Altheide & Michalowski (1999). Fear in the News

[杉森 典子]

Hi Linnea, 
I don't remember exactly when, but the physical size and font sizes of the Boston Globe changed in the past ten years and these factors make the interpretation of the result of median word length in headlines difficult. Reading your message, I also realized that there are some words which have more synonyms than others. "Game-playing" is long, but other short ways of saying the same thing may not br available. 
Noriko
 Linnea Micciulla <polyglot at BU.EDU> wrote:Hi Noriko,

That's an interesting observation about word length. It might be informative
to look at median word length in headlines to see if it had changed over
that same 10-year period - if there has been no particular trend in word
length in those papers, then it wouldn't explain the increased use of
"fear". Also, in the headline you cite, the words "excessive" and
"game-playing" are pretty long; so using shorter words doesn't seem critical
here. 

Linnea
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