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Based on Jef Verschueren's Adaptation Theory, Lakoff's definition and Prince et al.'s classification of hedges, this paper takes New York Times and China Daily from January 23rd to April 8th, 2020 as corpus sources, randomly selects 39 COVID-19 reports, and makes a contrastive study of hedges among them, aiming at exploring the similarities and differences in the use of hedges in COVID-19 reports selected from Chinese and American mainstream newspapers and further revealing their influencing factors.

This study focuses on the investigation of frequency and distribution of the active, passive sentences and nominalized structures in new reports about "the terrorist attack in Ankara on October 10th" (2015) across British and American newspapers. In the light of this purpose, the following research questions are addressed: 1. How is the news about the terrorist attack in Ankara reported in British and American newspapers as far as active, passive sentences and nominalized structures are concerned? 2. What are the frequencies and distributions of active, passive sentences and nominalized structures in news reports across British and American newspapers? The data of the study are analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively by finding out the frequencies and distributions of the structures, and by explaining examples from the document analysis process respectively. American newspapers were found to present the agent more frequently compared to British newspapers. The results of the study show that there are instances of passivization in mitigating a claim about the agent, or attenuating to present the details of the events. The journalists use active voice in describing the actions and events whereas they prefer passive voice in presenting the actions in which the agent is unknown or irrelevant. As the newspapers examined within the domain of this study are the most circulating and leading newspapers, the choice of these structures and their potential role in conveying ideology have crucial role in presentation of the image of Turkey in external media (i.e. the news reported abroad about Turkey). [This research study was presented at the Corpora and Discourse International Conference (June 30-July 2, 2016) Siena University, Italy.]

Major changes to the operation of local newsrooms--ownership restructuring, layoffs, and a reorientation away from print advertising--have become commonplace in the last few decades. However, there have been few systematic attempts to characterize the impact of these changes on the types of reporting that local newsrooms produce. In this paper, we propose a method to measure the investigative content of news articles based on article text and influence on subsequent articles. We use our method to examine over-time and cross-sectional patterns in news production by local newspapers in the United States over the past decade. We find surprising stability in the quantity of investigative articles produced over most of the time period examined, but a notable decline in the last 2 y of the decade, corresponding to a recent wave of newsroom layoffs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study the competitive forces which shaped ideological diversity in the US press in the early twentieth century. We find that households preferred like-minded news and that newspapers used their political orientation to differentiate from competitors. We formulate a model of newspaper demand, entry, and political affiliation choice in which newspapers compete for both readers and advertisers. We use a combination of estimation and calibration to identify the model's parameters from novel data on newspaper circulation, costs, and revenues. The estimated model implies that competition enhances ideological diversity, that the market undersupplies diversity, and that optimal competition policy requires accounting for the two-sidedness of the news market. (JEL D72, K21, L13, L41, L82, N42, N72) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we explore the relations of the Bolivian National Revolution (1952-1964) with the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc (including Cuba) seeking to understand the implications for the structuring of discourses and hegemonic and counter-hegemonic power blocs in the political struggle, and, thus, for the developmentalist approach to planning. Our aim is to shed light on little-studied aspects of the Bolivian National Revolution. Research included revising primary sources (archives of the Bolivian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Bolivian and Unites Stats (us) newspapers, technical and scientific documentation from Bolivian, us, and ussr institutions) as well as secondary sources (Bolivian historiography and opinion essays). On this basis, we discuss how, in the process of developing relations with both hegemonic blocs, the US and the ussr, Bolivia ended up complying with the former at the expenses of the latter. We argue that the reasons for this option are not only political but also economic, particularly, the actual content of the ussr development offers. Our analysis reveals that the relations with the ussr bloc played a key role in the self-determination of historically subaltern actors, and subsequent processes / forms of development planning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mugshot websites have become popular -- and controversial -- across the United States as news outlets seek more Web traffic and the advertising revenue that accompanies it. Proponents argue that online photo galleries showing recent arrests in the community are a modern incarnation of a practice that newspapers and television stations have done for years and provide a valuable public service. However, critics contend such sites may demonize innocent people, perpetuate racial stereotypes, and permanently brand individuals with a digital scarlet letter. As the national conversation on criminal justice shifts following the police killing of George Floyd, newsrooms are beginning to reevaluate their mugshot galleries and several have decided to discontinue them. With the law providing little, if any, help, according to First Amendment scholars, the issue is primarily an ethical one. This paper analyzes the controversy through the lens of the Society of Professional Journalists' Code of Ethics. It concludes that, while