Following on with our quarterly update cycle, the IPTC NewsCodes Working Group has released the Q2 2022 update of IPTC NewsCodes, including updates to the Media Topic, Subject Code, and Digital Source Type vocabularies.

Media Topic updates

• Translation changes:
  • A new language translation for “New Norwegian” (Norwegian nynorsk, no-NN) has been added to all labels. The existing Norwegian labels previously tagged with “no” are now tagged as “no-NB” for Norwegian bokmål. Thanks very much to NTB for providing the update.
• Label and definition changes:
  • medtop:20000446 diseases and conditions
  • medtop:20001230 corporate social responsibility -> environmental, social and governance policy (ESG)
  • medtop:20000449 epidemic -> epidemic and pandemic
  • medtop:20000451 virus disease -> viral disease
  • medtop:20000452 AIDS -> HIV and AIDS
  • medtop:20000457 medical conditions -> medical condition
  • medtop:20000458 mental health and disorder
  • medtop:20000463 health organisation
  • medtop:20000464 health treatment -> health treatment and procedure
  • medtop:20000466 dietary supplement
  • medtop:20000467 medical drugs -> non-prescription drug
  • medtop:20000468 prescription drugs -> prescription drug
  • medtop:20000469 medical procedure/test -> medical test
  • medtop:20000470 medicine -> health care approach
  • medtop:20000474 western medicine -> conventional medicine
  • medtop:20000480 government health care
  • medtop:20001225 ophthalmology -> eye care
• Definition changes:
  • medtop:07000000 health
  • medtop:20000784 family planning
  • medtop:20000454 heart disease
  • medtop:20000456 injury
  • medtop:20000461 health facility
  • medtop:20000465 diet
  • medtop:20001219 drug rehabilitation
  • medtop:20001221 emergency care
  • medtop:20000471 herbal medicine
  • medtop:20000472 holistic medicine
  • medtop:20000473 traditional Chinese medicine
  • medtop:20000479 healthcare policy
  • medtop:20000483 health insurance
  • medtop:20000484 private health care
  • medtop:20000486 medical service
  • medtop:20000490 paediatrics
• Hierarchy moves:
  • medtop:20000500 animal moves to become a child of medtop:20000441 nature
  • medtop:20000507 flowers and plants moves to become a child of medtop:20000441 nature
  • medtop:20001318 pests moves to become a child of medtop:20000500 animal
  • medtop:20000494 animal disease  moves to become a child of medtop:20000500 animal
  • medtop:20000495 plant disease moves to become a child of medtop:20000507 flowers and plants
  • medtop:20000460 obesity becomes a child of medtop:20000457 medical condition
  • medtop:20000477 vaccine  becomes a child of medtop:20000464 health treatment and procedure
• New terms:
  • medtop:20001355 developmental disorder
  • medtop:20001356 depression
  • medtop:20001357 anxiety and stress
  • medtop:20001358 public health
  • medtop:20001359 pregnancy and childbirth
• Retired terms:
  • medtop:20001218 pandemic (use the new “epidemic and pandemic” term instead)
  • medtop:20000450 plague (disease)
  • medtop:20000453 retrovirus
  • medtop:20000455 illness
  • medtop:20000475 physical fitness
  • medtop:20000476 preventative medicine
  • medtop:20001220 general practice
  • medtop:20000488 geriatric medicine
  • medtop:20000489 obstetrics/gynaecology
  • medtop:20001223 oncology
  • medtop:20001222 orthopaedics
  • medtop:20000713 pharmacology
  • medtop:20001227 psychiatry
  • medtop:20001224 radiology
  • medtop:20000491 reproductive medicine
  • medtop:20001226 surgical medicine
  • medtop:20000493 non-human diseases

In a related tool update announcement, we have now added a handy “show retired terms” checkbox to the Media Topics interactive tree browser tool, and we default to only showing the active (non-retired) terms. The new option can be seen in the picture at the top of this article.

Digital Source Type vocabulary updates

After asking for feedback on a draft of the work a few months ago, we have updated the Digital Source Type vocabulary to support the emerging area of “Synthetic Media.”

The single term “softwareImage” has been retired, which means that while it is acceptable in legacy content, we no longer recommend its use. The term is now replaced with 9 new terms covering the spectrum from purely human creation through to purely machine image creation:

• Original media with minor human edits
• Composite of captured elements
• Algorithmically-enhanced media
• Data-driven media
• Digital art
• Virtual recording
• Composite including synthetic elements
• Trained algorithmic media
• Pure algorithmic media
• RETIRED: Created by software

To see more detail including the definition of each term, click the links above or view the entire IPTC Digital Source Type vocabulary.

Thanks to those both inside and outside of the IPTC community who gave feedback on our original proposal, your comments were very much appreciated.

Subject Code vocabulary updates – indicating its deprecated status

The IPTC Subject Code vocabulary was created over twenty years ago, in the year 2000. It was maintained through to 2010, but at that point the Media Topic vocabulary took over as IPTC’s preferred subject classification taxonomy. We will keep it on our vocabulary server, but we no longer recommend its use in projects due to some terms being out of date.

So we have put warnings on the pages of the Subject Code vocabulary that indicate its deprecated nature, and encourage users to look at Media Topic instead.

As always, the Media Topics vocabularies can be viewed in the following ways:

• In a collapsible tree view
• As a downloadable Excel spreadsheet
• On one page on the cv.iptc.org server
• In machine readable formats such as RDF/XML and Turtle using the SKOS vocabulary format: see the cv.iptc.org guidelines document for more detail.

For more information on IPTC NewsCodes in general, please see the IPTC NewsCodes Guidelines.