Biases in News Media as Reflected by Personal Pronouns in Evaluative Contexts

2014 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
pp. 103-111 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marie Gustafsson Sendén ◽  
Torun Lindholm ◽  
Sverker Sikström
Keyword(s):  
Social Psychology ◽  
News Media ◽  
Semantic Analysis ◽  
Personal Pronouns ◽  
Individual Self ◽  
Private Domain ◽  
Outgroup Derogation

This paper examines whether pronouns in news media occurred in evaluative contexts reflecting psychological biases. Contexts of pronouns were measured by computerized semantic analysis. Results showed that self-inclusive personal pronouns (We, I) occurred in more positive contexts than self-exclusive pronouns (He/She, They), reflecting self- and group-serving biases. Contexts of collective versus individual pronouns varied; We occurred in more positive contexts than I, and He/She in more positive contexts than They. The enhancement of collective relative to individual self-inclusive pronouns may reflect that media news is a public rather than private domain. The reversed pattern among self-exclusive pronouns corroborates suggestions that outgroup derogation is most pronounced at the category level. Implications for research on language and social psychology are discussed.

Islamaphobic Discourse and Interethnic Conflict

2020 ◽  
pp. 320-334
Author(s):  
Bobbi J. Van Gilder ◽  
Zachary B. Massey
Keyword(s):  
Thematic Analysis ◽  
News Media ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
News Coverage ◽  
Ingroup Bias ◽  
Potential Influence ◽  
Social Actors ◽  
News Sources ◽  
Interethnic Conflict ◽  
Outgroup Derogation

This chapter examines the Islamaphobic discourse that is perpetuated by the news media coverage of the ISIS beheadings to explain the potential influence of news media on viewers' dissociative behaviors, and the justifications made by social actors for such behaviors. Specifically, this chapter seeks to explore the ways in which intragroup identities are strengthened (ingroup bias) through outgroup derogation. The authors conducted a thematic analysis of news coverage from five major news sources. Findings revealed four themes of problematic discourse: (1) naming the enemy, (2) establishing intergroup threat, (3) homogenizing Islamic peoples, and (4) accentuating the negative. The authors then describe several ways in which media can function as a buffer to alleviate intergroup hostilities through the creation of positive contact situations.

Consuming Schooling: Choice, Commodity, Gift and Systems of Exchange

1997 ◽  
Vol 44 (1_suppl) ◽  
pp. 163-182 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia Allatt
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Study ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
Public Domain ◽  
Commodity Exchange ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Family ◽  
Individual Self ◽  
Private Domain ◽  
Middle Class Families

Schooling is a relational good, its consumption founded in social reciprocities. A qualitative study of the purchase and use of schooling by three middle class families challenges the view of identity formation as a project of individual self-realization. Traversing the public domain of the quasi-market of education and the private domain of the family, schooling switches from commodity to gift, entering the associated systems of commodity exchange and moral reciprocities. The tailoring to parental ends of the education offered by schools, and the co-labour of consumption within the household in the form of homework, shaped young people's identity, colonized and reproduced the family.

Islamaphobic Discourse and Interethnic Conflict

2015 ◽  
pp. 147-161
Author(s):  
Bobbi J. Van Gilder ◽  
Zach B. Massey
Keyword(s):  
Thematic Analysis ◽  
News Media ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
News Coverage ◽  
Ingroup Bias ◽  
Potential Influence ◽  
Social Actors ◽  
News Sources ◽  
Interethnic Conflict ◽  
Outgroup Derogation

This chapter examines the Islamaphobic discourse that is perpetuated by the news media coverage of the ISIS beheadings to explain the potential influence of news media on viewers' dissociative behaviors, and the justifications made by social actors for such behaviors. Specifically, this chapter seeks to explore the ways in which intragroup identities are strengthened (ingroup bias) through outgroup derogation. The authors conducted a thematic analysis of news coverage from five major news sources. Findings revealed four themes of problematic discourse: (1) naming the enemy, (2) establishing intergroup threat, (3) homogenizing Islamic peoples, and (4) accentuating the negative. The authors then describe several ways in which media can function as a buffer to alleviate intergroup hostilities through the creation of positive contact situations.

