Corpus linguistics, newspaper archives and historical research methods

2019 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 533-549
Author(s):  
Chinmay Tumbe

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the utility of corpus linguistics and digitised newspaper archives in management and organisational history. Design/methodology/approach The paper draws its inferences from Google NGram Viewer and five digitised historical newspaper databases – The Times of India, The Financial Times, The Economist, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal – that contain prints from the nineteenth century. Findings The paper argues that corpus linguistics or the quantitative and qualitative analysis of large-scale real-world machine-readable text can be an important method of historical research in management studies, especially for discourse analysis. It shows how this method can be fruitfully used for research in management and organisational history, using term count and cluster analysis. In particular, historical databases of digitised newspapers serve as important corpora to understand the evolution of specific words and concepts. Corpus linguistics using newspaper archives can potentially serve as a method for periodisation and triangulation in corporate, analytically structured and serial histories and also foster cross-country comparisons in the evolution of management concepts. Research limitations/implications The paper also shows the limitation of the research method and potential robustness checks while using the method. Practical implications Findings of this paper can stimulate new ways of conducting research in management history. Originality/value The paper for the first time introduces corpus linguistics as a research method in management history.

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (105) ◽  
pp. 78-86
Author(s):  
EKATERINA A. NIKONOVA

The article deals with the analysis of the balance of opinion in the newspaper, which is originally realized through editorial and op-ed genres. We analyzed 20 articles from “The Wall Street Journal” and “The New York Times” in the genres of editorial and op-ed about events in Afghanistan in August 2021, which were interpreted differently in mass media due to the role of the White House. The findings prove that in the context of new digital reality the op-ed has lost its original function of conveying alternative positions to the ones stated in the editorial; at the same time newspapers tend to advocate the positions shared by the political parties they have historically developed close relations with: “The Wall Street Journal” - with the Republican Party, “The New York Times” - the Democratic Party.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sinan Aral ◽  
Paramveer S. Dhillon

Most online content publishers have moved to subscription-based business models regulated by digital paywalls. But the managerial implications of such freemium content offerings are not well understood. We, therefore, utilized microlevel user activity data from the New York Times to conduct a large-scale study of the implications of digital paywall design for publishers. Specifically, we use a quasi-experiment that varied the (1) quantity (the number of free articles) and (2) exclusivity (the number of available sections) of free content available through the paywall to investigate the effects of paywall design on content demand, subscriptions, and total revenue. The paywall policy changes we studied suppressed total content demand by about 9.9%, reducing total advertising revenue. However, this decrease was more than offset by increased subscription revenue as the policy change led to a 31% increase in total subscriptions during our seven-month study, yielding net positive revenues of over $230,000. The results confirm an economically significant impact of the newspaper’s paywall design on content demand, subscriptions, and net revenue. Our findings can help structure the scientific discussion about digital paywall design and help managers optimize digital paywalls to maximize readership, revenue, and profit. This paper was accepted by Chris Forman, information systems.


2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Ontaneda ◽  
Guillermo Quiroga

Learning outcomes Identify the types of innovation that Gastón Acurio’s proposal has created. Understand the key strategies developed to grown and consolidate Peruvian food as a category internationally and as part of Acurio’s business. Identify elements of the business model using the business model canvas. Explain how elements of a business model are related, reinforce each other and drive results. Evaluate strengths, opportunities, weaknesses and threats to a business model. Analyze changes to the model that can capitalize upon or mitigate these factors based on evidence. Case overview/synopsis Gastón Acurio is a successful Peruvian chef and restauranteur who was key in shaping the country’s gastronomic industry. His innovative business model distinguished him from other Peruvian restauranteurs and allowed him to grow and take advantage of opportunities in Peru and internationally. His success and growth attracted US$52m in investment funding. However, his model’s challenges surfaced during a difficult restaurant launch exacerbated by a harsh review in the New York Times. Students must identify and analyze the key elements of Acurio’s business model to evaluate and propose changes to better take advantage of its strengths and opportunities, as well as to mitigate weaknesses and threats. Complexity academic level Master’s or MBA. Supplementary materials Teaching Notes are available for educators only. Subject code CSS 12: Tourism and hospitality.


2020 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nidhi Srinivas

Purpose This study aims to offer a postcolonial approach that goes past current management history controversies. Design/methodology/approach Discussion of current management history controversies with examples. Findings Post-colonial approaches to management history enable engagement with questions of power and knowledge in the management discipline. Research limitations/implications Further historical research is needed that considers the interplay of disciplinary knowledge and the historical events under question, especially in post-colonial settings. Practical implications It is essential to engage with historical texts and interpretations to better understand the contextual limitations to management as a discipline: a better understanding of disciplinary pasts enables us to better understand the present. Social implications By considering management’s pasts, this paper can acknowledge more closely how the discipline continues to retain colonialist assumptions that need to be challenged and changed. Originality/value Examples of management history from formerly colonized regions.


