Representations of Disability in a Large Norwegian News Corpus: A Topic Modeling Approach Informed by Critical Discourse Studies

Håvard Tvedt Bakka; Jan Grue

doi:10.16993/sjdr.1248

Representations of Disability in a Large Norwegian News Corpus: A Topic Modeling Approach Informed by Critical Discourse Studies

Scandinavian Journal of Disability Research

Volume 27 (2025): Issue 1

By: Håvard Tvedt Bakka and Jan Grue

Open Access

|May 2025

Abstract

In this study, we examine how people with disabilities are framed in news media discourse in the early 21st century. Using Norway as a case study, we compiled articles from nationwide newspapers from the years 2005 and 2019 into two corpora comprising 149 million words. We utilized a mixed-method approach that situated Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) topic models in a critical discourse studies (CDS) framework. In both years, topics related to health, crime, paralympic sports, and politics/rights/accessibility predominated. However, we also found a marked shift over the time period toward a ‘personalization’ frame, where news media discourse foregrounded individual disabled people. Our study suggests that an emphasis on personalized stories rather than structural issues risk reproducing the ‘heroic/tragic’ binary of stereotypical representation.

References

Bengtsson, Henrik. 2024. HenrikBengtsson/future [R]. https://github.com/HenrikBengtsson/future
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Blei, David, Andrew Ng, and Michael Jordan. 2003. “Latent Dirichlet Allocation.” Journal of Machine Learning Research 3(2003): 993–1022. DOI: 10.1162/jmlr.2003.3.4-5.993
Open DOI Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Bogart, Kathleen R., Adena Rottenstein, Emily M. Lund, and Lauren Bouchard. 2017. “Who Self-Identifies as Disabled? An Examination of Impairment and Contextual Predictors.” Rehabilitation Psychology 62(4): 553. DOI: 10.1037/rep0000132
Open DOI Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Busselle, Rick, and Helena Bilandzic. 2009. “Measuring Narrative Engagement.” Media Psychology 12(4): 321–347. DOI: 10.1080/15213260903287259
Open DOI Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Clare, Eli. 2001. “Stolen Bodies, Reclaimed Bodies: Disability and Queerness.” Public Culture 13(3): 359–365. DOI: 10.1215/08992363-13-3-359
Open DOI Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Corker, Mairian, and Sally French. 1999. Disability Discourse. Open University Press.
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Davis, Lennard. 2016. The Disability Studies Reader (Fifth Edition). Routledge. DOI: 10.4324/9781315680668
Open DOI Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Degener, Theresia. 2016a. “A Human Rights Model of Disability.” Routledge Handbook of Disability Law and Human Rights. Routledge, 31–49.
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Degener, Theresia. 2016b. “Disability in a Human Rights Context.” Laws 5(3): 35. DOI: 10.3390/laws5030035
Open DOI Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Eide, Elisabeth, Jan Grue, and Tonje Vold. 2014. Ut av medieskyggen. Representasjon av funksjonshemmede i media. Fagbokforlaget.
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Ellis, Katie, and Gerard Goggin. 2017. Disability and the Media. Bloomsbury Publishing. DOI: 10.4324/9781315475059-38
Open DOI Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Fairclough, Norman. 1992. Discourse and Social Change. Polity Press.
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Fairclough, Norman. 2015. Language and Power (3rd edition). Routledge.
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Gan, Jingxian, and Yong Qi. 2021. “Selection of the Optimal Number of Topics for LDA Topic Model—Taking Patent Policy Analysis as an Example.” Entropy 23(10): 1301. DOI: 10.3390/e23101301
Open DOI Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Goffman, Erving. 1963. Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity. Penguin.
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Google. 2024. Google Books Ngram Viewer [Dataset]. https://books.google.com/ngrams/
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Grimmer, Justin, Margaret E. Roberts, and Brandon M. Stewart. 2022. Text as Data: A New Framework for Machine Learning and the Social Sciences. Princeton University Press.
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Grue, Jan. 2016a. “The Problem with Inspiration Porn: A Tentative Definition and a Provisional Critique.” Disability and Society 31(6). DOI: 10.1080/09687599.2016.1205473
Open DOI Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Grue, Jan. 2016b. “The Social Meaning of Disability: A Reflection on Categorisation, Stigma and Identity.” Sociology of Health and Illness 38(6). DOI: 10.1111/1467-9566.12417
Open DOI Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Grue, Jan, and Silje Alnes. 2023. “Disability and Employability: A Case Study of the Rhetoric of Neoliberal Inclusionism.” In Disability in Dialogue, 46–66. John Benjmamins Publishing Company. DOI: 10.1075/ds.33.03gru
Open DOI Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Gugushvili, Alexi, and Jan Grue. 2025. “The Effect of Legislation on Perceived Disability Discrimination: A Heterogeneous Difference-in-Differences Analyses.” Social Forces. DOI: 10.1093/sf/soaf024
