Journalism

Sondre is The Economist‘s Senior Data Journalist. His journalism is also published in many other publications and in several books. Below is a selection of his published work, starting with the most recent.

(This page was last updated on November 14th, 2025)

Updating daily

Mapping the Ukraine war: where is the latest fighting?
First published: June 16th, 2023

Related: Using satellite data to track Ukraine’s counter-offensive (video) / Data from satellites reveal the vast extent of fighting in Ukraine (and many more)
Mentions: International Review of the Red Cross, Yale Humanitarian Research Lab, Civil Wars, Research & Politics
Awards: Royal Statistical Society Statistical Excellence in Journalism Awards 2023 – Investigative Journalism (commendation), Sigma Awards 2024 (shortlist, as part of portfolio), Press Awards 2024 (shortlist, as part of portfolio)
Data on Github

The pandemic’s true death toll
First published: September 2nd, 2021

Related: How we estimated the true death toll of the pandemic / There have been 7m-13m excess deaths worldwide during the pandemic
Mentions: BBC World News, Le Monde, Der Spiegel, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Wired, Foreign Policy, New York Magazine, Politico, Nature, The BMJ, The Lancet, National Geographic, CNN, the UN, WHO, World Bank, and many others
Awards: Future of Media Award 2022, British Press Awards – Innovation of the Year 2021 (shortlist), Sigma Awards 2022 – best project (shortlist), Sigma Awards 2022 – best portfolio (shortlist), Royal Statistical Society Statistical Excellence in Journalism Awards 2022 – Investigative Journalism (commendation)
Data on Github

See how age and illnesses change the risk of dying from covid-19
First published: Mar 11th 2021

Related: How we built our covid-19 risk estimator / Our covid-19 model estimates odds of hospitalisation and death
Mentions: Scientific Reports, PLOS ONE, Nutrients, Critical Care Explorations, Columbia Journalism Review
Awards: Sigma Awards 2022 – best portfolio (shortlist)
Note: This page displays predictions of a machine learning model of covid-19 death and hospitalisation risk in response to user inputs. The model itself does not update daily.

Tracking covid-19 excess deaths across countries
First published: May 16th, 2020 (originally by James Tozer, maintained by Sondre since October 2021)

Data on Github

2025

Seven conflicts to watch in the coming year
Nov 12th 2022

Eight trends to watch, explained with maps
Nov 12th 2022 (contributor)

How much wealth an AI stockmarket crash could destroy
Nov 5th 2025

Russia’s latest big Ukraine offensive gains next to nothing, again
Oct 17th 2025

Maps and data tell the story of two bloody years in Israel and Gaza
Oct 7th 2025 (contributor)

What are TikTok’s new owners buying?
Sep 26th 2025 (contributor)

North Korea is becoming even more repressive and threatening
Sep 25th 2025 (contributor)

How much of Gaza is left standing?
Aug 6th 2025
Related: How much of Gaza has Israel destroyed? (video)

Russia’s summer Ukraine offensive looks like its deadliest yet
Jul 9th 2025

What is the richest country in the world in 2025?
Jul 7th 2025

How often do ceasefires in the Middle East work?
Jun 24th 2025

More and more parents around the world prefer girls to boys
Jun 5th 2024 (contributor)

Tracking the Israel-Iran war
Jun 13th 2025 (contributor)

America’s poster-in-chief is very, very online
Apr 24th 2025 (co-author)

Rhyme, once in its prime, is in decline
May 28th 2025 (contributor)

How do countries rank by military spending?
May 16th 2025

How many people have died in Gaza?
May 8th 2025
Related: Gaza’s death toll may be much higher than reported (video)

State capture is a growing threat. Reversing it is hard
Apr 3rd 2025 (contributor)

What baby names reveal about American and British society
Mar 20th 2025
Related: What’s in a name (video)

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How do Ukrainian soldier fatalities compare with Russia’s?
Mar 6th 2025

