Country Mention Networks in UN Speeches

Our analysis suggests that diplomatic attention in UN speeches is unevenly distributed across countries. A smaller number of countries appear much more frequently in international discourse, while many others are mentioned less often. In the network, countries such as the United States, China, and Russia stand out as especially visible actors, which suggests that global political attention is concentrated around a limited set of highly prominent states.

The country level graphs also show that diplomatic attention is directional rather than balanced. Some countries appear to direct attention broadly toward many others, while some are more prominent as targets of discussion. For example, the United States appears as a country with broad outgoing attention, while China and Russia also emerge as major targets of incoming attention from other countries. This shows that centrality in the network can reflect different roles: a country may be highly active in talking about others, highly visible as a topic of discussion, or both.

Another important pattern is that international political discourse is not purely positive or purely negative. The sentiment based graphs suggest that the same country can receive both supportive and critical references depending on who is speaking and in what context. This is especially visible for countries like the United States, China, and Russia, which appear in a mix of positive and negative relationships rather than fitting into a single simple category. This highlights the complexity of diplomatic language, where cooperation, criticism, and strategic concern can exist at the same time.

The filtered graphs also make it easier to compare large, globally central actors with smaller or more selective ones. For example, the Vatican appears much less densely connected than countries such as the United States, China, or Russia. This suggests a more selective pattern of diplomatic attention, where some actors are present in the network but do not occupy the same broad, central role as major geopolitical powers.

Taken together, these findings suggest that UN speeches reveal more than isolated political statements. They reflect a larger structure of global diplomatic attention in which a small number of countries occupy especially central positions, while others appear in more limited or specialized ways. By combining mention frequency with positive and negative framing, the network provides a more nuanced picture of how countries are represented in international discourse.