Unequal Attention – Why Some Conflicts Make Headlines and Others Don’t 

In this year’s edition of the Global Peace Index (GPI) 2025, we examine the interrelationships between peace, conflict and media attention. International news coverage does more than recount events; it also responds to audience interests. Outlets inform the public about developments worldwide while satisfying what readers and viewers want to see. Consequently, the prominence a story receives depends not only on its tangible impact but also on what both media producers and consumers consider most engaging.  

News stories are inevitably shaped by editorial decisions about what consumers wish to read and institutional priorities, which in turn influences public perceptions. ​​New analysis from the GPI 2025 finds that conflicts in less prominent countries, particularly civil wars, tend to receive less attention than those involving more prominent countries, particularly if these countries are involved in interstate conflicts. 

This pattern becomes evident when examining media event data and violence and conflict data. Event data is captured in datasets like the Global Database of Events, Language and Tone (GDELT), a platform comprising millions of media records that are assembled and coded in real time to track global events. Conflict and violence data is captured in datasets like the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED), a data initiative that collects detailed information on political violence, protest and conflict events across the world. The comparison of the datasets reveals the disproportionality in media attention relative to the lethality of conflict. 

This disparity occurs despite unprecedented global connectivity, as telecommunications infrastructure has improved by 35.9 per cent since 2009, bringing internet access to billions. However, this technological expansion has coincided with a 13.4 per cent deterioration in information quality and a 6.9 per cent decline in press freedom.  

The divide between media coverage is most extreme when comparing major powers to countries that are less geopolitically influential. Of the five countries with the highest ratio of articles to civilian conflict deaths in 2023, all but one were highly economically developed or upper-middle income countries. Conversely, conflicts in less economically developed countries like Ethiopia and Burkina Faso received very little coverage, even though both had over 20,000 recorded civilian deaths.

The relationship between economic development and media attention is particularly striking. The volume of coverage per death in economically developed countries is significantly higher than in less economically developed countries. The median number of articles per death in high-income countries was 1,663, nearly 100 times more than the 17.4 articles per death in low-income countries. 

Different types of conflict also result in unequal news coverage. All five of the countries with the least coverage per civilian death are experiencing civil conflicts. Four of the five countries with the worst coverage are in Africa, suggesting that conflicts in this region receive disproportionately low media attention regardless of their severity and impact on civilians. 

The disparity becomes even more pronounced when examining conflict types. Civil conflicts, which make up most conflicts globally, garner far less attention than conflicts between two or more sovereign states, which, in the 21st century, have become relatively rare. Interstate conflicts receive by far the most media attention, with approximately 870 articles per civilian death. Second are intrastate conflicts, which receive about 37 articles per civilian death, followed by internationalised intrastate conflicts, with only about 18 articles per civilian death.

These patterns are not unique to recent coverage of conflicts but reflect enduring trends in how conflicts have been reported. For example, in 2014 the New York Times had much higher levels of coverage of conflict in Gaza and Ukraine than in Africa. The 2014 Gaza War was the subject of 134 articles in a single month, while in the first six months of the Russian-Ukrainian War in 2014, Ukraine was on average the subject of more than 70 articles per month. In contrast, the civil war in the Central Africa Republic (CAR) was the focus of only about 4-5 articles per month in the same year, despite the CAR conflict resulting in at least twice as many deaths. 

This disproportionate media coverage is often a reflection of relative geopolitical influence but also of the interest of the viewers. Conflicts involving powerful nations or alliances, particularly interstate conflicts, carry broad implications for international diplomacy, security alliances, and economic policies. Conflicts that threaten major trade routes, foreign investments, valuable resources, or stability in economically significant regions tend to attract greater media attention. In contrast, conflicts in regions with less economic influence are more likely to be overlooked, regardless of their severity or humanitarian consequences. 

This dynamic holds true even when tensions do not erupt into open conflict. In the past decade, many powerful countries have seen a rise in geopolitical tensions with rival powers. An analysis of country pairings with the highest volume of international media reports shows that adversarial relationships involving major powers dominate the media landscape. These countries, including Russia, Ukraine, the US, Israel and China, reflect the focus of the media on events which speak to global power dynamics. 

The growing negativity in news coverage may also contribute to this inequality of attention. Research shows that news headlines became markedly more negative between 2000 and 2019. There is also evidence that news content has also grown more negative. Analysis of news article records from 2009 to 2022 shows an increase in the volume of articles denoting conflict rather than cooperation. This increase has come from a combination of a decline in articles depicting verbal cooperation and a rise in articles discussing material conflict. Analysis of a more recent dataset indicates that over the past six years about two-thirds of newsworthy geopolitical and sociopolitical events have been negative as opposed to positive or neutral.  

Negativity and fatigue biases can also contribute to disparities in conflict coverage. Repeated exposure to a specific ongoing issue often causes news audiences to grow tired of it, leading them to avoid the topic and view its coverage negatively. This fatigue, particularly in relation to long-term conflicts, may result in reduced media coverage as audience engagement declines, prompting news producers to scale back reporting on these subjects. 

Research has highlighted how negativity bias in news consumption stems from deeply ingrained psychological tendencies. People are naturally more attuned to negative information, a trait thought to have evolved as a survival mechanism to prioritise threats in the environment. Headlines evoking anger, fear, or outrage not only capture more attention but are also more likely to be shared, reinforcing the prominence of conflict-driven and sensationalist narratives.  

One recent study drew on a massive online dataset of viral news stories to assess the impact of negative words on consumption patterns, finding that negative words in news headlines boosted consumption rates, while positive words reduced them. However, this focus on negative, conflict-driven content may be contributing to rising news avoidance, with 38 per cent of people across 36 countries saying they selectively avoid news in 2024, up from 29 per cent in 2017. News avoiders have regularly cited repetitive and boring content, along with the negative tone of news, making them feel anxious and powerless. 

Media coverage often reflects a narrow lens, shaped more by geopolitical significance than by humanitarian urgency. These patterns highlight a core issue with the current information environment: many of the world’s most deadly conflicts remain underrepresented in global news.