Babel Briefings News Headlines Dataset README
Break Free from the Language Barrier
Version: 1 - Date: 30 Oct 2023
Collected and Prepared by Felix Leeb (Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, Tübingen, Germany)
License: Babel Briefings Headlines Dataset © 2023 by Felix Leeb is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
This dataset contains 4,719,199 news headlines across 30 different languages collected between 8 August 2020 and 29 November 2021. The headlines were collected using the News API by collecting the top headlines (usually about 30-70 articles) separately for each combination of the 54 locations x 7 categories almost every day. Note, that the same article may occur more than once across different locations, categories, or dates (which is recorded in the instances property), so in total 7,419,089 instances were collected.
For non-English articles, the article data is translated to English using Google Translate (see en-title, en-description, and en-content properties).
The dataset is provided in the form of 54 JSON files, one for each location containing the all the unique headlines that appeared for the first time in the corresponding location. Each headline is represented as a JSON object with the following properties:
ID: (integer) a unique ID for each articletitle: (string) the headline text in the original languagedescription: (string) the article description in the original languagecontent: (string) the first few words of the article in the original languageauthor: (string) the author of the articlesource-id: (string) the news aggregator (e.g. Google-News)source-name: (string) usually the domain of the source where the article was publishedurl: (string) the URL of the articleurlToImage: (string) the URL to an image associated with the articlepublishedAt: (date) the article was publishedinstances: (list) specific time and place where this article was posted. Each element contains:collectedAt: (date) date and time when the article was collectedcategory: (string) of the article from 7 possible values (see below for full list)location: (string) of the article from 54 possible values (see below for full list)
language: (string) ISO-639 2-letter code for the language (inferred from location)en-title: (string) the headline text translated to English (if necessary)en-description: (string) the article description text translated to English (if necessary)en-content: (string) the first few words of the article translated to English (if necessary)
Notes
- Unfortunately, due to an issue with News API, the
contentof articles originally in a non-latin based script (e.g. Chinese, Arabic, Japanese, Greek, Russian, etc.) are usually not available. However, for the most part all other articles should have a meaningfulcontentproperty, and thetitleanddescriptionsappear unaffected. - All properties except
language,en-title,en-description, anden-contentare taken directly from the News API responses. The language is inferred from the location, and the English translations are collected using Google Translate.
Statistics
Here are a few basic summary statistics about the dataset.
Articles by Language
| Code | Language | Articles | Locations |
|---|---|---|---|
| en | English | 1128233 | au, ca, gb, ie, in, my, ng, nz, ph, sa, sg, us, za |
| es | Spanish | 455952 | ar, co, cu, mx, ve |
| fr | French | 288328 | be, fr, ma |
| zh | Chinese | 270887 | cn, hk, tw |
| de | German | 259718 | at, ch, de |
| pt | Portuguese | 243829 | br, pt |
| ar | Arabic | 178854 | ae, eg |
| id | Indonesian | 131252 | id |
| it | Italian | 129005 | it |
| tr | Turkish | 122724 | tr |
| el | Greek | 119940 | gr |
| ja | Japanese | 118475 | jp |
| pl | Polish | 116904 | pl |
| ru | Russian | 113395 | ru |
| nl | Dutch | 104031 | nl |
| th | Thai | 90708 | th |
| sv | Swedish | 86838 | se |
| ko | Korean | 83090 | kr |
| sr | Serbian | 80040 | rs |
| hu | Hungarian | 73509 | hu |
| cs | Czech | 70647 | cz |
| he | Hebrew | 67794 | il |
| bg | Bulgarian | 67223 | bg |
| uk | Ukrainian | 65610 | ua |
| ro | Romanian | 54601 | ro |
| no | Norwegian | 46804 | no |
| sk | Slovak | 43057 | sk |
| lv | Latvian | 40006 | lv |
| lt | Lithuanian | 34719 | lt |
| sl | Slovenian | 33026 | si |
Instances by category
| Category | Instances |
|---|---|
| sports | 1132542 |
| entertainment | 982479 |
| business | 840748 |
| technology | 802933 |
| general | 704692 |
| health | 424188 |
| science | 388281 |
Instances by location
| Code | Location | Instances |
|---|---|---|
| ae | United Arab Emirates | 214256 |
| ar | Argentina | 159139 |
| ph | Philippines | 155365 |
| ng | Nigeria | 155112 |
| in | India | 145536 |
| us | United States | 144800 |
| ca | Canada | 143928 |
| sa | Saudi Arabia | 143382 |
| cu | Cuba | 138675 |
| au | Australia | 138408 |
| br | Brazil | 136101 |
| ma | Morocco | 131974 |
| id | Indonesia | 131252 |
| eg | Egypt | 129382 |
| it | Italy | 129005 |
| gb | United Kingdom | 127391 |
| ie | Ireland | 126640 |
| mx | Mexico | 124499 |
| tr | Turkey | 122724 |
| gr | Greece | 119940 |
| de | Germany | 119917 |
| jp | Japan | 118475 |
| za | South Africa | 117351 |
| fr | France | 117210 |
| pl | Poland | 116904 |
| pt | Portugal | 115976 |
| co | Colombia | 115325 |
| my | Malaysia | 115223 |
| ru | Russian Federation | 113395 |
| at | Austria | 111867 |
| nz | New Zealand | 108809 |
| tw | Taiwan | 108652 |
| nl | Netherlands | 104031 |
| sg | Singapore | 101251 |
| be | Belgium | 99460 |
| cn | China | 91561 |
| ve | Venezuela | 91045 |
| th | Thailand | 90708 |
| se | Sweden | 86838 |
| kr | Korea | 83090 |
| hk | Hong Kong | 83051 |
| rs | Serbia | 80040 |
| hu | Hungary | 73509 |
| cz | Czechia | 70647 |
| ch | Switzerland | 68846 |
| il | Israel | 67794 |
| bg | Bulgaria | 67223 |
| ua | Ukraine | 65610 |
| ro | Romania | 54601 |
| no | Norway | 46804 |
| sk | Slovakia | 43057 |
| lv | Latvia | 40006 |
| lt | Lithuania | 34719 |
| si | Slovenia | 33026 |