What's Newsworthy?

[bcholmes]

Some statistical analysis. Articles from many dozen online news sources. Over 18,000 articles sampled over a span of two weeks or so. Strip out advertising, "related stories", and other stuff, leaving only the article content.

Ignore the following words: and, but, or, the, an, a

Here are some word frequencies:

• he: ~50,000 instances
• his: ~34,000 instances
• she: ~11,000 instances
• her: ~11,000 instances

"He" was also the second-most common word, after "said". "Their" was more common than "she".

Comments

[persephoneplace.livejournal.com]

Do you have the source?

thanks.

[bcholmes.livejournal.com]

Me. I ran the stats this afternoon.

[persephoneplace.livejournal.com]

wonderful. Can i quote you?

[bcholmes.livejournal.com]

Sure. Feel free.

[indefatigable42.livejournal.com]

Interesting.

It's worth noting that the parallel structures are used as follows:

1) Police say (he/she) has no previous criminal record.
2) Officers arrested (him/her) two days later.
3) Both of (his/her) cars were stolen.
4) All of the dogs were (his/hers).

Both his and her actually pull double duty. It's not really possible with single-word searches to break those down and see if the discrepancy is still universal or not.

[icedrake.livejournal.com]

Interesting. Now here's a question: How much of this is a news media bias in favour of relative male importance, and how much is a reflection of male overrepresentation in positions of power and authority?

[king-tirian.livejournal.com]

Not just power and authority, but also that men commit 100% of the crimes and are the victims of 50% of them.

[icedrake.livejournal.com]

I'm not entirely sure whether this was a serious or tongue-in-cheek statement.

[horsetraveller.livejournal.com]

I imagine that reporting on crime doesn't compose most of the words in a newspaper.

And also that the statement "men commit 100% of the crimes" is either wrong or the women who get charged with crimes are innocent, or they are actually men in disguise.

[king-tirian.livejournal.com]

Quite serious. If your newspaper doesn't focus on the acts of violence done in your community, then it is balanced by my newspaper which has focused on this issue very strongly for years now. And these acts of violence are predominately man-on-man street violence with a woman occasionally getting hit in the crossfire.

And my community is one in which women have approached parity in the political, corporate, and sporting worlds to the best of my perception. But our news seems to be about what scares and angers us, and men seem to dominate that aspect of our perception of reality.

[bcholmes.livejournal.com]

I'm not icedrake, but I suspect he's not sure what to make of the "men commit 100% of the crimes" statement. I think you're saying, "going by the news reports, men commit 100% of the crimes" and even then, you're engaging in a bit of hyperbole. But one could read you as making a literal statement about who commits crimes.

[icedrake.livejournal.com]

You're not icedrake (I'm saying this with at least 90% certainty), but you got to the root of my confusion in a most precise fashion. I think I understand [Unknown site tag] better now.

[king-tirian.livejournal.com]

Yes, that is the sort of statement that one oughtn't make on LiveJournal because you have to go four levels deep into the comments to clarify it. But I am thinking of robberies and homicides in public places and other sorts of things that are likely to receive print news coverage. But, hmmm. While I don't want to give the perception that a woman would not be capable of committing an act of violent crime, it really does seem to be an overwhelming minority of the cases to the point that 95% or 98% strikes me as less accurate estimates.

All of this is making me curious about your data. I have full faith in your methodology, but I wonder what percentage of news stories was about international diplomacy vs. local crime news vs. parlimentary wrangling vs. whatever else, and how the pronouns settle out in the midst of those subcategories.

[icedrake.livejournal.com]

I'll admit to, at least unconsciously, being subject to the same bias. When I think "criminal," I either think of the truly famous ones (where ones like Thelma and Louise and Bonnie of Bonnie and Clyde come to mind, but no others), or the average ones... In which case, the image is invariably that of a male perpetrator. Since I don't go out of my way to search out crime stories, I am only exposed to the ones in the mass media, and I suspect that as being the source of my bias.

[rbowspryte.livejournal.com]

Truly fascinating! Thanks for doing this and sharing.