News Focus: Greenland, the subject of geopolitical debate. Impact online
The change of administration at the White House has brought a new topic of global debate: the situation in Greenland. This autonomous territory, under the sovereignty of Denmark, has for decades been considered a key strategic security point in the Arctic. In this context, the Trump administration has sent multiple signals of increased US interest in Greenland.
The issue has attracted international public attention and generated controversy, as it has highlighted an unusually outspoken US attitude towards capitalizing on Greenland's strategic position in relation to its own security interests. The US administration's reactions have provoked wide-ranging debate and fueled uncertainty about both the real intentions of the White House and the means by which it might seek to achieve its objectives.
The debate surrounding Greenland has also been reflected in relevant Romanian online sources in recent months. According to data provided by NewsVibe, a media intelligence software based on artificial intelligence, the term Greenland became significant for the Romanian online space only from January 2025, with the intensification of statements from the US. More than 75% of the mentions of Greenland in the Romanian online space in the last year were registered between January 1 and March 31 this year.
Graphic NewsVibe. Changes in the number of mentions of Greenland and their total impact over the last year
Predominant resources
The online resources that have written the most about Greenland in the last three months are news websites and Facebook pages affiliated to such media outlets. Of these, the sites Ziare.com (especially) and Adevărul stand out, with over 200 and over 100 mentions of Greenland respectively.
As for Facebook pages, Digi24, Știri Antena 3 CNN, Antena 3 and Sinteza Zileza Oficial stand out, each with over 50 mentions related to the topic.
Grafic NewsVibe. Top relevant web sources that covered Greenland from January to March 2025
Top keywords mentioned
The most significant associations in the articles in web sources and Facebook posts in relation to Greenland are with Donald Trump, United States, Russia, Denmark, USA or JD Vance.
Almost all of these entities frequently associated with Greenland in the past three months in the most relevant online sources are linked to the debate over the island's importance for Arctic and North Atlantic security, as well as discussions over Denmark's sovereignty over the territory.
There are also secondary associations with Panama, with the canal through that state being another goal presented as strategic by the US administration since the start of Donald Trump's second term in office.
Grafic NewsVibe. Top entities mentioned in the context of mentions of Greenland, January-March 2025
Evaluating the tone of communication
The NewsVibe platform utilizes an advanced sentiment analysis system that not only quantifies the appearances of public actors online, but also examines the perception associated with them. Using artificial intelligence, specially trained algorithms and LLM language models, the system detects the nuances of tone - favorable, unfavorable or neutral - and identifies the dominant themes that contribute to this perception by extracting the relevant entities for each tone category.
Grafic NewsVibe. Automatic tone evaluation of frequently mentioned entities in the context of online mentions of Greenland in March 2025
In the case of Greenland, the sentiment analysis highlights a mostly negative communication climate, reflected by the frequent invocation of entities frequently discussed in a negative context, such as Donald Trump, The Trump Administration, Russia or even China. This type of relationality indicates that while Greenland itself is not the target of negative perceptions, the discussions surrounding its current situation are conducted in a tense register, generating concerns, controversies and critical reactions. Among the entities reflected in a positive context are NATO and Zelenski.
Emoji and hashtags
The most frequently used emoji in Facebook posts mentioning Greenland symbolize state of alert, surprise, achieving a goal, but also conflict, United States, or Ukraine. This suggests that the posts integrated the Greenland topic into a broader context related to US strategic posturing.
Grafic NewsVibe. Top emoji used on Facebook in conversations about Greenland, January-March 2025
The most intensely used hashtags in posts that also mention Greenland are #donaldtrump, #trump and #your. There are also hashtags promoting social media material about Greenland's history, in which context the sponsors of the respective Facebook pages are also mentioned.
On the whole, however, the number of posts about Greenland accompanied by hashtags on the most relevant Romanian social media pages remains low.
The dominant theme continues to be the geopolitical situation of Greenland.
Grafic NewsVibe. Top hastags used on Facebook in conversations about Greenland, January-March 2025
The topic of Greenland has generated moderate interest in the Romanian online space, mainly focused on its geopolitical importance. The reflection in the online space is, however, relevant mainly because of the themes and actors with which the subject is associated.
*****Synthesis realized with the help of a monitoring feed provided by NewsVibe Romania. The analysis, data and images presented were enhanced with Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence tools.