mugshot sites are not an inherently unethical journalism practice, many news outlets present mugshots utilizing ethically dubious methods that urgently need to be reformed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the phenomenon of the gift enterprise bookstore in the mid-nineteenth-century United States. An early form of premium marketing, the gift-book enterprise promised to reward each book purchase with a surprise 'gift', ranging from pencils to dress patterns to cutlery to jewellery. A novel form of marketing books, the gift enterprise bookstore teetered on a thin line between sensation and sham. Although decried as form of illegal lottery gambling and beset by accusations of dishonesty, gift-book enterprises grew immensely popular. Drawing on extensive archival research on one of the most successful gift-book enterprises, the bookstores of G.G. and D.W. Evans--operating in urban centres from 1856-1861--this article examines gift enterprise bookselling in the context of mid-nineteenth-century American print cultures. As savvy entrepreneurs, the Evans' leveraged the national reach and perceived authority of the newspaper by engaging in debates over the morality and legality of the business in the columns of widely-circulating papers and capitalised on editorial and reprinting practices to endorse their business model and market their bookstores. In addition, in lengthy bookseller catalogues distributed across the nation, the Evans' created a bookstore in print and shaped inclusive imagined and real communities of readerbook buyers. Examining the print culture of Evans' gift-book enterprise offers new insights into nineteenth-century book marketing and the ways in which gift enterprise bookselling was intimately connected to and inseparable from contemporary print forms, networks, and practices. Taking the gift-book enterprise seriously expands the histories of American bookselling and decentres the dominant focus on large publishers. In addition, the gift-bookstore phenomenon highlights how bookselling is always entwined with larger cultural dynamics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Produced in a historiographical spirit, this literature review traces trends in the depiction of Hmong Americans not in popular representations such as newspapers or public perception, but in the American academic discourse itself. By adopting a thematic approach, it evidences the curious chronological development of which aspects of Hmong studies were treated in which way from the 1980s until the present. To this extent, the paper argues that while the 1980s and 1990s saw a heavy emphasis on social scientific studies of Hmong family ties and clan structure which, while careful and mostly sensitive in their treatment, nevertheless on occasion construct the Hmong as either irreconcilably or undesirably different (sections I and II). It then proceeds to crystallise the significant treatment of education with respect to the Hmong, which, produced in particular in the late 1990s and early 2000s, presented powerful cases of forced assimilation through the lens of Hmong Americans themselves (section III). A brief fourth section focuses on the marginal role ascribed to economic problems encountered by the Hmong, treated as almost inevitable. Crucially, the fifth section proceeds to problematise more recent feminist critiques. The argument presented here is that their central drawback lies in the appropriation and overriding of Hmong voices for a particular project. This construction of Hmong voices, finally, is on the retreat in most recent studies which, centred on horticulture, music, rituals and medicine - to name but a few - attempt to elucidate the Hmong American experience through the lens of the protagonists themselves. This is an important step, and one which must be pursued further. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores discursive constructions of women trafficked for sexual exploitation in newspaper articles in the United Kingdom and the United States. I draw on the results of a multimodal discourse analysis of 25 articles published in 2018 across seven newspapers. The framework of politics of pity is used to analyze the politics of representation of trafficked women. The analysis yields six categories that fall into two themes: Agency is depicted through trafficked women as deceased, controlled, and injured subjects, and visibility through the categories of strangers, victims, and survivors. These ways of appearance suggest that, in newspaper content, trafficked women are placed on a hierarchy of victimhood. Appeals to compassionate care are reserved for "ideal victims," while those lower on the hierarchy are construed as ambivalent subjects lacking a political voice. The study shows that dominant constructions of public suffering reflect a neo-abolitionist politics of representation, while marginalized identities and subjectivities are framed through ambivalence. To expand the remit of care, ambivalence could be productively used to contextualize social oppression in media accounts of human trafficking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The degree to which the media report a health emergency affects the seriousness with which the people respond to combat the health crisis. Engagement from local newspapers in the US has received scant scrutiny, even though there is a sizable body of scholarship on the analysis of COVID-19 news. We fill this void by focusing on the Rio Grande Valley area of the US-Mexico border. To understand the differences, we compared such local news coverage with the coverage of a national news outlet. After collecting the relevant news articles, we used sentiment analysis, rapid automatic keyword extraction (RAKE), and co-occurrence network analysis to examine the main themes and sentiments of COVID-19 news articles. The RAKE identified that county-specific news or local regulations are more prevalent among the key terms in The Monitor which are absent in USA Today. The co-occurrence network shows the coverage of the disruption of sports season in USA Today which is not present in The Monitor. The sentiment analysis presents fear emotion is more dominant in USA Today, but trust emotion becomes more prevalent in The Monitor news coverage. These findings show us that, although the subject of the health emergency is the same, local and national newspapers describe it in different ways, and the sentiments they convey are also not the same. