If it’s May, then it’s time for a new version of my on-going series where I track what places are being mentioned the most in the news and on social media.

The criteria for being a place in this context is that I can generate longitude and latitude for it. Even if those co-ordinates don’t always make total sense.

For example Google thinks that the EU is in Austria and while it makes more sense for it to be placed Brussels, it’s not 100% wrong.

This month I have added social media mentions as a criteria. The results were remarkably similar although some places (like Venezuela) are mentioned much more often in the news than on social media.

Other places ( Colombo Sri Lanka,  Warsaw Poland, and Doha, Qatar ) are mentioned much more often on social media then they are in the English speaking press.

Top 100 Places in the News & Social Media May 2019

As you can see from the image above the majority of the places I am tracking are still in the Northern Hemisphere even though adding social media mentions did make it somewhat more representative.  India and South Eastern Asia were the regions that saw the largest increases with the inclusion of social media mentions.

If you are interested is seeing the entire list, want to ask me about my data collection and processing methodology, or are interested in hiring me to write some Python – just drop me a line here.