scholarly journals Analyzing Topic Differences, Writing Quality, and Rhetorical Context in College Students’ Essays Using Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count

2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 107-118
Author(s):  
Roman Taraban ◽  
Abusal Khaleel
Keyword(s):  
Social Psychology ◽  
Academic Success ◽  
Expressive Writing ◽  
Text Analysis ◽  
Latent Dirichlet Allocation ◽  
Semantic Analysis ◽  
Small Samples ◽  
Word Count ◽  
Writing Quality ◽  
Linguistic Inquiry

Machine methods for automatically analyzing text have been investigated for decades. Yet the availability and usability of these methods for classifying and scoring specialized essays in small samples–as is typical for ordinary coursework–remains unclear. In this paper we analyzed 156 essays submitted by students in a first-year college rhetoric course. Using cognitive and affective measures within Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC), we tested whether machine analyses could i) distinguish among essay topics, ii) distinguish between high and low writing quality, and iii) identify differences due to changes in rhetorical context across writing assignments. The results showed positive results for all three tests. We consider ways that LIWC may benefit college instructors in assessing student compositions and in monitoring the effectiveness of the course curriculum. We also consider extensions of machine assessments for instructional applications. References Blei, D. M., Ng, A. Y., & Jordan, M. I. (2003). Latent Dirichlet Allocation. Journal of Machine Learning Research, 3, 993-1022. Boot, P., Zijlstra, H., & Geenen, R. (2017). The Dutch translation of the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) 2007 dictionary. Dutch Journal of Applied Linguistics, 6(1), 65-76. Carroll, D. W. (2007). Patterns of student writing in a critical thinking course: A quantitative analysis. Assessing Writing, 12, 213–227. Landauer, T. K., Foltz, P. W., & Laham, D. (1998). An introduction to latent semantic analysis. Discourse processes, 25(2-3), 259-284. Lord, S. P., Sheng, E., Imel, Z. E., Baer, J., & Atkins, D. C. (2015). More than reflections: Empathy in motivational interviewing includes language style synchrony between therapist and client. Behavior therapy, 46(3), 296-303. Lund, K., & Burgess, C. (1996). Producing high-dimensional semantic spaces from lexical co-occurrence. Behavior research methods, instruments, & computers, 28(2), 203-208. Lunsford, A. A. (2016). St. Martin’s handbook (8th ed.): MLA supplement. Bedford/St. Martin’s Press. Massó, G., Lambert, P., Penagos, C. R., & Saurí, R. (2013, December). Generating New LIWC Dictionaries by Triangulation. In Asia Information Retrieval Symposium (pp. 263-271). Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. Pennebaker, J. W. (2004). Theories, therapies, and taxpayers: On the complexities of the expressive writing paradigm. Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice, 11(2), 138-142. Pennebaker, J.W., Boyd, R.L., Jordan, K., & Blackburn, K. (2015). The development and psychometric properties of LIWC 2015. Austin, TX: University of Texas at Austin. Pennebaker, J. W., Chung, C. K., Frazee, J., Lavergne, G. M., & Beaver, D. I. (2014). When small words foretell academic success: The case of college admissions essays. PLoS ONE, 9(12), e115844. Pennebaker, J. W., & King, L. A. (1999). Linguistic styles: Language use as an individual difference. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 77(6), 1296-1312. Robertson, K., & Doig, A. (2010). An Empirical Investigation of Variations in Real‐Estate Marketing Language over a Market Cycle. Housing, Theory and Society, 27(2), 178-189. Robinson, R. L., Navea, R., & Ickes, W. (2013). Predicting final course performance from students’ written self-introductions: A LIWC analysis. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 32(4), 469 – 479. Taraban, R., Pittman, J., Nalabandian, T., Yang, W. F. Z., Marcy, W. M., & Gunturu, S. M. (2019). Creating and testing specialized dictionaries for text analysis. East European Journal of Psycholinguistics, 6(1), 65-75. Tausczik, Y. R., & Pennebaker, J. W. (2010). The psychological meaning of words: LIWC and computerized text analysis methods. Journal of language and social psychology, 29, 24-54. Van Wissen, L., & Boot, P. (2017, September). An electronic translation of the LIWC dictionary into Dutch. In Electronic lexicography in the 21st century: Proceedings of eLex 2017 Conference (pp. 703-715). Lexical Computing.

