Analysis of science journalism reveals gender and regional disparities in coverage
- University of Colorado School of Medicine, United States
Figures
Figure 1 with 1 supplement
Data and processing pipeline overview.
(a), left, depicts an example news article and the type of data extracted from the text. Green and blue highlighted text depicts all quotes, and associated speakers identified by the coreNLP …
Figure 1—figure supplement 1
Benchmark data.
The performance of gender prediction for pipeline-identified quoted speakers.
Figure 2 with 2 supplements
Speakers predicted to be men are sometimes over-represented in quotes, but this depends on the year and article type.
(a), left, depicts an example of the names extracted from quoted speakers in news articles and authors in papers. (a), right, highlighted the data types and processes used to analyze the predicted …
Figure 2—figure supplement 1
Speakers predicted to be men are over-represented in news quotes regardless of predicted journalist gender.
(a) depicts two trend lines: Yellow: proportion of Nature news articles written by a predicted women journalist; blue: proportion of Nature news articles written by a predicted men journalist. We …
Figure 2—figure supplement 2
Speakers predicted to be men are over-represented in news quotes when compared against Springer Nature authorship.
(a) depicts three trend lines: purple: proportion of Nature quotes for a speaker estimated to be a man; light gray: proportion of The Guardian quotes for a speaker estimated to be a man; yellow: …
Figure 3 with 4 supplements
Analysis of quotes and citations found over-representation of Celtic/English and under-representation of East Asian predicted name origins.
(a), left, depicts an example of the names extracted from quoted speakers and citations found within news articles and authors in papers. (a), right, highlights the data types and processes used to …
Figure 3—figure supplement 1
Predicted Celtic/English, and European name origins are the highest cited, quoted, and mentioned.
(a) depicts the number of quotes, mentions, citations, or research articles considered in the name origin analysis. (b–g) depicts the proportion of a name origin in a given dataset, citations in …
Figure 3—figure supplement 2
Distribution of name origins Nature and Springer Nature articles.
(a–d) depicts the predicted name origins of first and last authors in our background sets. (a and b) show the predicted name origins of Nature first and last authors, respectively. (c and d) show …
Figure 3—figure supplement 3
Over-representation of predicted Celtic/English and under-representation of East Asian name origins are also found in comparison to Nature and Springer Nature articles.
(a–f) depicts 10 plots, each for a possible name origin comparison against a background set. (a, c) and (e) compare the citation (a), quote (c), or mention (e) rate against Nature first and last …
Figure 3—figure supplement 4
Over-representation of predicted Celtic/English and under-representation of East Asian quotes and mentions are reduced when additionally considering citation (a–d) depicts twelve plots, each for a possible name origin comparison against a background set.
(a and b) compare name origin proportions of quotes from people that were also cited in the same article. (c and d) compare name origin proportions from mentions of people that were also cited in …
Tables
Table 1
Breakdown of quotes at major processing steps.
| Processing step | Frequency |
|---|---|
| Total quotes | 105,457 |
| Quotes with a full name or pronoun associated | 96,620 |
| Quotes with a gender prediction | 96,390 |
| Quote with a full name | 88,535 |
| Quotes with a name origin prediction | 100,457 |
Table 2
Breakdown of citations at major processing steps.
| Writer of article | Total citations | Total Springer Nature citations | First author citations with a full name | Last author citations with a full name | First author citations with a name origin prediciton | Last author citations with a name origin prediciton |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Journalist | 15,713 | 5736 | 4452 | 4464 | 4449 | 4447 |
| Scientist | 40,707 | 14,597 | 11,276 | 11,170 | 11,276 | 11,152 |
Table 3
Breakdown of all Springer Nature papers at major processing steps.
| Processing step | Frequency |
|---|---|
| # Springer Nature articles | 38,400 |
| # First + last authors with a full name in Springer Nature articles | 55,370 |
| # First + last authors with a gender prediction in Springer Nature articles | 51,686 |
| # First + last authors with a name origin prediction in Springer Nature articles | 55,197 |
Table 4
Breakdown of all Nature papers at major processing steps.
| Processing step | Frequency |
|---|---|
| # Nature articles | 13,414 |
| # First + last authors with a full name in Nature articles | 21,996 |
| # First + last authors with a gender prediction in Nature articles | 21,173 |
| # First + last authors with a name origin prediction in Nature articles | 21,996 |
Table 5
Quoted speaker gender by name origin.
| Women | Men | Proportion men | |
|---|---|---|---|
| African | 270 | 1554 | 0.8519737 |
| ArabTurkPers | 346 | 1765 | 0.8360966 |
| CelticEnglish | 6399 | 33,329 | 0.8389297 |
| EastAsian | 1090 | 4438 | 0.8028220 |
| European | 4788 | 22,844 | 0.8267226 |
| Greek | 73 | 445 | 0.8590734 |
| Hebrew | 213 | 1303 | 0.8594987 |
| Hispanic | 760 | 2450 | 0.7632399 |
| Nordic | 593 | 2397 | 0.8016722 |
| SouthAsian | 465 | 2019 | 0.8128019 |
Table 6
Mean fold change comparison with Nature from bootstrap samples with 95% CI.