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Information about how newspapers portray antidiabetic medicines to readers is lacking. This study investigated the reporting on antidiabetic medicines in the most widely circulated newspapers published in the United Kingdom (UK) and the United States (US) over a 10-year period. Methods: The Nexis UK database was used to identify and select relevant articles. Systematic content analysis of the articles which met the inclusion criteria (articles of any format that contained reference to antidiabetic medicines) within the highest circulated newspapers in the UK and US between 2009 and 2018 was conducted. Inter-rater reliability of coding was established using a 10% sample of the identified articles. Results: A total of 560 (369 UK and 191 US) relevant newspaper articles were retrieved. In the UK, the number of relevant articles showed a slightly increasing trend over the study period, while in the US, article numbers declined over the study period. Safety/risk of antidiabetic medicines was the most frequent theme covered by the articles (34.6%). Over one-third of the newspaper articles were written from a clinical perspective (37.7%). Insulin was the most commonly discussed class of antidiabetic medicine (23.1%). Control of blood sugar levels (53.1%) and side effects/toxicity (92.7%) were the most frequently reported benefit and risk of antidiabetic medicines, respectively. The most frequently reported organ systems harmed by antidiabetic medicines were the cardiovascular, endocrine and gastrointestinal systems. The UK newspapers were more likely to report the benefits of antidiabetic medicines (p = 0.005), while the US articles were more likely to report on harms/risks (p = 0.001). The majority of relevant articles (91.8%) were judged as having a balanced judgement, while 8.2% of the articles were rated as exaggerated. Conclusions: This study has revealed that antidiabetic medicines are indeed reported on by UK and US newspapers. As media portrayal has the potential to negatively or positively influence patients' views of their medication for diabetes, healthcare professionals should check on patients' beliefs and knowledge about their medication and proactively provide objective and balanced information (including promotion of medication adherence). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background This study investigated the nature of newspaper reporting about online health information in the UK and US. Internet users frequently search for health information online, although the accuracy of the information retrieved varies greatly and can be misleading. Newspapers have the potential to influence public health behaviours, but information has been lacking in relation to how newspapers portray online health information to their readers. Methods The newspaper database Nexis®UK was searched for articles published from 2003 - 2012 relating to online health information. Systematic content analysis of articles published in the highest circulation newspapers in the UK and US was performed. A second researcher coded a 10% sample to establish inter-rater reliability of coding. Results In total, 161 newspaper articles were included in the analysis. Publication was most frequent in 2003, 2008 and 2009, which coincided with global threats to public health. UK broadsheet newspapers were significantly more likely to cover online health information than UK tabloid newspapers (p = 0.04) and only one article was identified in US tabloid newspapers. Articles most frequently appeared in health sections. Among the 79 articles that linked online health information to specific diseases or health topics, diabetes was the most frequently mentioned disease, cancer the commonest group of diseases and sexual health the most frequent health topic. Articles portrayed benefits of obtaining online health information more frequently than risks. Quotations from health professionals portrayed mixed opinions regarding public access to online health information. 108 (67.1%) articles directed readers to specific health-related web sites. 135 (83.9%) articles were rated as having balanced judgement and 76 (47.2%) were judged as having excellent quality reporting. No difference was found in the quality of reporting between UK and US articles. Conclusions Newspaper coverage of online health information was low during the 10-year period 2003 to 2012. Journalists tended to emphasise the benefits and understate the risks of online health information and the quality of reporting varied considerably. Newspapers directed readers to sources of online health information during global epidemics although, as most articles appeared in the health sections of broadsheet newspapers, coverage was limited to a relatively small readership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: In the past decade, most people who buy and own guns are doing so for self-defense. Yet little is known about actual defensive gun use in the USA. Methods: To discover what information newspaper articles and local news reports might add, we read the news reports of defensive use incidents assembled by the Gun Violence Archive. We examined a sample of more than a quarter of the incidents from 2019, the last year before the pandemic. We examined all cases from four months—January, April, July, and October. We created a typology of defensive gun use incidents. Results: Of 418 incidents, in about half, the perpetrator was armed with a firearm. In almost 90% of the cases, the victim fired their firearm—315 perpetrators were shot and about half of them died. The average number of perpetrators shot per incident was 0.75; the average number of victims shot was 0.25. We estimate that in 2019 fewer than 600 potential perpetrators were killed in defensive gun use incidents that made the news. Among the thirteen categories of shooting were drug-related (4% of incidents), gang-like combat (6%), romantic partner disputes (11%), escalating arguments (13%), store robberies (9%), street robberies (5%), unoccupied vehicle theft (5%), unarmed burglaries (7%), home invasions (20%), and miscellaneous (6%). Conclusion: We believe the Gun Violence Archive dataset includes the large majority of news reports of defensive gun use—and especially those in which the perpetrator is shot and dies. Some of the strengths of using news reports as a data source are that we can be certain that the incident occurred, and the reports provide us with a story behind the incident, one usually vetted in part by the police with occasional input from the victims, perpetrator, family, witnesses, or neighbors. Defensive gun use situations are quite diverse, and among the various categories of defensive gun use, a higher percentage of incidents in some of the categories seemed far less likely to be socially beneficial (e.g., drug-related, gang-like, escalating arguments) than in others (e.g., home invasions). