Various studies have revealed that regular news sources create stereotypical impressions of ethnic minorities. In Norway, surveys conducted on Muslims and non-Muslims reveal that the Norwegian
population sees news media as a significant source for this negative impression. There is little to no technical research conducted on how mainstream Norwegian news media writes about these minority groups.
In her interdisciplinary master research project, Laréb Fatima Ahmad investigated using Natural Language Processing methods, whether stereotyping of Muslims and ethnic minorities can be detected in newspapers. She used data collected between 2017 to 2019. The study — which could only be done with computational methods, given the large body of text — objectively shows a disproportionate reportage practice in Norwegian newspapers in which Muslims and ethnic minorities are described in ways that align with bias and negative, discriminatory stereotypes.
Lareb Fatima Ahmad (2024) The Islamic Elephant in the News Room
Using Natural Language Processing to Uncover Stereotypes of Muslims and Ethnic
Minorities in Norwegian News in 2017-2019. Master thesis Computer Science, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. The thesis is available at request.
