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Mentions of prejudice in news media – an international comparison

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David Rozado at Otago Polytechnic
David Rozado
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Previous research has identified a post-2010 sharp increase of terms used to denounce prejudice (i.e. racism, sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, etc.) in U.S. and U.K. news media content. Here, we extend previous analysis to an international sample of news media organizations. Thus, we quantify the prevalence of prejudice-denouncing terms and social justice associated terminology (diversity, inclusion, equality, etc.) in over 98 million news and opinion articles across 124 popular news media outlets from 36 countries representing 6 different world regions: English-speaking West, continental Europe, Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, Persian Gulf region and Asia. We find that the post-2010 increasing prominence in news media of the studied terminology is not circumscribed to the U.S. and the U.K. but rather appears to be a mostly global phenomenon starting in the first half of the 2010s decade in pioneering countries yet largely prevalent around the globe post-2015. However, different world regions’ news media emphasize distinct types of prejudice with varying degrees of intensity. We find no evidence of U.S. news media having been first in the world in increasing the frequency of prejudice coverage in their content. The large degree of temporal synchronicity with which the studied set of terms increased in news media across a vast majority of countries raises important questions about the root causes driving this phenomenon.
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RESEARCH ARTICLE
Journal of Computational Social Science (2024) 7:1965–1983
https://doi.org/10.1007/s42001-024-00295-2
Abstract
Previous research has identied a post-2010 sharp increase of terms used to de-
nounce prejudice (i.e. racism, sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism,
etc.) in U.S. and U.K. news media content. Here, we extend previous analysis to
an international sample of news media organizations. Thus, we quantify the preva-
lence of prejudice-denouncing terms and social justice associated terminology (di-
versity, inclusion, equality, etc.) in over 98 million news and opinion articles across
124 popular news media outlets from 36 countries representing 6 dierent world
regions: English-speaking West, continental Europe, Latin America, sub-Saharan
Africa, Persian Gulf region and Asia. We nd that the post-2010 increasing promi-
nence in news media of the studied terminology is not circumscribed to the U.S.
and the U.K. but rather appears to be a mostly global phenomenon starting in the
rst half of the 2010s decade in pioneering countries yet largely prevalent around
the globe post-2015. However, dierent world regions’ news media emphasize dis-
tinct types of prejudice with varying degrees of intensity. We nd no evidence
of U.S. news media having been rst in the world in increasing the frequency of
prejudice coverage in their content. The large degree of temporal synchronicity with
which the studied set of terms increased in news media across a vast majority of
countries raises important questions about the root causes driving this phenomenon.
Keywords News media · Agenda setting · Prejudice · The Great Awokening ·
Wokeness · Social justice · Racism · Sexism · Homophobia · DEI
Received: 3 January 2024 / Accepted: 15 May 2024 / Published online: 11 June 2024
© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2024
Mentions of prejudice in news media – an international
comparison
DavidRozado1
David Rozado
david.rozado@op.ac.nz
1 Otago Polytechnic, Forth Street, Dunedin 9016, New Zealand
1 3
Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved.
... This environment fosters ethical awareness and cultural openness, yet tends to marginalize material concerns. As recent research indicates, British and American journalism has experienced a substantial increase in references to various forms of prejudice related to race, gender, sexuality, and religion since 2010 (Rozado, 2024). A parallel trend can be observed in academic writing, where terminology associated with social justice and the denunciation of bias has proliferated markedly in the same period. ...
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