The articles in the database below represent the New York Times opinion section’s published work on the Israeli assault on Gaza between April 17 and May 8, 2024. Articles were collected using the following Google search term, repeated for each date in the established timeframe.
<aside> <img src="/icons/rename_lightgray.svg" alt="/icons/rename_lightgray.svg" width="40px" /> "student"OR"protest"OR"palestine"OR"israel"site:nytimes.com/2024///opinion
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This search term limited data collection to the NYT Opinion Section and to the specified dates. Once the raw data were collected, they were cleaned and filtered to remove irrelevant content, further limiting the data to only those articles which directly address Israel and Palestine. The result was 54 unique articles. Then each article was coded for its relationship to campus protests.
<aside> <img src="/icons/rename_lightgray.svg" alt="/icons/rename_lightgray.svg" width="40px" /> Protests check = main topic of the article is campus protests Protests unchecked = main topic of the article is something else
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This coding process returned 35 Protests articles. Finally, each of the Protests articles was individually coded for bias using the following classifications:
<aside> <img src="/icons/rename_lightgray.svg" alt="/icons/rename_lightgray.svg" width="40px" /> Pro = author seems to support campus protestors Sympathetic = author seems sympathetic to campus protestors Anti = author seems firmly opposed to campus protestors Both-Sides = the article’s rhetorical strategy attempts to convey a balanced set of two or more perspectives, or a neutral perspective Letter to the Editor = a series of letters to the editor, usually skewing towards the Anti or Both-Sides perspectives
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This second coding process returned the following distribution:
<aside> <img src="/icons/rename_lightgray.svg" alt="/icons/rename_lightgray.svg" width="40px" /> 1 Pro articles 6 Sympathetic articles 14 Anti articles 10 Both-Sides articles 4 Letter to the Editor articles
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The criteria for coding these articles was not based on an objective or quantitative metric. Really, it was just based on my own analysis and rhetorical sensibilities. You can feel free to disagree if you want — that’s the reason I posted the data on the internet in the first place. Nit-pick away, perverts. ✌️
NYT Opinion Section on Gaza Protests, April 16 - May 8, 2024