The intertwining of world news with Sustainable Development Goals: An effective monitoring tool

Article type: Research Article

Keywords: Sustainable development goals, Climate sensitivity, News analysis, Network analysis

Authors: Tímea Czvetkó, Gergely Honti, Viktor Sebestyén, János Abonyi

Affiliations: MTA-PE “Lendület” Complex Systems Monitoring Research Group, University of Pannonia, Egyetem str. 10, H-8200 Veszprém, Hungary; Institute of Advanced Studies Köszeg, Chernel str. 14, H-9730 Köszeg, Hungary; Sustainability Solutions Research Lab, University of Pannonia, Egyetem str. 10, H-8200 Veszprém, Hungary

License: © 2021 The Author(s) CC BY 4.0 This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

Article links: DOI: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2021.e06174  |  PubMed: 33598579  |  PMC: PMC7868610

Relevance: Moderate: mentioned 3+ times in text

Full text: PDF (115 KB)

Introduction

News plays a significant role in conveying objectives and major focus areas of both governmental as well as public interests. Furthermore, news can be considered to be creative source of information (ref. Moutidis and Williams, 2019). The level of public awareness and prioritisation regarding sustainability issues can be determined across countries and regions (ref. Barkemeyer et al., 2013). The analysis of news can define areas that gain attention, moreover, governmental strategies and action plans to be identified as sustainable development and environment-related news coverage depend mostly on political institutions and experts as sources of news (ref. Maniou et al., 2017).

News analysis can also play an active role in terms of defining the status of the road map for localizing the SDGs. Generic patterns in sustainability-related media agendas can contribute to support addressing challenges (ref. Barkemeyer et al., 2013). The localization of the SDGs is critical as local spaces are key factors of the successful implementation and preservation of the goals (ref. Taskforce, 2016).

It is our aim to bring about a comprehensive overview of articles concerning sustainable development goals by the different approaches of media analysis. In Section 2. 113 articles are classified according to their relevance with regard to describing the 17 SDGs. The overview of articles revealed a gap in terms of defining SDG areas through news and media appearance and highlighted that there is a need for a systematic tool for country-specific and thematically targeted news-based monitoring of sustainable development.

In this research, the GDELT database (ref. GDELT) is used to explore news about sustainable development goals as well as measure trends and similarities between countries around the world. The proposed methodology can be used to determine which sustainability issues are becoming more critical in a given country or region, or what trends can be observed in the field of sustainability communication.

In connection to world news, the following analytical questions can be formulated:

• What terms directly related to sustainable development goals can be identified in the taxonomic system of news?
• What is the tone of the news regarding each of the sustainability issues?
• What are the differences between countries in terms of SDG news? How similar are the focal points?
• Which countries cooperate in terms of various sustainability issues?

To answer these questions a labelled multilayer network is created to identify the profiles of nations/regions based on the news categorized according to the 17 sustainable development goals and the related targets and indicators.

The novelty of the research is hidden in the broadened exploration of news that overcomes boundaries – it links the multi-level analysis of SDGs with evidence-based events, governmental strategies as well as public interests. The news centred approach can model interconnections between nations regarding sustainable development actions and strategies as well as supports decision-making mechanisms. Furthermore it is possible to measure public awareness, which is closely related to social acceptance and support for the national sustainable development strategies. The appearance of the sustainable development goals in the news has not been directly measurable previously. The main advantage of the developed tool is that the analysis of the occurrence of goals in the published news can be performed in an automated way for any time period.

Systematic overview of articles describing sustainable development-related topics based on news analysis

This section refers to a systematic overview of articles that used news analysis in order to proximate the sustainable development goals and reveal the extent of their spread, coverage or effect on forming public awareness.

Specific search words were used to identify articles relevant for the overview. In Appendix A, Table A.1 indicates these key search words used to proximate each SDG. The time horizon considered was between 2015 and 2020.

Overall, 112 articles were reviewed, where the selection occurred individually. Table 2, Table 3, Table 4, Table 5, Table 6, Table 7, Table 8, Table 9, Table 10, Table 11 classify articles into the 17 sustainable development goals.

