Media talks Privacy: Unraveling a Decade of Privacy Discourse around the World
Authors: Shujaat Mirza (New York University), Corban Villa (New York University Abu Dhabi), Christina Pöpper (New York University Abu Dhabi)
Volume: 2024
Issue: 4
Pages: 102–122
DOI: https://doi.org/10.56553/popets-2024-0109
Abstract: Our increasingly digital world has heightened concerns about privacy. Newspaper and media reporting influences and shapes public opinion, which impacts the strategic and operational decisions of a variety of stakeholders, making it crucial to understand how privacy-related issues are portrayed in the media. Leveraging time-series analysis, topic modeling, and sentiment analysis, this paper presents a comprehensive study on the coverage of privacy-related issues in newspapers from 2010 to 2022 across six regions of the world. Temporal trends in privacy coverage reveal a gradual increase in attention to privacy issues globally, with a notable surge observed in newspapers from the Global South, complementing the historically prominent Global North coverage. Topic modeling uncovers dominant themes in privacy reporting, revealing shifts in media focus from government surveillance to data breaches and tech corporations' role. Notably, the majority of privacy reporting carries a negative sentiment, emphasizing the widespread unease that pervades discussions surrounding privacy matters.
Keywords: privacy, media, topic modeling, sentiment analysis, LLM, text classification
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