “Coherent, Respected”, “Scandal” and “Tragedy”.

As for the first vector, we find that Wikileaks news were much more sensitive to ethical and reputational concerns than Japan disaster is.

Wikileaks is also more associated than the Japan earthquake to all components related to the “Scandal” brand vector. Only awful is an exception.

The third brand vector “Tragedy” is the one expected to be highly associated to Japan disaster. It is indeed. But at this initial stage, where there is a lot of incertitude about the final impact of what is right now to be a big catastrophe, we find that news about Wikileaks were even more associated to “Tragedy” than Japan.

Japan news about the quake and tsunami are more associated than Wikileaks to the components catastrophic and worst. But at this moment, and by comparison, Wikileaks media coverage considered Wikileaks content more linked to components like horrible, failure, harm or even tragedy than Japan.

This result is a clear example of the reputational impact of all institutions or persons affected by Wikileaks cables, when they refer to questionable decisions and behaviour.

New update, 12 hours after the earthquake.

At this stage, media coverage becomes massive, as it appears clear the the probable dead toll will be much higher than the dozens announced after the first hours. Dramatic video footage showing the colossal impact of the tsunami in the northern coasts of Japan obliges to expect a terrible number of human casualties. Unnofficial figures now speak about more than 1,000 killed. In constrast, the damage of the tsunami in other Pacific countries appears to be low right now.

Using our data set of newspapers and our methodology, we have identified and content analyzed some 18,000 news in English about the Japan earthquake. We compare in the following figure how the media coverage is evolving between the news generated in the first three hours (some 5,700 news) against the profile twelve hours after the earthquale (some 18,000) news. We select the brand vector “Tragedy”. As it can be observed with the results, media treatment of Japan disaster is increasing the association of it to the components tragedy, catastrophic and horrible, while the other components remain stable.

So now, if we compare again media coverage of Wikileaks against Japan earthquake, this last disaster is about to outpace Wikileaks in terms of being associated to a tragedy and catastrophic, but still Wikileaks vehiculates a worse media image as for horrible and harm.

Japan V. Japan Earthquake Media Impact by Cities

Japan IV. Fukushima Nuclear Crisis Media Coverage Evolution

Japan III. Japan Earthquake Initial Media Coverage: Comparison with 2010 Disasters Haiti, Chile and Turkey Earthquakes

Japan II. Fukushima Explosion Media Coverage vs Wikileaks: Portraying Fears of an Unknown and Uncontrolled Disaster

Japan I. Japan Earthquake and Tsunami Vs Wikileaks: Media Coverage of Disasters

US Reputation. (III) The impact of some ugly brands: Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, Madoff, Jared Loughner

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US Reputation and Wikileaks. (III) The Impact of ugly brands

US Reputation and Wikileaks. (II) The Impact of Top American Brands

US Reputation and Wikileaks. (I) US Vs Spain Media Reputation

(last update: Jared Lee Loughner media reputation analysis)

We countinue our series of posts oriented to show the impact of Wikileaks on the reputation and image of the United States. In our first post we showed the media reputation position of the United States by comparison with Spain. In the secong post we presented the positive impact that top American brands create in enhancing its overall reputation.

Now we show in this third post the media profile of issues and persons that are perceived as strongly linked to the US and that we assume that the vast majority of people consider that are associated to really bad image. As in our precedent post, we do not show results concerning all news about the brands to be presented, but we select only those that establish a direct reference to the United States in the body of the article. Even if the brands that we have selected are probably associated by many to the US, we concentrate the analysis really only to those news associating both the brand and the United States. As in all our precedent posts, we will not discuss about the political issues and their implications, but just to show how they are portrayed by the media and how it does affect US reputation.

First example is Abu Ghraib. Even if the term refers to a city in Iraq, all international news refer to the scandal of prisoners abuse and torture.

It is self evident that the positive brand vectors presented in the precedent post, like Excellence, Impressive, Acclaimed, are not relevant here. This is why we concentrate our analysis directly to the brand vectors that refer to bad reputation. The fist one is “Scandal”, and empirical results are shown in the next figure. The Abu Ghraib case clearly affects negatively the US reputation, as it is strongly related to the “Scandal” vector, much higer than globa US media reputation. The components more sensitive are “scandalous”, “harm” and “corruption”.

The second brand vector associated to bad image is “Tragedy”. Here also, Abu Ghraib penalises US reputation, as it increases the association with “tragedy”, “harm” and “failure”.

We show finally a third brand vector that should be considered in principle refelcting positive reputation. It refers to “Respected, Coherent”. Our results here and in the analysis of other brands and events show that this brand vector can reflect both good and bad reputation associated to respect and coherence. The interpretation is that in this case our analysis show which issues are strongly associated to these two brand vectors. In order to identify if this association is positive or negative, a direct analysis to the content of the news is required.

The Abu Ghraib case clearly reflects that this is also an issue in terms of affecting the reputation of the US in terms of respect and coherence. The lecture here is clearly negative, and not positive. Abu Ghraib is strongly related with this area, specially referring to “dignity”, “ethical”, “compassion” ,”fairnes” and “respected”.