Each table outlines a comprehensive overview of the articles including: a straightforward description of the examined article, methodology used to analyse news, newspapers or search engine used as the basis of the source, the language of news/search, the number of articles examined in the sample, horizontal coverage of data to comprehend its relevance at local, national or international levels, as well as the temporal coverage of data and references.

The exploration of the articles outlined the limitations of SDG-related news analysis, which can be seen in Table 1. In most of the cases, news and media in local/national newspapers/sources disregarding broader geographic coverage, which led up to a narrowing focus with regard to language requirements. Only 28 articles analysed the involvement of at least two countries and 48 explored news in at least two languages (this includes 36 articles where the language of news was not specified).

Furthermore, the time period of the analysis considered was typically far earlier than the day of publication, which on the one hand, is an essential way to gain overall knowledge of a closed period, on the other hand to advance news analysis to the next level to serve as an effective monitoring tool, temporal coverage must be as recent as possible. This enables present issues to be detected and assumptions as well as actions taken to meet the sustainable development goals.

This finding led to the provision of a tool that enables sustainable development-specific world news to be monitored in several languages and considered the latest data available, for which the GDELT Project served as an effective source.

Development of the methodology of the news-related analysis of sustainable development goals

In this section, the methodological steps are discussed from data acquisition and categorization up until the formation of multi-layered networks. The proposed methodological workflow is suitable to build multi-layered networks to reveal the focal points between news and specific contents and taxonomies. The key assumption is that connecting topic-specific news and their spatial connection can reveal the sensitivity of country to a given topic as well as detect interconnections between keywords. Regarding the analysis sustainable development goals the spatial coverage is considered at the country level, while the temporal horizon is considered in the year of 2019. This chapter presents the connection between the specific content of sustainable development goals and the taxonomy of the World Bank as well as the segments of the My World 2015 survey, followed by a presentation of the development of analytical Structured Query Language (SQL) queries. The reader is then guided through the description of the network formulation from the extracted information to determine the news and SDG.

The workflow of SDG-related acquisition of news gained from the GDELT Project

The steps of the analysis are summarized in Fig. 1, where the dark blue numbers refer to the related subsections in the paper.

World news on sustainable development goals is a good illustration of the mentality of countries’ concerning the 2030 Agenda. The published news stories are labelled along with the ontologies in the GDELT Project, which allows for their thematic analysis if the ontologies related to the given issue are selected, in our case, the SDGs based on the taxonomy of the World Bank.

The taxonomy of the World Bank has been reviewed and the categories related to SDGs selected.

The data were extracted from the GDELT’s Global Knowledge Graph (GKG). GDELT has already been used to estimate the future level of violence in Afghanistan (ref. Yonamine, 2013), explore disasters and their determinants (ref. Kwak and An, 2014), determine the risk of upcoming social unrest events and predict indicators related to the instabilities of country (ref. Qiao and Chen, 2016) or to analyze peace and conflict data (ref. Keertipati et al., 2014).

Two methods were used for the extraction, namely the “standard” way, which involves Google Big-Query engine, and a self-developed Python-based engine. For short queries, and validation, Big-Query was used, for more analytical and long time frame analysis, the offline Python-based engine was used.

The results of the queries can also be analyzed using Geographic Information System (GIS) techniques, thus revealing how the countries are sensitive to SDG issues and how much news is reported about SDGs. Multidimensional networks comprised of queries aim to shed light on the relationships between countries and topics. The ontological assignments with regard to the SDGs can be checked based on the identified keyword communities, however, it is important to emphasize that due to the interconnectedness of SDGs the validation requires expert knowledge.

Determination of search words connected to SDGs to extract news

WBG Topical Taxonomy refers to the World Bank Group’s topical knowledge domains and areas of expertise, whilst the segments determined by the My World 2015 survey contributed to the formation of Agenda 2030. These data was used as a basis to approximate these categories within the 17 goals – involved targets and its indicators.

The selection from topics with regard to WBG Topical Taxonomy and association with the development goals happened through expert sampling. These associated search words are shown in Appendix B.

