Thesis Title:
Mind Over Media: Mapping the Mental Landscape of Discourse, Social Perceptions, and Inferences About Others
Thesis Abstract:
More often than not, the conclusions we draw about the thoughts, feelings, and beliefs of individuals outside our own societal group are incorrect. The media is one of the main ways that information about others is shared, but researchers still don’t understand how the type of language used by the media contributes to our understanding of other people’s minds – and thus, the way we perceive different groups within society.
The main goal of this project is to study the impact language has on shaping how we understand the minds of others, and the effect this has on the way both individuals and groups interact within wider society. To provide a concrete example of this, the project will focus specifically on how the media portrays autism – a neurodivergent identity that is often linked to social disadvantages and is frequently misunderstood as an illness or ‘deficit’ that can be treated. The project has the following research objectives:
1. To evaluate how the language used to describe autistic people varies across different online news media (e.g., by source, reporting style, or time period).
2. To investigate how audiences (both autistic and non-autistic) feel about the stories shared about autism in the media, and how these stories are written.
3. To study whether different types of language describing autistic people in media articles influences the way audiences understand these individuals’ thoughts, feelings, and beliefs.
4. To determine whether changing the language used to describe autistic people in media articles results in corresponding changes to the way these individuals are understood by audiences.
Through doing this, the project aims to explain how language used within the media changes social identities for different people or groups.
Primary Supervisor:
Dr Caroline Catmur