Which countries have appeared most on Le Monde's front page, and when?
In GraphsThe newspaper's 24,856 front pages since 1944 to 2024 retrace the last eight decades of major upheavals around the world.
For the past 10 years, the Les Décodeurs team at Le Monde has covered the news through data, maps and graphs. For Le Monde's 80th anniversary, we delved into the depths of its archives and all the 24,856 print editions, with the invaluable assistance of the editorial IT department. We asked ourselves: Which countries have appeared most on Le Monde's front pages since 1944, and when?
Each flag in our visualization represents the country that most often made Le Monde's front page, month-by-month for the past 80 years. The result is a reflection of eight decades of historical events, ranging from conflicts to popular uprisings and international politics, which Le Monde has chronicled daily.
Methodology
How we analyzed the front pages of Le Monde from 1944-2024
Countries were considered to be present on the front page if their name or any of their possible nicknames ("The Middle Kingdom", for China), their capitals ("London") or their demonyms ("Italian") were mentioned in the title of an article. The number of mentions within any one article was not taken into account, only the fact that it was or was not mentioned at least once in the title. Given that the aim was to analyze international news coverage, France was excluded from the search.
This infographic was inspired by similar analysis of on the front pages of The New York Times by The Pudding .