NLP and machine learning to measure peace from news media

“Hate speech” can mobilize violence and destruction.  What are the characteristics of “peace speech” that reflect and support the social processes that maintain peace?  In this study we used a data driven, machine learning approach to identify the words most associated with lower-peace versus higher-peace countries. Logistic regression and random forest classifiers were trained using five respected, traditional peace indices: Global Peace Index, Positive Peace Index, World Happiness Index, Fragile States Index, and Human Development Index. The feature inputs into the machine learning model were the word frequencies from the news media in each country and the output classifications were the level of peace in that country.  The machine learning model was successful in properly classifying the level of peace from the news media in a country (both accuracy and F1: 96% - 100%). We also used that trained machine model to create a machine learning peace index that measured the level of peace i..., The starting point of our work used the NOW, News on the Web corpus <https://www.english-corpora.org/now/> because it has a large amount of news media data on a large range of different topics, including on-line newspaper and magazine articles about accidents, business, crime, education, the arts, government, healthcare, law, literature, medicine, politics, real estate, religion, sports, war, as well as book, music, and movie reviews. A small sample of these sources in the United States include: AlterNet, Austin American-Statesman, Business Insider, Business Wire (press release), Chicago Tribune, FOX43.com, Jerusalem Post, Israel News, KCCI Des Moines, Kentwired, KOKI FOX 23, POWER magazine, Press of Atlantic City, The Jewish Press, USA TODAY, and Vulture. We analyzed data over the time period January 2010 through September 2020.
 
In order to optimize this data for machine learning required natural language processing to substantially transform the NOW data so that the training a..., , # NLP and Machine Learning to Measure Peace from News Media

[Dataset]. Dryad. https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.2v6wwpzv6

PLOS ONE https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0292604

Authors

* Larry S. Liebovitch; Department of Physics, Queens College, City University of New York, New York, New York, United States of America and Advanced Consortium on Cooperation, Conflict, and Complexity, Columbia University, New York, New York, United States of America
* William Powers; Department of Physics, Queens College, City University of New York, New York, New York, United States of America
* Lin Shi; Department of Physics, Queens College, City University of New York, New York, New York, United States of America
* Allegra Chen-Carrel; School of Management, University of San Francisco, San Francisco, California, United States of America
* Philippe Loustaunau; Vista Consulting, LLC, Arlington, Virginia, United States of America.
* Peter T. Coleman; Advanced Consortium on Coo...