The segments of the My World 2015 survey are the following: A good education, Better healthcare, Better job opportunities, An honest and responsive government, Affordable and nutritious food, Protection against crime and violence, Access to clean water and sanitation, Support for people who can’t work, Better transport and roads, Equality between men and women, Reliable energy at home, Political freedoms, Freedom from discrimination and persecution, Protecting forests, rivers and oceans, Phone and Internet access, and Action taken on climate change.

The formulation of sustainable development goals is concise and ambitious, therefore, the World Bank categories are preferably linked on the basis of the keywords in the more detailed description of the indicators. For example, the following keywords can be extracted from the indicators of SDG 15: ‘ecosystem’, ‘forest’, ‘land’, ‘protected’, ‘biodiversity’, ‘red list’, ‘mountain’, ‘wildlife’ and ‘species’. Links are based on expert knowledge, however, the methodology allows them to be validated.

For SDG 13, “Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts”, 5 targets and 7 indicators were declared. To measure this goal, the number of countries with disaster risk reduction strategies, number of affected persons by disaster, mobilized financial support and other policy strategic measures are used. Table 12 shows that topics were selected that are very closely related to the concept of SDG 13 and its indicators. The following keywords extracted from the SDG 13 targets and indicators that linked with the World Bank categories: ‘disaster’, ‘natural disaster’, ‘policies, strategies and planning’, ‘education’, ‘climate change mitigation and adaptation’, ‘impact reduction’, ‘early warning’. The experience of studies discussing the interconnectedness of SDGs was taken into consideration in the application of the search words (ref. Sebestyén et al., 2019) (ref. Dörgő et al., 2018). One of the main advantages of the proposed methodological development is that it can be applied flexibly in any subject area, such as the representation of the circular economy or industry 4.0 topics in world news. In the table, the column WB_SHORT refers to the ontology number of the World Bank, that empowers the traceability, the column WB_NAME describes the description connected to WB_SHORT.

Sustainable development goals are not evenly covered by indicators, and in the case of indicators, there is a significant lack of data, which makes it challenging to monitor their fulfilment. This is especially true of SDG 13, where hardly any measurable indicators are present. This is why it is essential to find additional data sources for which one of the promising tools is the news analysis presented in this research. It is generally true that the SDG indicators do not characterize the awareness and participation of the society, however, the proposed methodological development allows these factors to be taken into account.

Development of the related SQL queries

GDELT uses some of the world’s most sophisticated natural-language and data-mining algorithms, including the world’s most powerful deep-learning algorithms, to extract and monitor world news. GDELT consists of the Event Database, which captures worldwide activities (events), as well as the Global Knowledge Graph (GKG), which records and entwines people, organizations, locations, themes, taxonomies, sources, tone and events of news into a network. The important attributes of GKG can be seen in Table 13.

GKG enables the co-occurrence of people, locations or organizations that empower analysis concerning the relationships between parties to be determined.

GDELT Global Knowledge Graph, which offers scalable, cost-effective, cloud-based opportunities to analyse huge amounts of data, is available as a queryable dataset in the Google BigQuery (GBQ).

GBQ is comprised of a Structured Query Language (SQL)-like syntax, with lots of additional data processing tools, e.g. unnesting (separating columns into multiple rows) and regular expression capturing. This domain-specific language is often used in programming and data management. The queries are based on a schematic SELECT query which captures the main details of the GKG database, namely location, date, topics and tone.

Generation of networks

Network analysis provides a graphical representation of complex patterns of relationships between variables (ref. Hevey, 2018). Therefore, beyond the relationships of countries with regards to sustainability news, the relationships between countries and topics can be described. Furthermore, this method can serve as validation of the selection and categorization of keywords which occurred as a result of expert sampling, as if the keywords are clustering significantly (creating a community), a strong interrelationship can be observed between them and the classification can be confirmed as suitable.

Network analysis carries great potential to:

• explore and visualize relationships;
• identify central nodes – countries/keywords – by defining the number of connections (degrees) to the node or analysing the frequency pathway between other nodes (betweenness);
• detect clustering nodes (communities), e.g. countries systematically involved in a certain topic.

