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What Is the Perception Gap Index (PGI)?
A daily measurement of how differently the world reports the same events — making narrative divergence visible for the first time.
The Perception Gap Index (PGI) is a quantitative measurement created by Albis that scores how differently world regions frame the same news event. It runs on a 1-10 scale, where 1 means global consensus and 10 means completely opposed narratives. The PGI reveals what traditional media analysis cannot: the invisible distance between what different populations believe about the same reality.
Every day, Albis scans media sources across seven world regions in nine native languages. When the same event produces fundamentally different narratives in different regions — one side's self-defence is another side's aggression, one region's economic opportunity is another's existential threat — the PGI captures that divergence in a single, trackable number. Over time, PGI trends reveal whether the world is converging toward shared understanding or fragmenting into incompatible information realities.
Albis runs three scans daily — at 7am, 1pm, and 7pm NZST — covering more than 60 countries across 7 world regions. Each scan reads media in 9 native languages: English, Arabic, Farsi, Mandarin, Russian, Hindi, Spanish, French, and Turkish.
This is not translation of English-language sources. Albis reads Iranian media in Farsi, Chinese outlets in Mandarin, and Arabic sources in Arabic — capturing the domestic narrative that English-language coverage misses entirely. Each story is evaluated across six dimensions: source framing, emotional tone, causal attribution, actor portrayal, solution framing, and omission patterns. The result is a PGI score that reflects the true distance between regional narratives.
Read the full technical process on the methodology page.
The PGI uses a 1-10 scale to measure narrative distance between regions on any given story.
Global consensus — the same framing everywhere. A natural disaster where every region reports the facts identically.
Mild divergence — similar facts but different emphasis. Economic data where regions highlight different implications.
Significant divergence — different causal explanations and actor portrayals. The same trade policy framed as protectionism or sovereignty.
Completely opposed narratives — the same event described as opposite realities. One region's liberation is another's invasion.
Example — PGI 8.4
A military conflict scores PGI 8.4. Western media frames precision strikes targeting military infrastructure. Middle Eastern media frames civilian casualties and humanitarian crisis. Chinese media frames declining US hegemony and the rise of multipolarity. Same day, same events — three fundamentally different realities consumed by billions of people.
The PGI is not a single number — it is a river fed by seven tributaries, each measuring narrative divergence in a specific domain. Together they form the composite daily PGI. This structure allows analysts to see exactly where in the information ecosystem the largest gaps are forming.
Measures framing divergence in wars, diplomacy, sanctions, and territorial disputes. Carries the heaviest weight because geopolitical framing shapes how populations understand threats and alliances.
Tracks how state media, propaganda narratives, and information operations create opposing realities about the same events across different regions.
Captures how women's rights stories are framed differently — from progress narratives in some regions to cultural resistance framing in others.
Measures how economic events — trade wars, sanctions, inflation — are framed as opportunity in one region and threat in another.
Tracks divergence in how AI, surveillance, and tech regulation are framed — innovation vs. threat, freedom vs. control.
Measures framing gaps in health crises, pandemics, pharmaceutical access, and public health narratives across regions.
Captures how climate events and policy are framed — existential crisis in one region, economic burden in another, or ignored entirely.
Explore all seven tributaries with live scores on the PGI dashboard.
Information shapes perception. Perception shapes decisions. Decisions shape the world. Yet most people consume news from a single region, in a single language, and assume they are seeing the full picture. They are not.
The PGI makes the invisible visible. When a conflict scores PGI 8+, it means billions of people are reading fundamentally contradictory accounts of the same reality — and most of them have no idea the other accounts exist. This is not about who is right. It is about making the gap itself visible so people can think more clearly about what they believe and why.
By tracking PGI over time, Albis reveals whether the world is converging toward shared understanding or splitting into incompatible information realities. That data is available to everyone — researchers, journalists, educators, and anyone who wants to see the world more clearly.
Updated three times daily. Watch narrative divergence unfold in real time across seven world regions.
View the PGI DashboardPGI stands for Perception Gap Index. It is a daily measurement created by Albis that quantifies how differently the same news event is framed across world regions, scored on a scale of 1 to 10.
The PGI is updated three times daily — at 7am, 1pm, and 7pm NZST. Each scan covers 60+ countries across 7 world regions in 9 languages, producing fresh scores with every cycle.
The PGI measures how differently a story is framed across regions (narrative divergence). The GAI (Global Attention Index) measures whether a story is covered at all. A story can have a low PGI (everyone agrees on framing) but a high GAI (most regions ignore it entirely).
A PGI of 10 means completely opposed narratives — the same event is described in fundamentally contradictory ways by different regions. One side's liberation is another side's invasion. These scores are rare and indicate deep ideological fractures in global information systems.
Yes. Albis publishes PGI scores openly and provides raw data access. The methodology is fully transparent and documented on the Albis methodology page. Researchers, journalists, and educators are welcome to cite and build on PGI data.