Comparing event flows— The New York Times and The Times of London: Conceptual Issues And Case Studies†

This paper examines two newspapers, The New York Times and The Times of London, to test the similarities and differences in the collection of events interaction data over a three‐year time interval (from 1969–71). Two divergent approaches are taken—one involving gross aggregation over the “ who did what to whom about what” format and the other investigating specific studies of conflicts. The conflict studies included in the paper are those of India‐Pakistan, Jordan‐Palestinian guerillas and the general Middle East and Vietnam arenas. It was found that both sources have different reporting styles during non‐conflict periods. However, the central and most important point in this study is that events data are of a consistent and comparable nature over different sources when they are of a conflict orientation. Thus, the events data gathered from The New York Times and The Times of London are essentially conflict indicator data which represent similar patterns of of interactions.