The second brand that we have selected and that is expected to exert a negative impact on US reputation is Guantanamo. Guantanamo is a Cuban municipality and a province. But its media coverage comes from hosting a US Naval base. More specifically, after the conclusion of the Afghanistan and Iraq war, it contains the detention camp. As not being inside US legal jurisdiction, George Bush administration sent captives to this camp under a detention regime without the Geneva Convention rights and protections. Treatment to prisioners in Guantanamo has originated controversies and critics to the United States. Barack Obama signed an order by January 2009 with the proposal to shut down the facility within a year.

Guantanamo can be considered as a “brand” with a clear negative media reputation. Like in the toher cases, we show now the empirical results, but only about news where there is also an explicit mention to the United States.

Our results clearly confirm that currently Guantanamo is associated strongly to the brand vectors about “Scandal” and “Tragedy”. Guantanamo harms US media reputation in basically all negative brand components.

As we have already presented two brands negatively affecting US reputation, we can compare their specific profile. We show as example the brand association of Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib to the vector “Tragedy”. Both brand refer to special prisons, with shocking cases of abuses in the Abu Ghraib case. The results suggest that media perceive Abu Ghraib as closer to components tragedy and harm than Guantanamo, while Guantanamo prevail in the component failure.

The third brand selected as supposed to be attached to negative perceptions is an individual one. It refers to Bernard Madoff, the American stock broker, who pleaded guilty for the investment scandal based in a Ponzi scheme.

Results confirm that Madoff case punishes US reputation, two years after the case emerged publicly. Concerning the “Scandal” profile, Madoff’s assoiation is specially high for the components scandal, corruption, and also harm and embarrassing.

The impact of the Madoff case on the “Tragedy” vector affects negatively American reputation mainly in the components failure and worst.

As before, we compare the reputation profile of two brands with a negative media perception. We compare now the media profile of Madoff against news about Abu Ghraib, an individual against a non personal brand. We have selected the “Tragedy” profile. According to our results, they present a diverse profile, even if in both cases it was worst than the one concerning all news about the United States. Madoff is portrayed as more associated to catastrophic, failure and worst than Abu Ghraib. The Iraqi prison is stronger associated to tragedy, horrible and harm. Both brands produce a clear negative effect on US media reputation, but each one has its own brand profile.

The last example of brands with expected bad reputation is again a personal brand. We have chosen the profile of the media coverage about Jaerd lee Loughner. Loughner has been charged for killing six people, in what has been called the Tucson shooting. He also critically wounded Democrat Representative Gabrielle Giffords, who was apparently the main target of the assassin. Shooting took place in January 8, 2011. Massive media coverage followed, at national and international level. Our measure about the media reputation of Jared Loungher refers to February media coverage. Remember once again that we analyse here not all news about Jared Loughner, but only those where there is also an explicit mention to the United States.

Results indicate that one month after the shooting took place, the content of all news related to the shooter were still highly associated to the brand vector “Scandal”. This association is prominent in all components of this brand vector.

As for the brand vector “Tragedy”, the level of association is specially high concerning the components tragedy, harm and horrible.

We have shown before another personal brand with bad media reputation, Bernard Madoff. We comapre in our last figure his media reputation profile against Loughner, concerning the “Scandal” profile. Both persons are marked clearly with this bad reputation, but the origin of it comes from very different delictive areas. Our results show that Loughner case is by far more shocking for the media in terms of association to scandal. The only exception is corruption, which is linked to Madoff but not to Loughner. This last result is again a proof of the practical coherence of the results generated using the media reputation approach proposed by MRI Universidad de Navarra.

Libya Crisis Media Coverage: Who Uses Wikileaks Cables?

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Before continuing our analysis of the impact of Wikileaks on US Reputation, we include a new post directly related to the analysis of a political crisis of a country and the role of Wikileaks.

This post comes after our analysis of the media coverage given to the crisis and revolt in Tunisia and Egypt (plus a country analysis of Pakistan). We do not provide here the same line of analysis followed to study the Egypt and Tunisia case, as the main of this blog is not to provide a systematic analysis of Wikileaks impact, but just to show selected empirical results to interested readers, by using the approach and techniques developed at Media, Reputation and Intangibles center, MRI Universidad de Navarra.

The specific topic that we want to analyse in this post is how media from each country is interested in using Wikileaks cables related news about Libya when coverring the Libyan revolution. As explained in precedent posts, we check newspapers appearances from sources all over the world. We can thus cluster the results by country or by international region. We performed this analysis already, showing where did global media interest in Wikileaks cables come from.

Next figure shows the results concerning the origin of news about Libya using Wikileaks sources. This analysis is made by some 2,700 articles about the Libyan crisis citing Wikileaks.

In order to provide additional ground for analysis, we show the origin of all news related to Wikileaks, during the same period of Libya related news. This is all February 2011 period.

