Societal Age Stereotypes in the U.S. and U.K. from a Media Database of 1.1 Billion Words

Ng, Reuben

doi:10.3390/ijerph18168822

Cited by 40 publications

(32 citation statements)

References 58 publications

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“…Messages promulgated by media outlets throughout this crisis—and after—should feature more optimistic representations of older adults such that their contributions are not eclipsed by existing narratives of vulnerability. This will aid in dislodging negative stereotypes about older people who constitute a trove of knowledge and experience ready to be mined 6 …”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This is a validated method 15 used in past corpus-based analyses. 6,[12][13][14][16][17][18][19][20] Very negative collocates were rated 1 (e.g., abuse, molest), neutral collocates were rated 3 (e.g., wheel, journey), and very positive collocates were rated 5 (e.g., venerable, amazing). The inter-rater reliability using Cronbach's alpha was 0.972 (95% CI: 0.946, 0.986) for the scoring method.…”

Section: Why Does This Paper Matter?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…So pervasive is the belief in the propensity of the virus to infect the older demographic that it has inspired new lexicon; “senior deleter,” “elder repeller,” and ”boomer remover” are some of the terms that have been bandied about to describe the virus. Besides being deemed a burden for ostensibly draining societal resources, 5 older people have also been dismissed as expendable by virtue of their advanced age 6 . COVID‐19‐related deaths of older adults have even been treated by some politicians with sheer nonchalance 7 .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Reframing aging during COVID‐19: Familial role‐based framing of older adults linked to decreased ageism

Indran

2021

J American Geriatrics Society

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Background: Contributions of older adults amid the COVID-19 pandemic have been eclipsed by discourse positioning them as an at-risk population.We assess whether age-based framing (e.g., senior citizen) is associated with more negative stereotyping in the media compared to familial role-based framing (e.g., grandparent) across 8 months, from a baseline period (October 2019-December 2019) to the onset of the pandemic (January 2020-May 2020).Methods: Leveraging a 12-billion-word news media database-with over 30 million news articles from over 7000 websites-we identified the most common synonyms for age-based framing (e.g., senior citizen) and familial rolebased framing (e.g., grandparent). For each framing category, we compiled the most frequently used descriptors every month, amassing 488,907 descriptors in total. All descriptors were rated from 1 (very negative) to 5 (very positive) to determine a Cumulative Aging Narrative Score (CANS) for age-based and familial role-based framing. Results: Age-based framing of older adults increased negative stereotyping in the media by seven times compared to familial role-based framing during COVID-19. The percentage of positive topics for age-based framing was significantly lower during COVID-19 (35%) than before (61%). Conversely, the percentage of positive topics for familial role-based framing was higher during the pandemic (91%) than before (70%).Conclusion: This is one of the first empirical studies on whether framing older adults based on age or role is linked to more negative stereotypes during COVID-19. We argue for a more role-centered approach in framing older adults so that their contributions are acknowledged and valued by society.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Why Does This Paper Matter?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Reframing aging during COVID‐19: Familial role‐based framing of older adults linked to decreased ageism

Indran

2021

J American Geriatrics Society

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“…Span is the span of words (eg, if there are 6 words to the left and 6 words to the right of the target word, span=12) [log (2)=0.30103]. This is a well-established application of computational linguistics to study stereotypes in other studies [ 20 - 28 ]. The rigorous process culminated in 85,827 collocates over eight months, across 20 countries.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Anti-Asian Sentiments During the COVID-19 Pandemic Across 20 Countries: Analysis of a 12-Billion-Word News Media Database

