Sentiment on global leaders in online press worldwide 2017-2023

How are global leaders treated in online media worldwide? Among the politicians presented, Narendra Modi, India's prime minister, had the highest average sentiment score of online news articles mentioning him worldwide in 2023. Most of the presented politicians saw an increase in score compared to the previous year. The tone of articles mentioning Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the Turkish president, deteriorated in 2023, especially during the news coverage of severe earthquakes in Turkey in February of that year. The score of Jacinda Ardern, the prime minister of New Zealand who resigned in 2023, was measured at -0.95 in that year.

The tone of articles mentioning Putin and Zelensky is more negative than before the war

The average sentiment score of online news articles mentioning Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the president of Ukraine, significantly declined in recent years. In 2017 and 2018, before he got elected to that post and when he was mostly known as an actor and comedian, Zelenskyy's score was positive at 1.45 and 0.84, respectively. In 2022, the tone of articles mentioning Zelenskyy was highly negative, with a score of -2.94, because most of the publications were related to the war in Ukraine. Similarly, the tone of articles mentioning the Russian President Vladimir Putin deteriorated in that year. However, in 2023, the sentiment scores of Zelenskyy and Putin were higher than those of Donald Trump, who served as the U.S. president from January 2017 to January 2021 and had the lowest score in that year.