GDELT Global Knowledge Graph allows the co-occurrence exploration of locations (e.g. countries), people as well as themes that appear in news, which can serve as a basis for the network formation.

The analysis is based on the multidimensional network representation of the available information. A multidimensional network can be defined as, nodes (V), edges (E) and dimensions (D):

An edge is expressed as a connection between two nodes u and v, in a dimension d. In our case, the nodes are countries and the dimensions are sustainable goals as well as their subcategories. The network is generated using the GDELT geolocation, topic recognition and sentiment analysis. The sentiment analysis part will be discussed later, for now, the creation of the simplest network will be concentrated on. GDELT geolocates each article to countries and cities according to the locations mentioned in the article. If an article contains or mentions, two different countries, this is an edge in the network between the two countries. Upon the identification of an edge, the dimension must be accounted for. The network will be multidimensional, therefore, the categories of the article will define which layer the previously mentioned edge appears in.

An article is regarded as a quadruplet of the article’s id (i), its publication date ($t_i$), the identified set of locations mentioned within it ($L_i$), the dimensions and tags of the article ($D_i$) and its sentiment ($s_i$). Table 13 summarizes the connections between the GDELT database and our notations.

Based on GDELT, two types of network building are followed. One approach is when the nodes of the network are the topics (integrated SDGs), where the edges are the news, the dimension of the edges is the countries or groups of countries, while the weight of the edges is the number of pieces and/or tone.

The other option is when the nodes of the network are countries and edges are the news of a particular topic, where the weight of the edges can be determined from the number of articles. Networks can be generated directly with developed SQL queries, but can also be generated based on the downloaded database.

The presented tool analyzes the occurrence of sustainable development goals in the news and characterizes the emphasis of the goals based on the assigned World Bank Group Topical Taxonomy categories. A limiting factor of the approach is that the very general categories that are related to a lot of news can mislead the analyst, so it is not enough to interpret aggregated results at the SDG level, but also to control them at the taxonomy level. The tool can be further developed if different taxonomies are not given equal importance to the goals, but the labels that best describe the goals are represented with higher weights.

Results

The results section shows how world news are related to sustainable development goals. This is the only piece of research that uses a broad-spectrum, systematic, multilingual monitoring tool to describe the sustainability information flow objectively. This methodological development allows to be continuously monitored throughout the world through online queries, thus measuring the social acceptance of SDGs and encouraging participation in terms of their implementation, as well as helping countries around the world to share experiences concerning their problems and successes, which is essential for the implementation of the Agenda. Based on the news, the significance and tone of SDGs in different countries can be modelled on its own. Based on the network analysis, the joint occurrences of the topics can be explored from which the presented approach can be validated. In the news, the spatial allocation of sustainability issues can be measured based on common countries, and countries with similar problems or achievements can be grouped. The analysis can be performed both holistically and in a goal-oriented fashion.

The analysis presented for 2019 can be carried out for any time period. The developed tools and the extracted data are publicly available on the authors’ website: abonyilab.com.

In the following, the representation of the proposed method is described through the global overview of the Sustainable Development Goals, after which climate change goal (SDG13) is presented in detail and finally, the SDG interlinkages are illuminated by the interpretation of the generated networks.

The Sustainable Development Goals in the world news

Based on our method it can be determined, that how often the SDGs occur in the news in different countries worldwide. The percentages of world SDG news are summarized in Fig. 2. Cold colours represent lower percentages, while warm colours represent higher percentages. Map cutouts were selected based on the Global Burden of Disease Study (ref. Fullman et al., 2017). For the quantization of the data equal-frequency binning has been applied, in which we divided the dataset into bins that all have an equal number of frequencies.

Fig. 2 shows that the share of sustainability news, even in the most sensitive countries, is only around 2.6%. Sierra Leone leads the flow of information on SDG news with 2.62%, followed by Rwanda with 2.47% and Liberia with 2.44%. There are only 2 countries where the share of SDG-related news is less than 1%, Saint Pierre and Miquelon and Bouvet Island. The distribution shown in Fig. 2 shows that Africa as well as East and Southeast Asia are the general hot spots of SDG news.