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the 1920s, a wave of U.S. scientists and journalists descended on Central America and the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico to unlock the riddles of the ancient Maya: their origins, their cultures, and their disappearance. These expeditions, widely publicized in US newspapers, taught the public about both the Maya and US past and present. In this article, I compare media representations of archaeological exploration in Yucatan published in The New York Times. I analyze Alma Reed's reports from her 1923 visit to Yucatan against Gregory Mason's dispatches from the later Mason-Spinden Expedition in 1926. Each journalist drew different conclusions about the nature and identity of the ancient Maya, yet sought to transform readers into vicarious stakeholders to maintain US dominance in Yucatan. They recreated cultural and scientific ties between Yucatan and the United States damaged by plummeting henequen prices and a series of radical socialist experiments designed to bring the ideals of the Mexican revolution to the region. I show how cultural representations of empire and assumptions about the indigenous bolstered informal US economic empire and strengthened both real and imaginary relationships between Yucatan and the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study is an attempt to find out the relationship of cartoons in the print media in relation to the United States war on terror. It is an effort to highlight the depiction of this war through caricatures in Pakistani press with special reference to the two leading newspapers of the country i.e. The Dawn and The Nation. For data collection, a questionnaire, using Likert scale, has been designed to get the feedback of the people especially the educated segment of the society. Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) has been used to analyse the questionnaire and the subsequent results and findings of the data. A total of 140 students were given the questionnaires for collecting information about the role of cartoons in the said newspapers. Based on this data, this study has investigated cartoons about war on terror since 9/11, 2001. It concludes after the discussion and analysis that this war on terror is not a success for the United Statesand the rest of the world in general since many peopleare thinking otherwise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This study examines representations of transgender individuals and identity in mainstream U.S. newspapers in an effort to understand the extent to which the transgender community is legitimized or delegitimized by news media. To do so, 200 articles from 13 of the 25 most circulated daily newspapers in the United States were coded for the presence or absence of "legitimacy indicators." The study finds that mainstream newspaper coverage of the transgender community is extremely limited. Moreover, the coverage that does exist contains a significant amount of delegitimizing language, which it is argued will detrimentally impact both the projected legitimacy of transgender claims in the political arena and public perceptions of the transgender community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates discussions of race and poverty in newspaper opinion pieces during a period of welfare reform debates in the United States, 1994-2010. Results show that, often, the poor are identified as deserving of societal support, and outside entities (external causes) are identified as the source of their hardship. However, when the poor are identified by race, how contributors say poverty should be remedied shifts. When identified as African Americans, poor individuals are blamed for their poverty and solutions obviate structural explanations. Our research advances dialogue around the racialization of poverty and creates an opportunity to understand the relationship between public discussions of race and poverty and shifts in policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Consumers frequently encounter competing health information comprised of accurate and erroneous messages about different diseases. This longitudinal study examined the lagged associations between young adults' exposure to health (mis)information about 4 cancer-related risk factors (indoor tanning, e-cigarette use, reusing plastic bottles, and artificial sweeteners), beliefs, intentions, and behaviors as informed by theories of persuasion and behavior change. We found significant lagged associations between health (mis)information exposure and beliefs for three topics; beliefs predicted subsequent intentions for 2 topics; and intentions predicted subsequent behaviors for 4 topics. The hypothesized pathway of effects was supported for 2 topics. These findings provide insights for developing theory in the area of (mis)information effects and for designing interventions that mitigate the adverse consequences of misinformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A substantial body of research suggests that some news media outlets depict certain social groups stereotypically. We hypothesize that long-term exposure to such news influences viewers' automatically activated gut feelings (i.e., implicit attitudes) toward this social group, which, in turn, may be used as a basis for overtly expressed evaluations (i.e., explicit attitudes). This prediction was investigated in three empirical studies in two cultural contexts. In the United States and Austria, results suggest that regular exposure to stereotypical news coverage creates negative implicit attitudes, which, in turn, alter explicit attitudes. A better understanding of the news stereotype effects will allow us to develop strategies to reduce prejudice, which may contribute to the improvement of a humane and open society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]