Mapping Data from Google's Global Database for Events, Language, and Tone (GDELT)

The Global Database for Events, Language, and Tone or GDELT Project supported by Google Ideas, monitors global media (in more than 100 languages) and identifies key people, locations, organizations, conflict, and themes. GDELT already has a lot of great features and is moving towards 2.0 with more contextualized geocoding.

"[GDELT's] Event Database archives contain nearly 400 million latitude/longitude geographic coordinates spanning over 12,900 days,...making it one of the largest open-access spatio-temporal datasets in existence." - GDELT website

Event vs. GKG databases
GDELT consists of two databases: 1) an Event and 2) Global Knowledge Graph (GKG) database. The event database is more focused on what and where, while the GKG focuses on 'how something is being said.  With the Event database, you can search by actor (initiator and victim) and by category of exchange / different type of event codes.  With the GKG, you can search by keyword.

One day's worth of events mapped above.  Click the map to enlarge it.

Accessing and downloading data
GDELT data can be accessed in a number of ways for a wide range of users from beginner's to advanced.  You can utilize the Analysis Service, Google Cloud, or raw data--in this case event data. A lot of the data sets are tab delimited.  Column names can be found in the documentation.  Skip to the bottom of this article for more links!

Analysis Service
I have spent most of my time exploring the analysis service that allows you to export raw data, map it, view timelines and a host of other great features. It provides all sorts of tools to access, export, and analyze data including creating heat maps, dynamic KMLs, timelines, network diagrams, graphs  tone graphs, and word clouds!

GDELT's Analysis Service makes the data very accessible.

There is too much to describe, so check it out for yourself by visiting the links below!  Be sure to read through the documentation before getting started!

GDELT Analysis
http://analysis.gdeltproject.org/

Raw Data
http://gdeltproject.org/#downloading
http://data.gdeltproject.org/events/index.html

Documentation and Column Names
http://gdeltproject.org/data.html#documentation
http://data.gdeltproject.org/documentation/GDELT-Data_Format_Codebook.pdf

Conflict Dashboard
http://gdeltproject.org/globaldashboard/

Non-GIS Open Source, Worthy Companions

Do not look at the title twice!  Yes, this post is about non-GIS open source software.  However, these open-source programs make great companions to any analysis. 

For example, you may find the need for a traditional statistical software package. R Statistical Software can aid in importing, analyzing, and cleaning your data.  You can perform traditional statistical analyses.  There's even a spatial package, although you will better off sticking with open source GIS programs like GRASS or QGIS.  A good overview of its spatial package can be found here.

Want to examine social networks?  Then, Gephi's great!  I just analyzed my Facebook network in only a few minutes after following a tutorial.  In addition, Gephi has features and plugins to help you map geographic data. 
   
At some point you may also need Python.  Editing and organizing code, then give Notepad ++ a try.

A some point you will have to compress files, then 7-zip is a sure thing.  You may want to playback some videos or animations and VLC Player works great.

GIMP is a image maniupulation program similar to photoshop.  You can see an example of combining GIS with GIMP on a great GIS blog.

You will probably want to type up your results or make a few "PowerPoint" slides...so there's Open Office and the Libre Office implementation. If you need a standalone pdf creator, then there's PDF creator.

Lastly, if you ever want to venture away from Windows or other operating systems, there's Ubuntu--an easy installation of Linux.  Be sure the open-source or for-fee programs you want to run have a Linux version before making the switch.  Naturally, many open source programs have a Linux version but some do not.