Comments on: “Civil Rights” http://alex.halavais.net/civil-rights Things that interest me. Sun, 05 Feb 2012 12:26:16 +0000 hourly 1 By: alex http://alex.halavais.net/civil-rights/comment-page-1#comment-173706 alex Sun, 19 Nov 2006 05:40:23 +0000 http://alex.halavais.net/civil-rights/#comment-173706 Erik actually asked about this, and you are right. Not only the events after 9/11, but lots of other things can affect the size of the news hole and the direction of coverage. And yes, one way to fix this would be to use a control word ("president," "America," etc.) as a balance. Nonetheless, it is suggestive. And given recent accusations that civil rights violations have gone under-investigated, the reasons for the dip may be less relevant than the fact that it has dipped. Erik actually asked about this, and you are right.

Not only the events after 9/11, but lots of other things can affect the size of the news hole and the direction of coverage. And yes, one way to fix this would be to use a control word (“president,” “America,” etc.) as a balance.

Nonetheless, it is suggestive. And given recent accusations that civil rights violations have gone under-investigated, the reasons for the dip may be less relevant than the fact that it has dipped.

]]> By: Ed Crowder http://alex.halavais.net/civil-rights/comment-page-1#comment-173635 Ed Crowder Sun, 19 Nov 2006 00:28:07 +0000 http://alex.halavais.net/civil-rights/#comment-173635 Those results are interesting, particularly the dip after 2001. I'm not sure exactly what it means, though. The attacks gobbled up so much of the news hole at the time that I would venture to guess that any search term you'd care to choose would suffer in comparison. It would be interesting to see whether there the dip was unique to the term "civil rights" or whether the frequency of other non-terrorism-related terms fell off as well. In fact, I'd venture to guess that "civil rights" fared better than many other terms, since it was at least part of the post 9/11 discussion. Those results are interesting, particularly the dip after 2001. I’m not sure exactly what it means, though. The attacks gobbled up so much of the news hole at the time that I would venture to guess that any search term you’d care to choose would suffer in comparison. It would be interesting to see whether there the dip was unique to the term “civil rights” or whether the frequency of other non-terrorism-related terms fell off as well. In fact, I’d venture to guess that “civil rights” fared better than many other terms, since it was at least part of the post 9/11 discussion.

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