Combined satellite and news data capture unseen aspects of war

Researchers’ understanding of political violence rests on an achievement of which few people are aware. For more than two decades, teams of coders have collected reports of wars around the world and turned them into structured records. In this sense, scientists’ understanding of political violence is news-based. Writing in Nature, Sticher et al.1 explain how satellite images could transform that understanding and drive a new era in conflict research.

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-026-02523-3

References Sticher, V. et al. Nature https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-11004-6 (2026). Raleigh, C., Linke, A., Hegre, H. & Karlsen, J. J. Peace Res. 47, 651–660 (2010). Sundberg, R. & Melander, E. J. Peace Res. 50, 523–532 (2013). Weidmann, N. B. Am. J. Polit. Sci. 60, 206–218 (2016). Croicu, M. & Eck, K. Int. Interact. 48, 450–470 (2022). Musienko, V., Jacquet, A., Weber, I. & Koebe, T. In Proc. 19th Int. AAAI Conf. Web Social Media (ICWSM, 2025). Download references

Competing Interests The author declares no competing interests.

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