In Eastern Europe, the appearance of SDGs in the news lags slightly behind that in Western countries. Considering that the maximum value is around 2.6%, it follows that the scale moves in a relatively narrow range. In Europe, sustainability related news is most common in Switzerland, at 1.94%. For Small Island Developing States (SIDS), the relative frequency varies. There are countries where more SDGs news appear, such as Singapore (2.04%) and Federated States of Micronesia (2.29%) and some where less than Mauritius (1.4%) or Dominica (1.52%).

The tone of the SDG-related news is illustrated in Fig. 3. For the quantization of the data equal-frequency binning has been applied, in which we divided the dataset into bins that all have an equal number of frequencies. Due to the relatively high number of topic areas, no particular extremes can be observed in Fig. 3. Even the unweighted average tone is represented the aggregate indicator is suitable for presenting the general opinion of the countries concerning the SDGs.

Based on Fig. 3, the most positive (+2.05) is found in Saint Kitts and Nevis, followed by Macau with 1.42. All other positive tones are below +1.00. Other positive countries are Saint Lucia scoring 0.92, Seychelles with 0.82, and then the United Arab Emirates with 0.73. The most pessimistic country is Christmas Island with a tone of -2.65, followed by Libya with -2.44 and Iran with -2.43. A very interesting correlation is observed between Figs. 2 and 3. The most SDG-related news sees the light of day in Africa, but the news is also the most negative here, therefore, a joint analysis of quantity and tone is recommended.

For Small Island Developing States, perceptions of SDG are generally positive (except in Marshall Islands, where -1.25), but overall, the news are more negative in the world as a global picture. One reason for this may be that awareness raising works more effectively if the emphasis is on the negative consequences. In any case, the regional patterns are well understood in the average tone of the news, however, they may be of further interest for analysis of tones at the different SDGs, which is beyond the scope of the present research. Nevertheless, the proposed tool we have developed is directly suitable for conducting such researches. In this case, the average tones can also be interpreted on a wider scale.

The impact of climate change is perhaps the most obvious in the world’s news, so the application of the methodology to address this issue will be described separately.

Fig. 4 shows the percentage of world news related to action against climate change in 2019. In the figure, red colours indicate higher frequencies, while colder blue colours indicate lower frequencies. Map cutouts were selected based on the Global Burden of Disease Study (ref. Fullman et al., 2017). For the quantization of the data equal-frequency binning has been applied, in which we divided the dataset into bins that all have an equal number of frequencies.

As a proportion of all the news in the countries of the world, Tuvalu publishes the most news related to climate change, 0.75% to be exact. The second most common is the U.S., where 0.6% of the news is about climate change. The third place is located in the Arctic Ocean, namely the Svalbard archipelago, with 0.54%. The least amount of news concerning climate change appears in Anguilla, 0.003%. In general, the analysis shows that news about climate change is more relevant in small island states. Climate induced risks for small islands includes sea level rise, tropical and extratopical cyclones, changes in rainfall patters and the increase of air and sea surface temperatures (ref. Nurse et al., 2014). This fact has so far not been sufficiently taken into account with regard to the implementation of the 2030 Agenda, as the indicators set for the Climate Action (SDG 13) goal in themselves fail to take into account such groupings of countries.

In general, climate change is more prominent in countries that, due to their geographical location, have a more significant relationship with the seas or oceans. In Europe, France has the most news on climate action, with 0.12%, an order of magnitude higher than the European average.

News media play a significant role in informing and engaging citizens in sustainability issues (ref. Östman, 2014), therefore, the tone of news indicates their general opinion. The average tone of the countries can be seen in Fig. 5. Pessimistic countries are denoted in red, while those with a positive attitude are labelled in green and nations that are neutral in yellow. For the quantization of the data equal-frequency binning has been applied, in which we divided the dataset into bins that all have an equal number of frequencies.