| CelticEnglish | EastAsian | European | |
|---|---|---|---|
| citation_journalist_first vs. nature_first | 1.36 (0.96, 1.74) | 0.7 (0.46, 0.91) | 1.01 (0.8, 1.25) |
| citation_journalist_last vs. nature_last | 1.18 (0.93, 1.54) | 0.82 (0.42, 1.27) | 0.93 (0.71, 1.19) |
| citation_scientist_first vs. nature_first | 1.26 (1.05, 1.5) | 0.81 (0.66, 1.02) | 1.05 (0.88, 1.22) |
| citation_scientist_last vs. nature_last | 1.11 (0.95, 1.31) | 0.77 (0.58, 0.99) | 1.06 (0.93, 1.19) |
| quote vs. nature_first | 2.12 (1.77, 2.51) | 0.25 (0.2, 0.32) | 1.01 (0.81, 1.22) |
| quote vs. nature_last | 1.52 (1.32 1.75) | 0.39 (0.3, 0.49) | 0.89 (0.79, 1.01) |
| mention vs. nature_first | 2.03 (1.67, 2.39) | 0.29 (0.23, 0.36) | 1.02 (0.81, 1.22) |
| mention vs. nature_last | 1.44 (1.26, 1.67) | 0.45 (0.35, 0.54) | 0.89 (0.79, 1) |
Table 7
Mean fold change comparison with Springer Nature from bootstrap samples with 95% CI.
| CelticEnglish | EastAsian | European | |
|---|---|---|---|
| citation_journalist_first vs. springer_first | 1.99 (1.42, 2.64) | 0.69 (0.47, 0.96) | 1.14 (0.89, 1.47) |
| citation_journalist_last vs. springer_last | 2.01 (1.31, 3.08) | 0.56 (0.3, 0.82) | 1.12 (0.91, 1.37) |
| citation_scientist_first vs. springer_last | 1.54 (0.95, 2.17) | 0.91 (0.62, 1.64) | 1.13 (0.91, 1.93) |
| citation_scientist_last vs. nature_last | 1.11 (0.95, 1.31) | 0.77 (0.58, 0.99) | 1.06 (0.93, 1.19) |
| quote vs. springer_last | 2.58 (1.74, 3.6) | 0.28 (0.2, 0.54) | 1.08 (0.84, 1.35) |
| quote vs. nature_last | 1.52 (1.32, 1.75) | 0.39 (0.3, 0.49) | 0.89 (0.79, 1.0) |
| mention vs. springer_last | 2.45 (1.65, 3.42) | 0.32 (0.23, 0.59) | 1.08 (0.85, 1.32) |
| mention vs. nature_last | 1.44 (1.26, 1.67) | 0.45 (0.35, 0.54) | 0.89 (0.79, 1) |
Table 8
Quoted speaker name origin, by journalist name origin.
| Journalist name origin | African | Arab Turk Pers | Celtic English | East Asian | European | Greek | Hebrew | Hispanic | Nordic | South Asian |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CelticEnglish | 0.020 | 0.025 | 0.484 | 0.038 | 0.319 | 0.006 | 0.016 | 0.033 | 0.035 | 0.022 |
| EastAsian | 0.018 | 0.017 | 0.354 | 0.243 | 0.250 | 0.004 | 0.016 | 0.026 | 0.036 | 0.035 |
| European | 0.022 | 0.023 | 0.420 | 0.086 | 0.326 | 0.005 | 0.016 | 0.043 | 0.032 | 0.027 |
Table 9
Quoted + cited speaker name origin, by journalist name origin.
| Journalist name origin | African | Arab Turk Pers | Celtic English | East Asian | European | Greek | Hebrew | Hispanic | Nordic | South Asian |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CelticEnglish | 0.016 | 0.027 | 0.368 | 0.070 | 0.363 | 0.008 | 0.017 | 0.023 | 0.083 | 0.025 |
| EastAsian | 0.002 | 0.077 | 0.377 | 0.143 | 0.167 | 0.000 | 0.012 | 0.133 | 0.019 | 0.080 |
| European | 0.014 | 0.028 | 0.363 | 0.116 | 0.352 | 0.006 | 0.030 | 0.026 | 0.035 | 0.030 |
Table 10
Quoted speakers (with US-affiliated citation) name origin, by journalist name origin.
| Journalist name origin | African | Arab Turk Pers | Celtic English | East Asian | European | Greek | Hebrew | Hispanic | Nordic | South Asian |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CelticEnglish | 0.011 | 0.023 | 0.378 | 0.086 | 0.361 | 0.010 | 0.021 | 0.029 | 0.056 | 0.025 |
| EastAsian | 0.000 | 0.066 | 0.340 | 0.148 | 0.209 | 0.000 | 0.005 | 0.148 | 0.033 | 0.049 |
| European | 0.021 | 0.030 | 0.410 | 0.111 | 0.300 | 0.012 | 0.023 | 0.019 | 0.030 | 0.046 |
