Media Topics

Subject Taxonomy for the Media - the successor to the Subject Codes

Diagram

Media Topics

Media Topics is a constantly updated taxonomy of over 1,200 terms with a focus on categorising text. Originally based on the IPTC Subject Codes taxonomy, the Media Topics taxonomy was first released  in 2010 and is updated at least once a year. It is now available in 13 languages and language variants: Arabic, British and US English, Chinese, Danish, French, German, Norwegian (Bokmal and Nynorsk), Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese, Spanish and Swedish.

The Media Topics vocabulary can be viewed on the IPTC Controlled Vocabulary server at http://cv.iptc.org/newscodes/mediatopic. In addition it can be downloaded as a NewsML-G2 Knowledge Item, RDF/XML or RDF/Turtle document, please read the Guidelines. An Excel version of Media Topics and a more user-friendly tree-like view is also available.

We have recently created an IPTC NewsCodes Guidelines document which describes much more about how IPTC maintains Media Topics and the other IPTC NewsCodes controlled vocabularies.

The Media Topics vocabulary is a member of the family of IPTC NewsCodes. Read more about NewsCodes features and terms of use.

Mappings between Media Topics and Subject Codes

The development of Media Topics started with the Subject Codes vocabulary, extended the tree from 3 to 5 levels and reused the same 17 top level terms. The lower level terms have been revised and rearranged. The Media Topics vocabulary provides a mapping back to the Subject Codes. The mappings are viewable as “Related Concept” entries on the controlled vocabulary server.

Mappings between Media Topics and Wikidata Concepts

We also maintain a set of mappings to related concepts from the Wikidata.org project where possible. These are also viewable as “Related Concept” entries on the controlled vocabulary server.

 

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Latest News

Sep 29 NewsCodes 2024 Q3 release including Media Topics and Digital Source Type updates

The IPTC NewsCodes Working Group is pleased to announce the latest release of the IPTC NewsCodes, our set of controlled vocabularies for the news industry. Updates this time span many vocabularies, with the biggest updates to Media Topic and Digital Source Type. Media Topic updates Most of the recent work has been in the politics […]