Using the GDELT API to watch uncertainty

After a series of blogs on the GDELT data, let show how to use the GDELT API to follow and watch uncertainty in real time. On EconBrowser, Menzie Chinn shown that the Economic Policy Uncertainty is skyrocketing:

https://econbrowser.com/archives/2025/03/economic-policy-uncertainty-at-recorded-maximum

Thanks to Rodolphe Desbordes, I learned that the GDELT DOC 2.0 API is available here:

In order to check the level of uncertainty, I can enter the following query:

https://api.gdeltproject.org/api/v2/doc/doc?query=uncertainty&mode=TimelineVol&startdatetime=20170101010000&enddatetime=20250317114240&timezoom=yes&TIMELINESMOOTH=7

The “query=uncertainty” is for the term search in the database. The “mode=TimelineVol” is for displaying a time series. The start date and end date can be specified with “startdatetime=20170101010000&enddatetime=20250317114240″. Finally, I used a 7-day smoothing to remove seasonality with TIMELINESMOOTH=7”.

The option “timezoom=yes” allows you to zoom-in interactively in the figure:

If I associate uncertainty and tariff as keywords, I obtain the following figure, I add the following in the query (tariff%20OR%20uncertainty):

https://api.gdeltproject.org/api/v2/doc/doc?query=(tariff%20OR%20uncertainty)&mode=TimelineVol&startdatetime=20170101010000&enddatetime=20250317114240&timezoom=yes&TIMELINESMOOTH=7

So, yes, the economic uncertainty is skyrocketing! Let us try with the key word “war”:

It spikes just after the start of the War in Ukraine.