The Monsoon in the News, 2019–2026: Seasonality, Geography and Tone of Global Monsoon Coverage, and How It Compares with Research
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: We measure how the monsoon was covered in a global news index from January 2019 to July 2026, using 74,107 de-duplicated monsoon articles, and set that coverage beside 10,352 research papers (2015–2025) on the monsoon. Six results stand out: Seasonality. On average 72.11% of each year's monsoon coverage appears between June and September, and 45.64% in June and July alone. Attention, not rainfall. The monsoon took a 39.1% smaller share of news in 2020 than in 2019. Its share peaked in July 2024, at 19.99 articles per 10,000. Geography. India holds 79.53% of located monsoon news, 6.02 times its share of all news. Nepal (11.21) is the most over-represented country, ahead of India, the Philippines (5), Pakistan (4.76) and Bangladesh (4.12). Within India, Himachal Pradesh (5.34), Kerala (2.42) and Goa (1.96) lead; within the United States, Arizona (38.35) and New Mexico (16.03), the core of the North American monsoon. Tone and urgency. 54.2% of monsoon articles are negative in tone (all news: 33.6%), and 67.6% are rated critical priority (all news: 42.6%). Yet 37.2% are positive, because a good monsoon is good news. Measurement. 13.6% of raw matches for monsoon vocabulary were removed as stories about the Monsoon Session of India's legislatures or a retailer of the same name. Counting them would inflate coverage with politics. Research. Papers with monsoon in the title held a flat share of the literature, 1.37 per 10,000 papers in 2015 and 1.44 in 2025. Patenting on the monsoon is negligible (58 families, 2015–2024).
Author: Kumar, Narendra
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7222905489
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