Ontology field guide
By NOSIBLE Research
IPTC Media Topics
IPTC Media Topics reveals when issuer coverage crosses risk domains.
Subject labels determine the risk regime a researcher sees. An issuer can move from routine company and engineering coverage into accidents, regulation, litigation and workforce disruption. IPTC Media Topics preserves those domains in one hierarchy. Researchers can detect the transition without treating every company event as equivalent across time, sources, sectors or risk regimes.[1]
World assigns each event a three-level topic path. Roots support broad regime measures. Leaves support precise cohorts. Topic transitions show where reporting moves. They do not establish economic impact, causal exposure, operational loss, legal liability or subsequent market repricing.[1]
- Categories
- 718 categories
- Structure
- 3 levels
- World events labelled
- 100.0%
- Stable codes
- Since v1
- Release data
- CC0
Foundations
Media Topics separates subject domains without measuring importance, impact or factual accuracy
IPTC Media Topics is a subject hierarchy for news. Seventeen roots cover economy, politics, health, science, labour, society, environment, sport and other domains. Descendants add narrower subjects. One structure supports broad attention measures and precise event cohorts for direct comparison.[1]
World stores the dominant path for each canonical event. It does not preserve every secondary subject in the underlying coverage. A broader topic mix can reflect real diffusion, changing sources or classification boundaries. Validate important transitions against entities, sources and leaf assignments before interpreting the regime shift.[1]
Categories
Media Topics organizes 718 reporting categories beneath 17 independent subject-domain roots
World implements 17 roots, 73 intermediate subjects and 628 leaves. Each event receives one path. The explorer exposes definitions, stable IPTC codes, complete paths and World V1.2 frequencies. Bounded search and tree expansion avoid rendering all 718 categories at once while preserving the full hierarchy.
15,311,040 of 15,311,040 World events carry labels from IPTC Media Topics. Select a category to see its count and both relevant shares.
arts, culture, entertainment and media
arts, culture, entertainment and media
Definition
Reporting about arts, culture, entertainment and media, including creative work, cultural practice, publishing and broadcasting.
Potential research use
Broad media, culture and entertainment attention
- Code
- medtop:01000000
- Events with label
- 770,168
- Share of labelled
- 5.0%
- Share of World
- 5.0%
Events with label is the selected count. Label share divides it by 15,311,040 assigned events; World share divides it by all 15,311,040 events.
Representative World V1.2 events
One strong classified example per available year, with up to ten years shown.
Local Arts Groups Propose Downtown Cultural District Revitalization
Coverage 11Corus Acquires Shaw Media for $2.65B to Expand Canadian TV Portfolio
Coverage 73Social Media Cancels Hollywood Events Including Performers and Shows
Coverage 39Ubisoft Developing Female-Led Skull Bones TV Series with Atlas Entertainment
Coverage 35Sky Arts Becomes Free-to-Air on Freeview and Freesat in September
Coverage 37UK City of Culture 2025 Longlist Revealed for Eight Areas
Coverage 54Naples Launches ¡Arte Viva! Hispanic Culture Arts Initiative
Coverage 52Social Media Algorithms Flatten Culture by Making Decisions
Coverage 234ARKO Concludes 10th World Summit on Arts and Culture in Seoul
Coverage 68Teens Prefer Social Media and Influencers for News Despite Skepticism
Coverage 366
Browse categories to compare definitions, World V1.2 statistics and representative classified events.
Example usage 1 of 3
Example Usage: COVID-19 coverage escapes health as policy, society and sport take over
COVID-19 reporting begins as a health story, then spreads across the economy and public life. Health falls from 37.4% of assigned topics before 20 February 2020 to 23.0% afterwards. Politics, society and sport each gain material share as governments restrict activity, close borders and cancel events.[2]
Each topic implies a different exposure set. Health points to providers and therapeutics. Politics identifies regulation and fiscal response. Society captures behavioral disruption. Sport isolates shutdowns and media rights. The hierarchy turns one pandemic keyword into separate event clocks for sector, policy and cross-asset research.[1][3]
The fixed English cohort contains 55,650 IPTC-assigned COVID-19 events from January through June 2020. Lines pool topic counts across consecutive weeks and divide by all assigned cohort events. They measure the reporting subject mix, not infections, economic losses or market returns.
Example usage 2 of 3
Example Usage: Suez topics separate the immediate trade shock from the longer logistics bottleneck
The Ever Given blockage creates a concentrated trade and transport regime after 23 March 2021. Normalized IPTC-assigned coverage reaches 2,800 events per million during the blocked week. Economy, Business and Finance accounts for 64.3% of assigned topics, Transport for 35.7%, and International Trade for 14.3% while the canal remains closed.[6]
After refloating, normalized attention falls to 584 events per million. Economy and Finance drops to 41.0%, while Transport remains at 38.5% and infrastructure-related Science and Technology reaches 7.7%. The categories create separate clocks for the initial trade interruption and the slower freight, inventory, insurance and port-congestion consequences.[7]
- Normalized coverage
- -2,216 per million
- Economy and finance
- -23.3pp
- Transport
- +2.8pp
- International trade
- -14.3pp
The fixed English cohort requires Ever Given or Suez Canal language from March through mid-May 2021. Each line pools category counts across the current and prior two weeks, then divides by all IPTC-assigned cohort events in that window. Economy and Science are top-level topics; Transport is the relevant third-level topic within the same fixed canal-disruption reporting cohort throughout the event window.
Example usage 3 of 3
Example Usage: GameStop becomes a policy story when Congress examines the trading restrictions
GameStop begins as a market and retail-investor story. Economy, Business and Finance represents 41% of assigned topics around the 28 January 2021 trading restrictions. Its share falls to 29% by the 18 February congressional hearing, while Politics and Government rises from 5% to 21% of the same classified cohort.[8]
The shift separates two risk channels that a GameStop keyword combines. The squeeze concerns positioning, liquidity and price formation. The hearing introduces brokerage rules, payment for order flow and market-structure risk. Topic labels identify when the event clock moves from trading mechanics toward regulation and business-model risk.[9]
- Politics
- +16.0pp
- Economy and Finance
- -12.0pp
- Lifestyle and Leisure
- +11.0pp
The fixed English cohort covers January through April 2021 and requires GameStop, Game Stop or GME. The chart shows 15 January through 10 March. Each line pools topic counts across the current and prior thirteen days, then divides by all IPTC-assigned cohort events. The cohort contains 231 assigned events; raw counts are sample disclosures only and do not directly establish market impact or causal effects.
Data and sources
Download IPTC Media Topics and References
Downloads
Download categories and counts as CSV, or the complete machine-readable release as JSON.
Release details and citation files
ManifestRelease READMECC0 license and scopeCitation fileChangelog
Need the complete World event schema? Open the World data dictionary.
References
- [1]International Press Telecommunications Council. Media Topics controlled categories, 2025-10-10 release.
- [2]World Health Organization. (2020). Timeline of WHO's response to COVID-19.
- [3]International Monetary Fund. (2020). World Economic Outlook: The Great Lockdown.
- [8]U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. (2021). Staff report on equity and options market structure conditions in early 2021.
- [9]U.S. House Committee on Financial Services. (2021). Game Stopped? Who wins and loses when short sellers, social media, and retail investors collide.
- [6]Suez Canal Authority. (2021). Successful refloating of the Ever Given, 29 March 2021.
- [7]United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. (2021). Suez Canal blockage could affect global trade by $6-9 billion per week.
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