Details
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 1475-1488 |
| Number of pages | 14 |
| Journal | IEEE Transactions on Computational Social Systems |
| Volume | 8 |
| Issue number | 6 |
| Publication status | Published - 1 Dec 2021 |
Abstract
Our perception of the situation in a country or a region is strongly influenced by the reflection of this situation in mass and social media channels. This effect is even more pronounced for geographically and culturally distant regions, for which no firsthand experience is available. To avoid information overload, news outlets typically filter the available news from foreign countries based on the expected interest of the target audiences. Such filtering imposes an inherent bias in the reporting and can create a distorted perception of a region among the consumers of news of other regions. This might lead to misunderstandings between countries and unsubstantiated political and individual decisions (e.g., in the context of migration). In this article, we systematically analyze the bias created in news reports. We consider Europe, or more precisely the European Union (EU) as our zone of concern, and examine its image in the media (news outlets) of other regions, Europe(NON-EU), Africa, Asia, Middle-East, America, and Oceania. An analysis of the year 2018 (January-December 2018) of news published in those regions reveals marked differences in the editorial policies and presented narrative when dealing with EU-related news. We observe a significant variation in the sentiment polarity of the reported EU-related stories between the European and other regional news outlets. We further analyze the polarity variation among different subregions of large geographical areas, such as Africa, Asia, and America. We observe a contrasting difference in their editorial policies. This trend also holds for news related to different topics, such as politics, business, economy, health, and international relation.
Keywords
- European Union (EU), media bias, news article, perception
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Mathematics(all)
- Modelling and Simulation
- Social Sciences(all)
- Social Sciences (miscellaneous)
- Computer Science(all)
- Human-Computer Interaction
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In: IEEE Transactions on Computational Social Systems, Vol. 8, No. 6, 01.12.2021, p. 1475-1488.
Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › Research › peer review
}
TY - JOUR
T1 - My EU = Your EU?
T2 - Differences in the Perception of European Issues across Geographic Regions
AU - Rudra, Koustav
AU - Backfried, Gerhard
AU - Shaltev, Miroslav
AU - Niederee, Claudia
AU - Elejalde, Erick
N1 - Funding Information: Funding for this project was in part provided by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 832921 (MIRROR)
PY - 2021/12/1
Y1 - 2021/12/1
N2 - Our perception of the situation in a country or a region is strongly influenced by the reflection of this situation in mass and social media channels. This effect is even more pronounced for geographically and culturally distant regions, for which no firsthand experience is available. To avoid information overload, news outlets typically filter the available news from foreign countries based on the expected interest of the target audiences. Such filtering imposes an inherent bias in the reporting and can create a distorted perception of a region among the consumers of news of other regions. This might lead to misunderstandings between countries and unsubstantiated political and individual decisions (e.g., in the context of migration). In this article, we systematically analyze the bias created in news reports. We consider Europe, or more precisely the European Union (EU) as our zone of concern, and examine its image in the media (news outlets) of other regions, Europe(NON-EU), Africa, Asia, Middle-East, America, and Oceania. An analysis of the year 2018 (January-December 2018) of news published in those regions reveals marked differences in the editorial policies and presented narrative when dealing with EU-related news. We observe a significant variation in the sentiment polarity of the reported EU-related stories between the European and other regional news outlets. We further analyze the polarity variation among different subregions of large geographical areas, such as Africa, Asia, and America. We observe a contrasting difference in their editorial policies. This trend also holds for news related to different topics, such as politics, business, economy, health, and international relation.
AB - Our perception of the situation in a country or a region is strongly influenced by the reflection of this situation in mass and social media channels. This effect is even more pronounced for geographically and culturally distant regions, for which no firsthand experience is available. To avoid information overload, news outlets typically filter the available news from foreign countries based on the expected interest of the target audiences. Such filtering imposes an inherent bias in the reporting and can create a distorted perception of a region among the consumers of news of other regions. This might lead to misunderstandings between countries and unsubstantiated political and individual decisions (e.g., in the context of migration). In this article, we systematically analyze the bias created in news reports. We consider Europe, or more precisely the European Union (EU) as our zone of concern, and examine its image in the media (news outlets) of other regions, Europe(NON-EU), Africa, Asia, Middle-East, America, and Oceania. An analysis of the year 2018 (January-December 2018) of news published in those regions reveals marked differences in the editorial policies and presented narrative when dealing with EU-related news. We observe a significant variation in the sentiment polarity of the reported EU-related stories between the European and other regional news outlets. We further analyze the polarity variation among different subregions of large geographical areas, such as Africa, Asia, and America. We observe a contrasting difference in their editorial policies. This trend also holds for news related to different topics, such as politics, business, economy, health, and international relation.
KW - European Union (EU)
KW - media bias
KW - news article
KW - perception
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85107333100&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1109/TCSS.2021.3082422
DO - 10.1109/TCSS.2021.3082422
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85107333100
VL - 8
SP - 1475
EP - 1488
JO - IEEE Transactions on Computational Social Systems
JF - IEEE Transactions on Computational Social Systems
IS - 6
ER -