Which goods are most vulnerable to American tariffs on China?
Feb 12th 2025

What Israel and Hamas can learn from past ceasefires
Jan 31st 2025

2024

How to give money to good causes
Dec 19th 2024

The search for the world’s most efficient charities
Dec 19th 2024

How many Ukrainian soldiers have died?
Nov 26th 2024

Elon Musk’s transformation, in his own words
Nov 21st 2024 (co-authored with Ainslie Johnstone)
Related: Elon Musk is Donald Trump’s disrupter-in-chief

Mentions: The London Evening Standard

What would it cost to kill coal?
Nov 15th 2024

Essay: Anti-politics is eating the West
Oct 31st 2024 (co-authored with Edward Carr)

Anarchy in Sudan has spawned the world’s worst famine in 40 years
Aug 29th 2024 (data contributor)

Has Ukraine’s shock raid successfully diverted Russian forces?
Aug 21st 2024

Small investments in nutrition could make the world brainier
Jul 11th 2024 (co-authored with Robert Guest)
Related: The Intelligence podcast, Nutrition and cognition

Github

How many Russian soldiers have been killed in Ukraine?
Jul 5th 2024

The world’s richest countries in 2024
Jul 4th 2024

At least 10% of research may already be co-authored by AI
Jun 26th 2024

LLMs now write lots of science. Good
Jun 27th 2024

How countries rank by military spending
May 7th 2024

America’s fentanyl epidemic, explained in six charts
Mar 14th 2024 (data contributor)

America’s ten-year-old fentanyl epidemic is still getting worse
Feb 29th 2024 (co-authored with Sarah Birke, Aryn Braun and James Miles)

How many Russian soldiers have died in Ukraine?
Feb 24th 2024
Mentions: Policy Studies

2024 is a giant test of nerves for democracy
Feb 11th 2024 (co-authored with Miranda Mitra)

2023

The world’s richest countries in 2023
Dec 15th 2023

Mentions: Visual Capitalist, Økonomiske principper, Protho Malo
Data on Github

American journalism sounds much more Democratic than Republican
Dec 14th 2023 (with Ainslie Johnstone)

Mentions: AllSides

Deaths in Gaza surpass 14,000, according to its authorities
Nov 23rd 2023

Is Ukraine’s counter-offensive over?
Nov 9th 2023

The threat of Hizbullah can be seen from space
Nov 6th 2023

What evidence reveals about the Gaza hospital blast’s source
Oct 20th 2023 (contributor)

Mapping Israel’s war in Gaza
First published Oct 17th 2023, updating regularly ever since (contributor)

Productivity has grown faster in western Europe than in America
Oct 4th 2023

Ukraine’s counter-offensive is speeding up
Sep 1st 2023

How cynical leaders are whipping up nationalism to win and abuse power
Aug 31st 2023 (contributor)
Mentions: Perspectives on Politics
Related: How paranoid nationalism corrupts

Data on air bases suggest a Chinese invasion of Taiwan may not be imminent
Jul 27th 2023
Awards: Sigma Awards 2024 (shortlist, as part of portfolio), Press Awards 2024 (shortlist, as part of portfolio)

Data from satellites suggest violence has surged in much of Sudan
Jul 20th 2023
Awards: Sigma Awards 2024 (shortlist, as part of portfolio), Press Awards 2024 (shortlist, as part of portfolio)
Data on Github

A new study finds that 47,000 Russian combatants have died in Ukraine
Jul 12th 2023

Video: Using satellite data to track Ukraine’s counter-offensive
Jun 19, 2023

Buyers of Russian crude are exporting refined oil to the West
Jun 20th 2023

Satellite data show Ukraine’s forces are testing Russia’s defences
May 25th 2023

Our model suggests that global deaths remain 5% above pre-covid forecasts
May 23rd 2023

America is less dominant in defence spending than you might think
May 11th 2023

A different way to measure the climate impact of food
Apr 11th 2023

Awards: Royal Statistical Society Statistical Excellence in Journalism 2024 award for data visualisation, The Harding Prize for Trustworthy Communication (shortlist)

Data from satellites reveal the vast extent of fighting in Ukraine
Feb 23rd 2023 (with Ainslie Johnstone)

