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Antimicrobial Resistance in the News, 2019–2026: Attention, Geography and Tone of Global Coverage, and How It Compares with Research and Invention

Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: We measure how antimicrobial resistance was covered in a global news index from January 2019 to July 2026, using 51,769 de-duplicated matched articles, and set that coverage beside 35,794 research papers (2015–2025) and 708 patent families (2015–2024) on the same subject. Six results stand out: Flat attention. The topic took 3.94 of every 10,000 news articles in 2019 and 3.78 in 2025. Raw counts rose 2.19-fold, but the index grew as fast. The low point was 2020, at 3.0 per 10,000, 24% below 2019. Calendar. Outside a January dating artefact, November (8.78%) and December (8.69%) hold the largest shares of each year's coverage. November is the month of World Antibiotic Awareness Week. In 2024 the peak month outside January was September (3.98 per 10,000), the month of the United Nations high-level meeting on the subject. Geography. The United Kingdom's share of located coverage is 2.28 times its share of all news; the United States, the largest source (32.38%), is under-represented at 0.67. Africa (2.29), Oceania (1.79) and Europe (1.56) are over-represented by continent. Within the United States, New York (1.91) and California (1.59), the only states with at least 50 located articles, are over-represented. Priority and tone. 93.4% of articles are rated critical priority (all news: 42.6%), yet only 27.2% are negative in tone (all news: 33.6%). Measurement. 80% of a hand-checked sample were journal abstracts indexed alongside news reports. Only 11.69% of matched articles carry a country, and records with only a publication year cluster on 1 January. Research and invention. Research papers on resistance grew from 2.49 to 8.59 per 10,000 papers between 2015 and 2025 (3.45-fold). Patent families grew 4.09-fold in raw count from 2015 to 2024, and China's office held 51.7% of filing-office records.
DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.23448560
Language: English
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7222899166
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