According to the news, Cape Verde is the most negative country with regard to climate change, where the average tone is -6. In second place is the United States with a value of -5.5 and in third is The Bahamas with -4.9. The most optimistic country is Aruba, with an average tone of 4.1, followed by Monaco with a value of 3.7 and then Macau with a score of 2.4. It can be seen that the average tone is usually neutral in the world. Further interesting research could be a separate analysis of very negative and very positive news, which can be done directly with the methodology developed in the present research.

The intertwining of the SDGs and world and news

Sustainable development goals are closely interlinked, a fact that is also true for news categories and the typical published news profiles of the countries around the world. In the following, networks are used to illustrate the complex interrelationships of the intertwining of SDGs and news. The network of ontologies characterizing sustainable development goals is illustrated in Fig. 6. In the network, the size of the title of the topics is proportional to its degree of centrality, while the thickness of the links between the issues is proportional to the number of news and the colour shows the average tone.

As is shown in Fig. 6, the identified modules in the network are related to the same topics, which are highlighted by the colours of the nodes, therefore, the connections between the ontologies of the World Bank and the sustainable development goals considered can be validated. The highest degrees of centrality with regard to the nodes in the network are the ‘human resources for public sector’, ‘pharmaceuticals’, ‘metal ore mining’, ‘education skills development and labor market’ and ‘health promotion and disease prevention’. The edges of the network are predominantly red, which means that sustainability news tends to be negative. If the developed queries are used, the development of the network of topic areas over time, the interest in sustainable development, the flow of information, and the speed of responding to environmental problems can all be measured. This research aims to present query-based monitoring as a new option in the field of sustainability assessment. Analyzing changes in the news over time is a promising future research direction.

This research has presented a methodological development based on the combination of news with SDGs that can contribute to the effective delivery of the 2030 Agenda. There are differences between countries around the world in both the proportion and tone of SDG-related news. The proposed methodology is also suitable for holistic and goal-oriented analyses, which were presented across all objectives and on the example of SDG 13. The overall hot spots of sustainability news are mainly in Africa as well as East and Southeast Asia, moreover the most negative tone recorded in Africa. In contrast, in the case of climate change, the United States and small island states are more in focus. These facts outline the foundations for exploring future focal points of SDG 10: Reduced inequalities, nevertheless, they can also help fill in information gaps to identify potential areas for collaboration (SDG 17). Tracking news can also help to better understand the state of technical goals worldwide, such as SDG 6 “Clean water and sanitation,” where SDG indicators focus mainly on infrastructure, while social aspects are highly underrepresented. Analyzing the news provides support for strategists in precisely this objectively difficult area to also measure modern wastewater treatment processes such as heat recovery, enzymatic wastewater treatment or membrane technology which can be measured mainly through news, across the SDG indicators it is not possible.

In Fig. 7 the occurrences of countries in the climate action-related (SDG 13) news are represented in a network. The network identifies the intertwining of countries based on countries mentioned together in news with regard to the 13th goal.

The sizes of the nodes are proportional to their occurrence, and the edges represent those mentioned to be in collaboration, where the weight is the number of the news. The colours of the nodes were chosen according to the classes of modularity detected.

Fig. 7 shows that the United States is most often mentioned in the world news about climate change. The U.S. can be grouped with 132 other countries, has a betweenness centrality of 0.525 and is by far the most significant hub in the network. The most weighted edges in the network are France-USA with 3343 news, France-Germany with 3243 news, Canada-USA 3209, UK-US 2368, Russia-USA 2091, Egypt-USA 2052 and China-USA 2015. In terms of nodes, the second most central hub is France, the third is Germany, the fourth is Mexico and the fifth is India.

The provision of information encourages people to participate in environmental protection and, by involving people, makes it possible to maintain the continuity and implementation of sustainability policy in the most cost-effective way. (ref. Iizuka, 2016)

Analyses showed that there was very little difference in the level of environmental quality concerns between developed and developing countries (ref. Iizuka, 2016).

If the environmental preferences of agents are sensitive to environmental pollution and human capital, the economy is able to follow a balanced growth trajectory, with damped oscillations that can be addressed by environmental policy (ref. Constant and Davin, 2019).