Comparing the results of both figures, we observe that US media are using Wikileaks cables more profusely when covering the Libya crisis. United States newspapers are respsobles for 31% of all Wikileaks news about Libya, while they count just for 24.8% of all news related to Wikileaks in general. We find that also Italy, a country with strong ties with the African country, takes a bigger share of all news related to the Libyan crisis using Wikileaks cables (from 4.5% to 6.0%). France is also another highly sensitive country. Also African countries cover in a higher extent the Libyan revolution using Wikileaks cables (a share of 1.9% against a general share of 1.4%). Asia and the Americas media (Ex USA) play a minor role and interest.

Wikileaks Media Coverage by Countries

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In one of our initial post we showed figures of the countries most affected by Wikileaks revelations, as appearing in news directly related to Wikileaks US State Department cables.

Now, instead of the destination, we show the origin: where do the news about Wikileaks come from? As in the data base of MRI Universidad de Navarra we identify every news by the npublishing newspaper, we can also perfom a geographical analysis of the sources. In this post we show the share of the main countries and regions of the world in the global media coverage reached by the Wikileaks case.

We have separated our analysis into three blocks, in order to provide a comparison of relative national media attention to Wikileaks in relation with the different stages of the case: first stage refers to media national attention before US State Department cables release, focused on Iraq war revelations; second stage corresponds to the media impact in the initial stages of US State Department cables; third stage covers news appearing after mid-December, more related to ongoing political crisis and to the controversies lilnked to Julian Assange judicial case.

Pre US State Department cables leaks that media attention to Wikileaks revelations was rather massive from German press. This huge interest is due to the news about the participation of German troops in Afghanistan, but also specific leaks related to the Love Parade stampede in Duisburg and its planning. United States foreign policy was already hit at that time because of the massive leaks about the Afghan war. US newspapers generated 26.4% oll all Wikileaks media impact.

The second graph reflect the global reception of the initial revelations of the content of leaks coming from US State Department cables. It refrs to the aftermath of it, to the first two weeks, that experienced a massive increase of media attention. US newspapers increase their share to 30.7% of global media attention. As German newspapers lose wieght because Wikileaks becomes a global media issue, other regions of the world increase their presence in propalating Wikileaks news. This is specially the case for the Asia region, and European region outside the big 6 countries.

The third period covered in this analysis refers to news published in 2011, upt to mid February. The flow of new leaks content has diminished dramatically. Media attention now considers the Wikileaks case in relation with the legal pursuit to its founder, Julian Assange. New leaks in this period are tipically related with the appearence of new political conflicts, like the revolution and unrest experienced in Tunisia and Egypt, and in almost all Arab countries.

In the new context, the weight of US newspapers diminishes again, moving from a share of 30.7% to 24.4%. The weight of United Kingdom press almost double, in line with the fact that this country is affected by the legal prosecution to Julian Assange as he was arrested in British territory and is pending on extradition decision. French and African press increase their relative presence: again in line with the ongoing events in Northern Africa. Americas (including Canada and excluding US media) also increase their share.

Egypt and Tunisia. Twin Wikileaks Stories? (and 3)

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Third and final post about the analysis of the Egypt crisis through the content of Wikilekas related news. In the precedetn post we found that some issues are clearly more related to the ongoing unrest and political crisis than to strictly the content of the cables revealed by Wikileaks. This appears clear again in the issues we show now, that seem to be strongly linked to how international media is portraying the crisis in Egypt, in comparison wo how it was explained when referring to Tunisia. Anyhow, we focus our analysis specifically to those news including Wikileaks as part of the explanation or source in the news article. In a future post we will show the differences of the storyline comparing all news to Wikileaks related news, using the Egypt case or other cases.

First three graphs contain issues that we identify as more closely linked to the description or interpretation of what the political context is in Egypt (and in Tunisia by comparison). As in the precedent posts, results help to show how media perceive each country crisis (comparative analysis), but it also offers clear insight of what are the “trending topics”, as the value taken by each issue tells us how frequently it has been used against other terms.

As always, we minimize the comments to the results. First graph indicates that the relevant foreign countries (Iran, Israel), are much more present in Egypt than in Tunisia. Egypt puts clearly the crisis inside the Middle East framework. As for the issues related to religion in both muslim countries, the concern about fundamentalism clearly predominates in Egypt related news.

Concerning the key players, the army plays a more relevant role in Egypt, while elections were more present in news about Tunisia.

It was quite surprising for us to find that foreign countries are much more present in the Tunisia crisis and Wikileaks news than in Egypt. It is also surprising to see that France acquires a minor role in English speaking media when referring to Tunisia. It is more balanced with the presence of other international powers in Egypt case.

Media play a relevant role in terms of prevalence in articles, but surprisingly enough, it is more important in Tunisia than in Egypt. Remember nevertheless that we are analysing here only Wikileaks news, and not all news.

Next graphs shows results concerning values and attitudes.

The final figure of this post refers to business oriented issues. They are in general much more present in the news about Tunisia.