‘Picturing Afghan Women’ for Western audiences: The Afghan perspective

Journalism ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (6) ◽  
pp. 800-820 ◽  
Author(s):  
Saumava Mitra
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
News Media ◽  
The United States ◽  
Ethical Concern ◽  
Visual Narratives ◽  
Afghan Women ◽  
Professional Activities ◽  
Precarious Labor ◽  
Individual Self ◽  
Future Status

As the United States engages with the Taliban in a peace process that might return them to influence within Afghanistan, concerns are rising regarding the future status of Afghan women. In this background, this article returns to the much studied subject of the portrayal of Afghan women in Western news media through Orientalist stereotypes. Noting the lack of Afghan perspectives in previous research on this topic, the study investigates the views and practices of Afghan photojournalists, who have today come to replace international photojournalists in the country, when it comes to ‘picturing Afghan women’ for Western audiences. It sheds light on the day-to-day professional activities of these photojournalists when producing images of Afghan women for Western audiences. It goes on to explore Afghan photojournalists’ perceptions about how Afghan women have been and are being portrayed in Western news media. Finally, it reports on how most of these Afghan photojournalists may perpetuate the same stereotypes about Afghan women for Western audiences because hierarchies in the international ‘visual gatekeeping chain’ supersede the Afghan photojournalists’ power to shape visual narratives and coupled with the need to earn an income as precarious labor, their individual self-reflexivity regarding picturing Afghan women are suppressed. The study also notes how photographing Afghan women causes risks for Afghan photojournalists as well as the Afghan women who are photographed. Attention is called to this hitherto invisible ethical concern that lives are jeopardized to validate Western savior narratives regarding Afghan women through images.

scholarly journals Weighting power by preference eliminates gender differences

PLoS ONE ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (11) ◽  
pp. e0234961
Author(s):  
Sverker Sikström ◽  
Laura Mai Stoinski ◽  
Kristina Karlsson ◽  
Lotta Stille ◽  
Johan Willander
Keyword(s):  
Gender Differences ◽  
Gender Difference ◽  
Romantic Relationships ◽  
Latent Semantic Analysis ◽  
Semantic Analysis ◽  
Public Life ◽  
The Public ◽  
Women's Power ◽  
Subjective Importance ◽  
Private Domain

Power can be applied in different domains (e.g., politics, work, romantic relationships, family etc.), however, we do not always reflect on which domains we have power in and how important power in these domains is. A dominant idea is that men have more power than women. This notion may be biased because the concept of power is associated with public life. We introduce the concept of preference-weighted power (PWP), a measure of power that includes different domains in life, weighted by the domains’ subjective importance. Two studies investigated power from this perspective. In Study 1, participants generated words related to power, which were quantified/categorized by latent semantic analysis to develop a semantic measure of the power construct. In Study 2, we computed a PWP index by weighting the participants' self-rated power in different power domains with the importance of having power in that domain. Together the studies suggest that men have more perceived power in the public domain, however, this domain has a lower preference weighting than the private domain where women have more power than men. Finally, when preferences for power in different domains were considered, no gender differences were observed. These results emphasize gender difference in different domains and may change how we perceive men’s and women’s power in our society.

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