This document discusses analyzing quotes from media sources to understand the relationship between media and political agendas. It proposes that quotes can be extracted from news articles automatically using natural language processing. A sample of quotes was manually coded to test the reliability of the automatic extraction, achieving precision of 0.9 and recall of 0.83 for source extraction and 0.79 and 0.77 for quote extraction. Preliminary analysis of automatically extracted quotes found they have a significant influence on parliament discussions but other actors do not significantly impact parliament.

1. Theory Methodology Reliability Results
Quoted Sources in the Media:
separate Agendas?
Wouter van Atteveldt
29 November 2012
Quoted Sources in the Media: separate Agendas? Wouter van Atteveldt

2. Theory Methodology Reliability Results
Quotes sources in the Media
ˆ Media are an actor with an institutional agenda
ˆ But also a platform for other actors
ˆ Complex relations:
ˆ Media and politics
ˆ Journalist and politician
ˆ Media content and e.g. parliamentary debate
ˆ Can we determine the use of the media as a platform by
politicians?
Quoted Sources in the Media: separate Agendas? Wouter van Atteveldt

3. Theory Methodology Reliability Results
Media Logic
ˆ Media Logic: media as institution with own logic
ˆ Mediatisation: politics adapt to/adopt this logic
ˆ Agenda settings: media set the political agenda
ˆ Mixed results (Walgrave/Van Aelst, Van Nooije, etc)
Quoted Sources in the Media: separate Agendas? Wouter van Atteveldt

4. Theory Methodology Reliability Results
Institutions, actors, and media
ˆ `The media' is a complex concept
ˆ Institution: journalistic norms and practices
ˆ Actors: journalists, businesses
ˆ Medium: part of communication channel
ˆ Media have dierent functions
ˆ Reporter / mirror
ˆ Investigator / watchdog
ˆ Platform
Quoted Sources in the Media: separate Agendas? Wouter van Atteveldt

5. Theory Methodology Reliability Results
Media as platform
ˆ Politicians use media as platform
ˆ Mediatisation: politicians play by media rules
ˆ Responsiveness: quick symoblic responses
ˆ Who determines the content of quotes?
ˆ Supply: quotes from politicians ← political logic
ˆ Demand: news values of journalists ← media logic
Quoted Sources in the Media: separate Agendas? Wouter van Atteveldt

6. Theory Methodology Reliability Results
Media Quotes as Agenda?
ˆ Do the quotes count as a separate agenda?
ˆ Media content = Media as institution
ˆ How does `quoted agenda' relate to traditional agendas?
ˆ Missing link in media logic / mediatisation debate
Quoted Sources in the Media: separate Agendas? Wouter van Atteveldt

7. Theory Methodology Reliability Results
Empirically investigating media quotes
ˆ Highly reciprocal relations
ˆ Many dierent actors
ˆ Large datasets needed
ˆ Can we extract quotes and sources automatically?
Quoted Sources in the Media: separate Agendas? Wouter van Atteveldt

8. Theory Methodology Reliability Results
Grammatical Analysis
ˆ Sentences parsed automatically (Alpino)
ˆ Yields dependency graph
ˆ Transformation rules applied to enrich graph with
semantic roles
ˆ Quote
Quoted Sources in the Media: separate Agendas? Wouter van Atteveldt

9. Theory Methodology Reliability Results
Quoted Sources in the Media: separate Agendas? Wouter van Atteveldt

10. Theory Methodology Reliability Results
Transformation rules
INSERT {?x :quoteobj ?y}
WHERE {?x :lexclass zeg .
?y :rel_body / :rel_vc ?x}
Quoted Sources in the Media: separate Agendas? Wouter van Atteveldt

11. Theory Methodology Reliability Results
Transformation rules
INSERT {?x :quoteobj ?y}
WHERE {?x :lexclass zeg;
:rel_tag ?y .
?y ?z [ :lemma '']
FILTER NOT EXISTS {?z :quoteobj ?y}
}
Quoted Sources in the Media: separate Agendas? Wouter van Atteveldt

12. Theory Methodology Reliability Results
Quoted Sources in the Media: separate Agendas? Wouter van Atteveldt

13. Theory Methodology Reliability Results
Quoted Sources in the Media: separate Agendas? Wouter van Atteveldt

14. Theory Methodology Reliability Results
Quoted Sources in the Media: separate Agendas? Wouter van Atteveldt

15. Theory Methodology Reliability Results
Reliability
ˆ 200 random sentences with a quote detected
ˆ 200 random sentences witouth a quote
ˆ Manually coded random sample
Quoted Sources in the Media: separate Agendas? Wouter van Atteveldt

16. Theory Methodology Reliability Results
Reliability
Metric Source Quote
Prec. 0.90 0.79
Recall 0.83 0.77
F1 0.86 0.78
ˆ Ignoring:
ˆ Whole-sentence quotes
ˆ Anaphora resolution
Quoted Sources in the Media: separate Agendas? Wouter van Atteveldt

17. Theory Methodology Reliability Results
Results
ˆ Quotes can be extracted automatically
ˆ Much work needed to understand role of media as
institiution, actor, and platform
ˆ Quote analsis can shed light on agenda setting,
mediatisation debates
ˆ Some preliminary substantive results
ˆ VAR analysis of quotes on crisis
ˆ of government, parliament others
ˆ Signicant eect of government → parliament
ˆ No other eects
Quoted Sources in the Media: separate Agendas? Wouter van Atteveldt