A Longitudinal and Contextual Analysis of Media Representation of Business Ethics

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present an analysis of media representation of business ethics within 62 international newspapers to explore the longitudinal and contextual evolution of business ethics and associated terminology. Levels of coverage and contextual analysis of the content of the articles are used as surrogate measures of the penetration of business ethics concepts into society. Design/methodology/approach – This paper uses a text mining application based on two samples of data: analysis of 62 national newspapers in 21 countries from 1990 to 2008; analysis of the content of two samples of articles containing the term business ethics (comprised of 100 newspaper articles spread over an 18-year period from a sample of US and UK newspapers). Findings – The paper demonstrates increased coverage of sustainability topics within the media over the last 18 years associated with events such as the Rio Summit. Whilst some peaks are associated with business ethics scandals, the overall coverage remains steady. There is little apparent use in the media of concepts such as corporate citizenship. The academic community and company ethical codes appear to adopt a wider definition of business ethics more akin to that associated with sustainability, in comparison with the focus taken by the media, especially in the USA. Coverage demonstrates clear regional bias and contextual analysis of the articles in the UK and USA also shows interesting parallels and divergences in the media representation of business ethics. Originality/value – A promising avenue to explore how the evolution of sustainability issues including business ethics can be tracked within a societal context.

The role of the media in a bubble

We examine the role of the news media during the British Railway Mania, arguably one of the largest financial bubbles in history. Our analysis suggests that the press responded to changes in the stock market, and its reporting of recent events may have influenced asset prices. However, we find no evidence that the sentiment of the media, or the attention which it gave to particular stocks, had any influence on exacerbating or ending the Mania. The main contribution of the media was to provide factual information which investors could use to inform their decisions. © 2012 Elsevier Inc.

Numerical analysis of impact events in a centrifugal impact pin mill

Milling is an important operation in many industries, such as mining and pharmaceutical. Although the comminution process during milling has been extensively studied, the material fragmentation mechanisms in a mill are still not well understood partly because of the lack of an understanding on the local stressing and dynamic information under operational conditions in mills. This paper presents a DEM simulation of particle dynamics and impact events in a centrifugal impact pin mill. The main focus is the statistical characteristics of the dominant stressing modes during the milling process. The frequency, velocity and force of the different impact events between particles and mill components, or between particles, are analysed. © 2013 AIP Publishing LLC.

Improved lexicon-based sentiment analysis for social media analytics

Social media channels, such as Facebook or Twitter, allow for people to express their views and opinions about any public topics. Public sentiment related to future events, such as demonstrations or parades, indicate public attitude and therefore may be applied while trying to estimate the level of disruption and disorder during such events. Consequently, sentiment analysis of social media content may be of interest for different organisations, especially in security and law enforcement sectors. This paper presents a new lexicon-based sentiment analysis algorithm that has been designed with the main focus on real time Twitter content analysis. The algorithm consists of two key components, namely sentiment normalisation and evidence-based combination function, which have been used in order to estimate the intensity of the sentiment rather than positive/negative label and to support the mixed sentiment classification process. Finally, we illustrate a case study examining the relation between negative sentiment of twitter posts related to English Defence League and the level of disorder during the organisation’s related events.

The influence that politicians, community leaders and the media have on confidence in the police in Northern Ireland

n January 2014, the Northern Ireland Policing Board (NIPB) commissioned the University of Ulster to conduct research into public confidence in policing to help inform the work of the Board and its oversight of police service delivery. More specifically, the research team were tasked with exploring ‘the influence that politicians, community leaders and the media have on public confidence in policing in Northern Ireland’. To date, the subject of ‘confidence in policing’ within a Northern Ireland context has been relatively under researched, both in academic and policy terms. Thus, the present research is the first empirical research to be produced in Northern Ireland which considers the issue of confidence in policing from the perspective of community leaders, politicians and the media – including the key influences and dynamics which underpin police confidence at a community level.

The report begins with a comprehensive review of academic literature, policy documents and contemporary events related to confidence in policing. The research then provides an overview of the methodology used to undertake the research, with the remainder of the report comprised of the findings from the discussions with representatives from the media, political parties and the community and voluntary sector who participated. The report concludes with an overview of the central findings along with a series of recommendations.