High-res Texas in Africa recently asked: If you took all the stories about African countries in American newspapers and removed those about poverty, disease, and war, I wonder what would be left? I don’t have a perfect answer, but I can offer a tentative one. The New York Times tags all of its stories on a number of variables, including the article’s geographic subject and its relevant overarching themes. This information is free for people to play around with (do it). I modified one of the programs I used previously to find out what themes were prevalent when an article was about the continent of Africa. Two caveats: These numbers are drawn from articles on the continent as a whole (as are the numbers for the graph above). Articles on specific countries or cities in Africa were not included unless wider Africa was an important part of the story. Each article can be tagged as having more than one overarching theme. I wanted to show the data as a pie chart, but the non-exclusivity of the themes made that impossible. With that out of the way, the juicy stuff: 16% of the articles on Africa in the New York Times between 1981 and 2008 were tagged as being about AIDS 12% were on foreign aid 5% were on famine 5% were on civil war and guerrilla warfare 4% were on immigration and refugees Don’t add the the percentages up! Each bullet is true on its own but you can’t add the percentages and say that 42% were on stereotypical themes. There is likely overlap between the “immigration and refugees” category and the “civil war and guerilla warfare” category, for example. There were some more nebulous categories as well: 21% were on US International Relations or International Relations 11% were on economic conditions and trends 6% were tagged as being on third world and developing countries As you can probably gather by now, the labeling system that the Times uses is a little opaque and can be hard to follow. I would not rely heavily on these numbers (only 6% were on developing countries?), but they do provide some insight into how Africa is portrayed in one major newspaper. Texas in Africa, that is the best I can do right now.

Texas in Africa recently asked:

If you took all the stories about African countries in American newspapers and removed those about poverty, disease, and war, I wonder what would be left?

I don’t have a perfect answer, but I can offer a tentative one. The New York Times tags all of its stories on a number of variables, including the article’s geographic subject and its relevant overarching themes. This information is free for people to play around with (do it). I modified one of the programs I used previously to find out what themes were prevalent when an article was about the continent of Africa. Two caveats:

  1. These numbers are drawn from articles on the continent as a whole (as are the numbers for the graph above). Articles on specific countries or cities in Africa were not included unless wider Africa was an important part of the story.
  2. Each article can be tagged as having more than one overarching theme. I wanted to show the data as a pie chart, but the non-exclusivity of the themes made that impossible.

With that out of the way, the juicy stuff:

  • 16% of the articles on Africa in the New York Times between 1981 and 2008 were tagged as being about AIDS
  • 12% were on foreign aid
  • 5% were on famine
  • 5% were on civil war and guerrilla warfare
  • 4% were on immigration and refugees

Don’t add the the percentages up! Each bullet is true on its own but you can’t add the percentages and say that 42% were on stereotypical themes. There is likely overlap between the “immigration and refugees” category and the “civil war and guerilla warfare” category, for example. There were some more nebulous categories as well:

  • 21% were on US International Relations or International Relations
  • 11% were on economic conditions and trends
  • 6% were tagged as being on third world and developing countries

As you can probably gather by now, the labeling system that the Times uses is a little opaque and can be hard to follow. I would not rely heavily on these numbers (only 6% were on developing countries?), but they do provide some insight into how Africa is portrayed in one major newspaper. Texas in Africa, that is the best I can do right now.