A topic network analysis of the system turn in the environmental sciences

Rabitz, Florian; Olteanu, Alin; Jurkevičienė, Jurgita; Budžytė, Agnė

doi:10.1007/s11192-020-03824-8

Cited by 6 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 17 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…In analyzing two corpora, comprising articles from large US dailies, we first estimate two Correlated Topic Models that identify the latent semantic structure of news reporting on Covid-19 and the swine flu. Second, we use these models to generate semantic networks, where nodes are topics and arcs represent inter-topic correlations (Rabitz et al 2021). The resulting models are iconic in semiotic terminology (Kralemann and Lattmann 2013) since they represent their objects through similarity to bring some of the objects' features to the fore.…”

Section: Models: Topic Semantic Iconicmentioning

confidence: 99%

A semiotic comparison of mass media representations of the swine flu and Covid-19 pandemics: Observing Narcissus Narcosis

Olteanu¹,

Rabitz²,

Nalivaikė³

2021

Punctum

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This paper compares the coverage of the H1N1 and Covid-19 pandemics in ten prominent US daily newspapers. We selected articles that reference disease-specific keywords, published in the period between the declaration of a Public Health Emergency of International Concern by the World Health Organization and the first peak in laboratory- confirmed cases in the USA (20550 articles on Covid-19 and 1705 articles on H1N1). We analyzed the dataset via topic models and semantic networks, which, in a semiotic approach, are understood as iconic models. As the Covid-19 virus produced the first global pandemic in the age of social media, this comparative analysis illustrates how the news media changed the mediasphere in general. During the H1N1 pandemic (2009-2010), newly emerging social media were not mainstream, having a limited impact compared to 2020 at the outbreak of Covid-19. By 2020, social media have definingly changed the mediasphere. Given their affordance for the virulent transmission of media products, the rise of social media stirred the relativization of knowledge and mistrust towards traditional authority and legacy media. Paradoxically, this both democratizes public debate and opens opportunities for misinformation. In this context, the Covid-19 pandemic has been accompanied by a global infodemic, with adverse impact on global health. While the two pandemics are very different, comparing media representations in their early stages, when the viral spread was unpredictable, offers an insight into how the emergence of social media impacted traditional newspapers’ approach to events of global concern. The analysis reveals that ideological commitments are expressed through the same correlation of topics in both corpora but that, overall, the discourses have different structures. We argue that the remarkable stability of ideological discourses displays what McLuhan termed Narcissus narcosis, namely the numbness experienced socially during media changes.

show abstract

Section: Models: Topic Semantic Iconicmentioning

confidence: 99%