How many people died after China lifted its zero-covid policy?
Feb 24th 2023

The age of the grandparent has arrived
Jan 12th 2023 (with Sarah Birke, Robert Guest, Gabriel Crossley, Tamara Gilkes-Borr and Kinley Salmon)

2022

Protest movements as deadly as Iran’s often end in revolution or civil war
Dec 8th 2022

Vladimir Putin wants to be a conqueror
Nov 23rd 2022

Vladimir Putin is dragging the world back to a bloodier time
Oct 22th 2022

Related: Vladimir Putin wants to be a conqueror
Awards: Wincott Award for Data Journalism of the Year (shortlist)
Data on Github

Covid-19 vaccines saved an estimated 20m lives during their first year
Jul 7th 2022

Costly food and energy are fostering global unrest
Jun 23rd 2022 (contributor)
Mentions: European Central Bank

Russia is swaying Twitter users outside the West to its side
May 14th 2022

Awards: Royal Statistical Society’s Award for Statistical Excellence in Journalism: Investigative journalism (shortlist)

How China’s Sinovac compares with BioNTech’s mRNA vaccine
Apr 19th 2022

Russians are fewer, poorer and more miserable than a decade ago
Apr 1st 2022

How the war in Ukraine compares to other refugee crises
Mar 30th 2022 (with Daniella Raz)

More than 15,000 Russians have been arrested in anti-war protests
Mar 22nd 2022

Squashing malaria could save as many lives as covid-19 has taken
Mar 19th 2022
Data on Github

Russians in every major city and region call for #nowar
Feb 28th 2022

The military gap between Russia and Ukraine is vast
Feb 25th 2022

Are some countries faking their covid-19 death counts?
Feb 25th 2022

The case for updating covid-19 vaccines for the Omicron variant
Jan 7th 2022

2021

Omicron is already dominant in South Africa
Dec 7th 2021

Who will win the World Chess Championship?
Nov 26th 2021

Ivermectin may help covid-19 patients, but only those with worms
Nov 18th 2021 (co-author)

According to Twitter, Twitter’s algorithm favours conservatives
Nov 13th 2021

Russian elections once again had a suspiciously neat result
Oct 11th 2021

Mentions: Statistics and Public Policy

Treating beef like coal would make a big dent in greenhouse-gas emissions
Oct 2nd 2021

Mentions: Journal of Legislation and Public Policy, NFU
Related: Carbon impact of food (TikTok)

America’s pandemic is now an outlier in the rich world
Sep 27th 2021
Mentions: PLOS Global Public Health

Which is the most recognisable country?
Sep 17th 2021

What the Delta variant did to South-East Asia
Sep 7th 2021

Delta is fast becoming the world’s dominant strain of SARS-CoV-2
Jun 29th 2021

After a stumbling start, the EU is vaccinating at a fast pace
Jun 23rd 2021

The delta variant is the most dangerous SARS-CoV-2 mutation yet
Jun 16th 2021

Covid-19 deaths in Wuhan seem far higher than the official count
May 30th 2021

There have been 7m-13m excess deaths worldwide during the pandemic
May 15th 2021

Related: How we estimated the true death toll of the pandemic / The pandemic’s true death toll
Mentions: BBC World News, Le Monde, Der Spiegel, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Wired, Foreign Policy, New York Magazine, Politico, Nature, The BMJ, The Lancet, National Geographic, CNN, the UN, WHO, World Bank, and many others
Awards: Future of Media Award 2022, British Press Awards – Innovation of the Year 2021 (shortlist), Sigma Awards 2022 – best project (shortlist), Sigma Awards 2022 – best portfolio (shortlist), Royal Statistical Society Statistical Excellence in Journalism Awards 2022 – Investigative Journalism (commendation)
Data on Github

How we estimated the true death toll of the pandemic
May 13th 2021

Nominal spending figures understate China’s military might
May 1st 2021
Mentions: International Institute for Strategic Studies, ,

In clinical and real world trials, China’s Sinovac underperforms
Apr 15th 2021

Our covid-19 model estimates odds of hospitalisation and death
Mar 13th 2021