Researching Media Slant: Language Features and Topics

In Table C.14, re-run our main specification, but instead of bigram-based similarity with FNC, we regress vocabulary size (normalized by the total size of the corpus, column 1), average word length (column 2), average sentence length (column 3), and average article length (column 4) on instrumented FNC viewership relative to MSNBC and CNN.


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Abstract and 1 Introduction 2. Data

3. Measuring Media Slant and 3.1. Text pre-processing and featurization

3.2. Classifying transcripts by TV source

3.3. Text similarity between newspapers and TV stations and 3.4. Topic model

4. Econometric Framework

4.1. Instrumental variables specification

4.2. Instrument first stage and validity

5. Results

5.1. Main results

5.2. Robustness checks

6. Mechanisms and Heterogeneity

6.1. Local vs. national or international news content

6.2. Cable news media slant polarizes local newspapers

7. Conclusion and References

\ Online Appendices

A. Data Appendix

A.1. Newspaper articles

A.2. Alternative county matching of newspapers and A.3. Filtering of the article snippets

A.4. Included prime-time TV shows and A.5. Summary statistics

B. Methods Appendix, B.1. Text pre-processing and B.2. Bigrams most predictive for FNC or CNN/MSNBC

B.3. Human validation of NLP model

B.4. Distribution of Fox News similarity in newspapers and B.5. Example articles by Fox News similarity

B.6. Topics from the newspaper-based LDA model

C. Results Appendix

C.1. First stage results and C.2. Instrument exogeneity

C.3. Placebo: Content similarity in 1995/96

C.4. OLS results

C.5. Reduced form results

C.6. Sub-samples: Newspaper headquarters and other counties and C.7. Robustness: Alternative county matching

C.8. Robustness: Historical circulation weights and C.9. Robustness: Relative circulation weights

C.10. Robustness: Absolute and relative FNC viewership and C.11. Robustness: Dropping observations and clustering

C.12. Mechanisms: Language features and topics

C.13. Mechanisms: Descriptive Evidence on Demand Side

C.14. Mechanisms: Slant contagion and polarization

C.12. Mechanisms: Language features and topics

Notes: 2SLS estimates. Cross-section with newspaper-county-level observations weighted by newspaper circulation in each county. The dependent variable is vocabulary size in column 1, average word length in column 2, average sentence length in column 3, and average total article length in column 4. The right-hand side variable of interest is instrumented FNC viewership relative to averaged CNN and MSNBC viewership. All columns include state fixed effects, demographic controls as listed in Appendix Table A.2, channel controls (population shares with access to each of the three TV channels), and a control for the size of the newspaper-specific corpus. Standard errors, multiway-clustered at the county and at the newspaper level, in parenthesis. * p < 0.1, ** p < 0.05, *** p < 0.01.

\ In Table C.14, re-run our main specification, but instead of bigram-based similarity with FNC, we regress vocabulary size (normalized by the total size of the corpus, column 1), average word length (column 2), average sentence length (column 3), and average article length (column 4) on instrumented FNC viewership relative to MSNBC and CNN. As before, we include demographic and channel controls. We also account for the size of the newspaper-specific corpus. [22] None of the coefficients are significant or close to significant. These results are consistent with the interpretation that our main results are driven by FNC-specific bigrams that diffuse into local newspaper content. [23]

\ Notes: 2SLS estimates. Cross-section with newspaper-county-level observations weighted by newspaper circulation in each county. The dependent variable is newspaper language similarity with FNC (the average probability that a snippet from a newspaper is predicted to be from FNC). The righthand side variable of interest is instrumented FNC viewership relative to averaged CNN and MSNBC viewership. All columns include state fixed effects, demographic controls as listed in Appendix Table A.2, and average topic share controls. Column 2 also includes channel controls (population shares with access to each of the three TV channels). Column 3 controls for generic newspaper language features (vocabulary size, avg. word length, avg. sentence length, avg. article length). Standard errors are multiway-clustered at the county and at the newspaper level (in parenthesis): * p < 0.1, ** p < 0.05, *** p < 0.01.

\

:::info This paper is available on arxiv under CC 4.0 license.

:::


[22] The number of articles scraped is given by the availability on NewsLibrary. It does not seem to follow a pattern: the correlation between corpus size and circulation by newspaper is rather small, around 0.3. The correlation between similarity with FNC and corpus size is, if anything, negative (around -0.21).

\ [23] The insignificance of the coefficients in Table C.14 should not come as a surprise given that the main results in Table 2 barely change when we move from column 2 to column 3 (where generic newspaper language controls are introduced).

:::info Authors:

(1) Philine Widmer, ETH Zürich and philine.widmer@gess.ethz.ch;

(2) Sergio Galletta, ETH Zürich and sergio.galletta@gess.ethz.ch;

(3) Elliott Ash, ETH Zürich and ashe@ethz.ch.

:::

\


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