The increasing frequency of terms denoting political extremism in U.S. and U.K. news media
Kaufmann, Eric and Rozado, D. (2022) The increasing frequency of terms denoting political extremism in U.S. and U.K. news media. Social Sciences 11 (4), ISSN 2076-0760.
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Abstract
The term political extremism is commonly used to refer to political attitudes considered to be outside the ideological mainstream. This study leverages computational content analysis of big data to longitudinally examine (1970–2019) the prevalence of terms denoting far-right and far-left political extremism in more than 30 million written news and opinion articles from 54 news media outlets popular in the United States and the United Kingdom. We find that the usage of terms denoting right and left political extremism has been increasing across news media outlets in both countries. This trend is particularly stark for far-right-denoting terms, which have been growing in prevalence since at least 2008. Most U.S. and U.K. news media outlets tend to use far-right-denoting terms substantially more often than they use far-left-denoting terms. The rising prevalence in news media of terms denoting political extremism is strongly correlated with similar growing usage of terms denoting prejudice and social justice discourse.
Metadata
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| School: | Birkbeck Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences > School of Social Sciences |
| Depositing User: | Eric Kaufmann |
| Date Deposited: | 30 May 2022 14:27 |
| Last Modified: | 02 Aug 2023 18:16 |
| URI: | https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/48016 |
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