2015 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 481-497 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lauren Feldman ◽  
P. Sol Hart ◽  
Tijana Milosevic

This study examines non-editorial news coverage in leading US newspapers as a source of ideological differences on climate change. A quantitative content analysis compared how the threat of climate change and efficacy for actions to address it were represented in climate change coverage across The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and USA Today between 2006 and 2011. Results show that The Wall Street Journal was least likely to discuss the impacts of and threat posed by climate change and most likely to include negative efficacy information and use conflict and negative economic framing when discussing actions to address climate change. The inclusion of positive efficacy information was similar across newspapers. Also, across all newspapers, climate impacts and actions to address climate change were more likely to be discussed separately than together in the same article. Implications for public engagement and ideological polarization are discussed.


Author(s):  
Zhongyang Li ◽  
Xiao Ding ◽  
Ting Liu

Script event prediction requires a model to predict the subsequent event given an existing event context. Previous models based on event pairs or event chains cannot make full use of dense event connections, which may limit their capability of event prediction. To remedy this, we propose constructing an event graph to better utilize the event network information for script event prediction. In particular, we first extract narrative event chains from large quantities of news corpus, and then construct a narrative event evolutionary graph (NEEG) based on the extracted chains. NEEG can be seen as a knowledge base that describes event evolutionary principles and patterns. To solve the inference problem on NEEG, we present a scaled graph neural network (SGNN) to model event interactions and learn better event representations. Instead of computing the representations on the whole graph, SGNN processes only the concerned nodes each time, which makes our model feasible to large-scale graphs. By comparing the similarity between input context event representations and candidate event representations, we can choose the most reasonable subsequent event. Experimental results on widely used New York Times corpus demonstrate that our model significantly outperforms state-of-the-art baseline methods, by using standard multiple choice narrative cloze evaluation.


2020 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ming Yi ◽  
Yingying Lu ◽  
Weihua Deng ◽  
Lu Kun ◽  
Zhanhao Zhang

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to present a new human dynamics model to explain the process of verified users' (VUs) posting on Sina micro-blog.Design/methodology/approachA common human dynamics research method with three steps is applied. Firstly, a large-scale behavioral dataset is collected involving 495 VUs and five topics on Sina micro-blog. Second, five important indicators that reveal the characteristics of posting behavior are analyzed. Then, a quantitative model is constructed to describe the process of posting behavior, and its validity is verified by simulations.FindingsThree important characteristics of VUs' micro-blog posting behavior are observed: fat-tailed distribution, fluctuation and periodicity. These characteristics do not fit the assumption of interest-driven models proposed by previous literature. An optimized task-driven model is introduced to describe this complex phenomenon mathematically. The model is verified on empirical data, confirming that task-driven models can be optimized to explore information behavior on social media.Originality/valueBeing different from previous studies that mainly describe common users' posting behavior on social media by applying interest-driven models, this paper customizes an optimized task-driven model for VUs, who mainly treat social media as a platform for work and play a crucial role in information creation on social media.


2020 ◽  
Vol 117 (32) ◽  
pp. 19054-19060
Author(s):  
Rachel Wetts

Whose voices are most likely to receive news coverage in the US debate about climate change? Elite cues embedded in mainstream media can influence public opinion on climate change, so it is important to understand whose perspectives are most likely to be represented. Here, I use plagiarism-detection software to analyze the media coverage of a large random sample of business, government, and social advocacy organizations’ press releases about climate change (n= 1,768), examining which messages are cited in all articles published about climate change inThe New York Times,The Wall Street Journal, andUSA Todayfrom 1985 to 2014 (n= 34,948). I find that press releases opposing action to address climate change are about twice as likely to be cited in national newspapers as are press releases advocating for climate action. In addition, messages from business coalitions and very large businesses are more likely than those from other types of organizations to receive coverage. Surprisingly, press releases from organizations providing scientific and technical services are less likely to receive news coverage than are other press releases in my sample, suggesting that messages from organizations with greater scientific expertise receive less media attention. These findings support previous scholars’ claims that journalistic norms of balance and objectivity have distorted the public debate around climate change, while providing evidence that the structural power of business interests lends them heightened visibility in policy debates.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Giulia Rovelli

Purpose This paper aims at tracing how older people and old age have been portrayed in English quality newspapers from 1989 to 2018 by comparing newspaper articles and readers’ letters to the editor. Design/methodology/approach This study follows the methodology of corpus-assisted discourse analysis and examines a corpus of readers’ letters to the editor and newspaper articles published in The Guardian and The New York Times, paying particular attention to the use and evolution of terminology and related stereotypes. Findings The investigation revealed how the portrayal of old age in newspaper articles and readers’ letters to the editor has mostly evolved symmetrically, with negatively connoted terms, including “elderly,” “old” and “aged,” which are generally perceived as unrepresentative of the new generation of older people, being replaced by more neutral or euphemistic expressions such as “older” and “senior.” Originality/value The analysis provides an interesting insight into how both the language and the discourse surrounding old age has evolved in the past few decades to accommodate to a changing society, taking into consideration how different professional and social groups, including older people themselves, represent and portray such an important life stage.


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