The fact that countries play a largely neutral role in the climate change news network is a good indication that we need to make serious efforts to achieve the objectives of the SDGs and the Paris Climate Agreement.

In summary, sustainable development goals can be monitored through news appearing determined by carefully selected keywords. The network of ontologies characterizing sustainable development goals determines their centrality, links and tone. The distribution of the percentage of sustainability news reveals that general hot spots are located in Africa as well as East and Southeast Asia. The average tone of the SDG-related news presenting the general opinion of countries in regard with the issues, for example, considering the average of SDG news, the most positive country is Saint Kitts and Nevis (+2.5), while the most pessimistic is Christmas Island (-2.65). Furthermore, the cooperation of countries in regard with sustainability issues can be determined by the thoughtful analysis of countries co-occurrence in the selected news.

Conclusion

The major objective of this paper was to determine country profiles as well as interconnections according to the presence of sustainability – assessed through a news-centred network analysis. This method enables the stages of implementation to be determined and serves as a supportive decision-making tool to contribute towards the conscious formation of a sustainable socio-economic ecosystem.

Based on the developed methodology, any SDG can be analyzed in the world news. A comprehensive analysis of 2019 shows that world news are not significantly focus on SDGs, as with all related topics accounting for only roughly 2.5% of the news are covered by SDG-related topics, even in the most sensitive countries. Sustainability news is most prevalent in Africa as well as East and Southeast Asia, with the former having the most negative tone in the region. The proposed methodology will provide essential information for future strategic planning with regard to several goals, in particular in the area of SDG 10, where addressing inequalities is a key challenge.

Through the news, not only holistic but also goal-oriented analyses can be performed. It can be seen that the role of the United States is prominent in SDG 13 and that greater emphasis should be placed on small island states in the future, because the news about climate change is mostly negative in these countries. The analysis shows that more emphasis should be placed in all countries on the appearance of SDGs in the news.

Since countries are also grouped together in terms of different SDG-related ontologies, the relationship between countries can also be analyzed. It has been shown that the United States is one of the most important hubs in the network. The results will contribute to an objective SDG-based analysis of the news, thus helping to track implementation of the 2030 Agenda.

The average tone of SDGs is negative, especially for African countries, while Small Island Developing States have a positive viewpoint on the 2030 Agenda. The most positive countries are Saint Kitts and Nevis +2.05, followed by Macau with 1.42. The most negative news are occurred in Christmas Island with a tone of -2.65, followed by Libya with -2.44 and Iran with -2.43.

We recommend that countries exposed to climate change (especially the SIDS) work together, while tackling the negative appearance of the United States in the news about climate change is an urgent task. The negative perception of African countries about SDGs shows that countries around the world need to put more emphasis on Reduced Inequalities within and among countries (SDG10) goal.

Social acceptance is a key element in the strategic planning of the implementation of 2030 Agenda, so we recommend that national governments inform the public about the tasks, achievements and challenges related to SDGs. A more frequent appearance in the news can be one of the positive drivers for a better understanding of sustainability issues and solutions. The presented monitoring tool can provide useful feedback to decision makers about the awareness of residents and help them learn about their attitudes.

Declarations

Author contribution statement

V. Sebestyén: Performed the experiments; Analyzed and interpreted the data; Contributed reagents, materials, analysis tools or data; Wrote the paper.

T. Czvetkó: Analyzed and interpreted the data; Contributed reagents, materials, analysis tools or data; Wrote the paper.

G. Honti: Performed the experiments; Analyzed and interpreted the data; Contributed reagents, materials, analysis tools or data.

J. Abonyi: Conceived and designed the experiments; Performed the experiments; Analyzed and interpreted the data; Contributed reagents, materials, analysis tools or data.

Funding statement

This work was supported by Széchenyi 2020 (GINOP-2.3.2-15-2016-00016) and NKFIH-872.

Data availability statement

Data will be made available on request.

Declaration of interests statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Additional information

Supplementary content related to this article has been published online at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2021.e06174.

No additional information is available for this paper.

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