Ng¹

2021

J Med Internet Res

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Background US president Joe Biden signed an executive action directing federal agencies to combat hate crimes and racism against Asians, which have percolated during the COVID-19 pandemic. This is one of the first known empirical studies to dynamically test whether global societal sentiments toward Asians have become more negative during the COVID-19 pandemic. Objective This study aimed to investigate whether global societal sentiments toward Asians across 20 countries have become more negative, month by month, from before the pandemic (October 2019) to May 2020, along with the pandemic (incidence and mortality rates) and cultural (Hofstede’s cultural dimensions) predictors of this trend. Methods We leveraged a 12-billion-word web-based media database, with over 30 million newspaper and magazine articles taken from over 7000 sites across 20 countries, and identified 6 synonyms of “Asian” that are related to the coronavirus. We compiled their most frequently used descriptors (collocates) from October 2019 to May 2020 across 20 countries, culminating in 85,827 collocates that were rated by 2 independent researchers to provide a Cumulative Asian Sentiment Score (CASS) per month. This allowed us to track significant shifts in societal sentiments toward Asians from a baseline period (October to December 2019) to the onset of the pandemic (January to May 2020). We tested the competing predictors of this trend: pandemic variables of incidence and mortality rates measured monthly for all 20 countries taken from the Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker, and Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions of Individualism, Power Distance, Uncertainty Avoidance, and Masculinity for the 20 countries. Results Before the pandemic in December 2019, Jamaica and New Zealand evidenced the most negative societal sentiments toward Asians; when news about the coronavirus was released in January 2020, the United States and Nigeria evidenced the most negative sentiments toward Asians among 20 countries. Globally, sentiments of Asians became more negative—a significant linear decline during the COVID-19 pandemic. CASS trended neutral before the pandemic during the baseline period of October to November 2019 and then plummeted in February 2020. CASS were, ironically, not predicted by COVID-19’s incidence and mortality rates, but rather by Hofstede’s cultural dimensions: individualism, power distance, and uncertainty avoidance—as shown by mixed models (N=28,494). Specifically, higher power distance, individualism, and uncertainty avoidance were associated with negative societal sentiments toward Asians. Conclusions Racism, in the form of Anti-Asian sentiments, are deep-seated, and predicated on structural undercurrents of culture. The COVID-19 pandemic may have indirectly and inadvertently exacerbated societal tendencies for racism. Our study lays the important groundwork to design interventions and policy communications to ameliorate Anti-Asian racism, which are culturally nuanced and contextually appropriate.

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“…If the target noun (e.g., caregiver) was the first word of a sentence, the collocates from the preceding sentence were excluded; (b) Relevant Context: collocate referred specifically to caregiver(s) (checked by two raters); (c) Mutual Information Score of three and above: collocate had a stronger association with the target word than other words in the corpus for that country, indicating semantic bonding [ 15 ]. This is an application of concordance analysis, utilized in computational linguistics to explore the evolution of narratives [ 16 , 17 , 18 , 19 , 20 , 21 , 22 , 23 , 24 ]. Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA)—a technique for topic modelling—was performed on the collocates.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Societal Narratives on Caregivers in Asia

Indran

2021

IJERPH

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Although there has been an increase in awareness of the struggles experienced by caregivers, discourse on caregiving remains confined mostly to academia, policy circles or the family unit. There have been suggestions that public discourse on informal caregiving dwells overwhelmingly on the outsize toll it takes on the health of caregivers. However, few studies have examined societal narratives on caregivers—a gap our study aims to fill. We leveraged an online media database of 12 billion words collated from over 30 million articles to explore societal narratives on caregivers in six Asian countries. Computational linguistics and statistical analysis were applied to study the content of narratives on caregivers. The prevalence of societal narratives on caregivers was highest in Singapore—five times higher than Sri Lanka, which evidenced the lowest prevalence. Findings reveal that the inadequacies of institutional care as well as the need to train and empower caregivers are pressing issues that need to be prioritized on the policy agenda in Asia. Of broader significance, the diverse capabilities across Asia present opportunities for cross-country learning and capacity-building.

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Societal Age Stereotypes in the U.S. and U.K. from a Media Database of 1.1 Billion Words

Cited by 40 publications

References 58 publications

Reframing aging during COVID‐19: Familial role‐based framing of older adults linked to decreased ageism

Reframing aging during COVID‐19: Familial role‐based framing of older adults linked to decreased ageism

Anti-Asian Sentiments During the COVID-19 Pandemic Across 20 Countries: Analysis of a 12-Billion-Word News Media Database

Societal Narratives on Caregivers in Asia

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