Media has been an influential factor in our society for centuries, which has grown exponentially since the creation and expansion of the internet. Even newspapers have been changed to be consumable electronically, which can explain how discourses shared through the news can spread and be interpreted so rapidly. Historically, newspapers have been utilized to represent and shape discourse, often without readers being aware (Harding 2016). Before looking at political influence, one must understand the ways news media is utilized to grab a reader’s attention. For example, Fateh (2013) argues that a student news organization in Iran successfully presented the topic of homelessness by utilizing imagery and strong language on their front cover, making the topic unavoidable. Their choice to use the front cover of their publications to blatantly show the ongoing issue of homelessness in their country allows for the discourse surrounding the issue to grow and change, as they were the only media utilizing imagery in this way at the time. Using imagery and wording allows publishers to draw their readers in, in order to share their story’s perspective. Journalists have the ability to construct the audience’s social reality by their choice of reporting and framing (Moorhead 2022). Understanding the power that the news media has over society is essential to properly comprehend today’s discourse surrounding homelessness. This can also be seen in a study of homelessness in Brazil, in which one newspaper was found to be dehumanizing and objectifying the homeless within their country (de Melo Resende 2020). While all of these choices to frame homelessness a certain way may seem cynical, some researchers argue that journalists are simply trying to sell their stories; negative stories elicit more frequent responses (Soroka and McAdams 2015). Aside from the influence of news media, it is also important to consider bias that may be written into articles, especially with the influence of politics.
In order to understand how bias takes shape within online media, it is important to analyze the language used by the writers. Vocabulary and language reflects the most bias within news outlets, which readers are not always aware of (Elejalde, Ferres and Herder 2018). Aside from what is actually written, it is also important to be aware of what is left out. Researchers found that if an individual relies solely on media reports for information, they often miss a lot of pertinent information, since journalists, publishers, and editors can all choose what they put in and leave out (Dietrich and Eck 2020). The same study also found that bias is introduced into machine-coded datasets through the use of media and non-media sources, and that certain filter biases can decide what is shown to an individual and what is not (Bozdag 2013; Dietrich and Eck 2020). This explains how despite any efforts to avoid bias in any sense, it is essentially unavoidable due to the influence of social bias that machines eventually learn. While there are biased algorithms made to suggest media to online readers, there is also the issue of selective exposure. If an individual is already aware of the idea of bias in media, they may choose to be selective in what they read. However, selective exposure is related to lower levels of perceived bias in those sources, but associated with higher levels of perceived bias in general media (Barnidge et al. 2020). In other words, despite attempts to make conscious efforts in choosing media, readers still are faced with bias in their beliefs and readings. Politics and social media also allow for fake news to spread, which can provide misinformation regarding a topic, or a perceived level of misinformation that makes the source seem unreliable to those of opposing political beliefs (van der Linden, Panagopoulos, and Roozenbeek 2020). In order to connect these ideas, I analyzed language from various news media outlets to gain an understanding of how they view and frame homelessness today.