Chile Social Outbreak Dataset

This repository presents a dataset of Chilean news media coverage during the social unrest and constitutional processes from 2019 to 2023. Using Python-based web scraping with BeautifulSoup and Selenium, we collected articles from 15 Chilean news outlets between 15 November 2019 and 17 December 2023. The initial collection of 1254 articles was filtered to 931 usable data points after removing non-relevant content, duplicates, and articles unrelated to the Chilean social outburst. Each news outlet required specific extraction approaches due to varying HTML structures, with some outlets inaccessible due to paywalls or anti-scraping mechanisms. The dataset is structured in JSON format with standardized fields including title, content, date, author, and source metadata.

Interest range: November 15, 2019 – December 17, 2023

Citation

If you use this data set in your work please cite the following article:

@article{molina2025web,
  title={Web Scraping Chilean News Media: A Dataset for Analyzing Social Unrest Coverage (2019--2023)},
  author={Molina, Ignacio and Morales, Jos{\'e} and Keith, Brian},
  journal={Data},
  volume={10},
  number={11},
  pages={174},
  year={2025},
  publisher={MDPI}
}

Final Data File

The final data is located in the directory: src/archive/FINAL_DATA.json.

Media Outlet and Ideological Leanings

Media Outlet	Ideology/Description
El Mercurio	Right-wing politics. Conservative-liberal vision, mainly aimed at business sectors, politicians, and Chilean elites.
La Cuarta	Right-wing politics. Popular and sensationalist focus, mainly aimed at workers, middle, and lower classes.
The Clinic	Left-wing politics. Progressive-critical line, oriented towards young people, university students, and urban sectors with an alternative political outlook.
CNN en Español	Liberal-centrist editorial line, aimed at a Latin American audience interested in politics, economy, and current affairs.
Diario Financiero	Pro-market liberal vision, oriented towards businesspeople, executives, investors, and economic decision-makers.
La Segunda	Right-wing politics. Conservative-liberal line, focused on professionals, politicians, and businesspeople.
La Tercera	Right-wing politics. Liberal-centrist line, aimed at middle classes, professionals, academics, and readers of national politics.
Las Últimas Noticias	Right-wing politics. Entertainment and apolitical focus, aimed at a mass, young, and digital consumer audience.
HoyxHoy	Right-wing politics. Citizen and neutral focus, oriented towards an urban, young audience and public transport users.
Ciper	Independent. Critical line, aimed at those interested in investigative journalism, transparency, and Chilean politics.
EMOL	Right-wing politics. Centrist-liberal editorial line, aimed at a general audience, professionals, academics, and readers of national and international news.
Ex-Ante	Center-right politics. Analytical and critical focus, directed at politicians, professionals, businesspeople, and readers of national political affairs.
El Mostrador	Pluralist. Progressive and independent line, directed at urban readers, young people, academics, and politically engaged Chileans.
El País	Center-left politics. Progressive and critical focus, aimed at an international audience and readers interested in global politics.
Gamba	An openly progressive and leftist political stance, aimed at young, digital, and activist Chilean audiences.

Activity and Results

Media Outlet	Data
El Mercurio	Access not allowed
La Cuarta	153
The Clinic	75
CNN en Español	28
Diario Financiero	Access not allowed
La Segunda	Access not allowed
La Tercera	236
Las Últimas Noticias	Access not allowed
La Segunda	Access not allowed
Ciper	16
EMOL	153
Ex-Ante	65
El Mostrador	86
El País	102
Gamba	17
Total	931

Directory Structure

📁src/
├─ 📁archive/
│  ├─ 📁historial/
│  ├─ 📁pages_extracted/
│  ├─ 📁temp/
├─ 📁pages_extracted/
├─ 📁extract_code/

• src → archive: Contains .json files with extracted information.
• src → archive → historial: Sets of historical .json files kept as backup.
• src → archive → pages_extracted: Dataset divided into folders by news outlet for analysis.
• src → archive → temp: Temporary .json files used for testing on subsets of data.
• src → extract_code: Collection of .ipynb files used for news extraction. Each outlet corresponds to an individual notebook.