Open DOI Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Gugushvili, Alexi, Jan Grue, Therese Dokken, and Jon Erik Finnvold. 2023. “No Evidence that Social-Democratic Welfare States Equalize Valued Outcomes for Individuals with Disabilities.” Social Science & Medicine 339. DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2023.116361
Open DOI Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Haller, Beth, and Jeff Preston. 2016. “Confirming Normalcy: ‘Inspiration Porn’ and the Construction of the Disabled Subject?” In Disability and Social Media: Global Perspectives, 41–56. Routledge. DOI: 10.4324/9781315577357
Open DOI Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Kohrman, Matthew. 2005. Bodies of Difference: Experiences of Disability and Institutional Advocacy in the Making of Modern China. University of California Press. DOI: 10.1525/9780520935563
Open DOI Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Longmore, Paul K. 1987. “Uncovering the Hidden History of People with Disabilities.” Reviews in American History 15(3): 355–364. DOI: 10.2307/2702029
Open DOI Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Mitchell, David T., and Sharon L. Snyder. 2015. The Biopolitics of Disability. University of Michigan Press.
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Nasjonalbiblioteket. 2024. Nasjonalbiblioteket N-gram [Dataset]. https://www.nb.no/ngram/
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Norden, Martin F. 1994. The cinema of Isolation: A History of Disability in the Movies. Rutgers University Press.
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Norwegian Newspaper Corpus. 2020, April 20. Språkbanken. https://www.nb.no/sprakbanken/en/resource-catalogue/oai-nb-no-sbr-4/
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
OECD. 2022. Sickness and Disability. https://www.oecd.org/employment/sickness-and-disability.htm
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Oliver, Mike, and Colin Barnes. 2012. The New Politics of Disablement. Palgrave Macmillan. DOI: 10.1007/978-0-230-39244-1
Open DOI Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Pelka, Fred. 2012. What We Have Done: An Oral History of the Disability Rights Movement. University of Massachusetts Press.
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Petryna, Adriana. 2002. “Life Exposed: Biological Citizens after Chernobyl.” In Information Series. Princeton University Press.
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Porter, Kyle. 2018. “Analyzing the DarkNetMarkets Subreddit for Evolutions of Tools and Trends Using LDA Topic Modeling.” Digital Investigation 26: 87–97. DOI: 10.1016/j.diin.2018.04.023
Open DOI Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Roberts, Margaret E., Brandon M. Stewart, and Dustin Tingley. 2019. “stm: An R Package for Structural Topic Models.” Journal of Statistical Software 91: 1–40. DOI: 10.18637/jss.v091.i02
Open DOI Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Schofield, Alexandra, Måns Magnusson, and David Mimno. 2017. “Pulling Out the Stops: Rethinking Stopword Removal for Topic Models.” In Proceedings of the 15th Conference of the European Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics: Volume 2, Short Papers, edited by M. Lapata, P. Blunsom and A. Koller, 432–436. Association for Computational Linguistics. DOI: 10.18653/v1/E17-2069
Open DOI Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Schofield, Alexandra, and David Mimno. 2016. “Comparing Apples to Apple: The Effects of Stemmers on Topic Models.” Transactions of the Association for Computational Linguistics 4: 287–300. DOI: 10.1162/tacl_a_00099
Open DOI Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Silge, Julia. 2018, September 8. Training, evaluating, and interpreting topic models. https://juliasilge.com/blog/evaluating-stm/
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Snyder, Sharon L., and David T. Mitchell. 2000. “Narrative Prosthesis: Disability and the Dependencies of Discourse.” In Corporealities. University of Michigan Press.
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Stiker, Henri-Jacques. 1999. “A History of Disability.” In Corporealities. University of Michigan Press.
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Thomas, Carol. 2004. “How is Disability Understood? An Examination of Sociological Approaches.” Disability & Society 19(6): 569–583. DOI: 10.1080/0968759042000252506
Open DOI Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Titchkosky, Tanya. 2007. Reading and Writing Disability Differently: The Textured Life of Embodiment. University of Toronto Press. DOI: 10.3138/9781442683839
Open DOI Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Törnberg, Anton, and Petter Törnberg. 2016. “Muslims in Social Media Discourse: Combining Topic Modeling and Critical Discourse Analysis.” Discourse, Context & Media 13: 132–142. DOI: 10.1016/j.dcm.2016.04.003
Open DOI Search in Google Scholar Back to article
United Nations. 2007. Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and Optional Protocol. United Nations.
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
van Dijk, Teun A. 2008. Discourse and Power. Palgrave Macmillan. DOI: 10.1007/978-1-137-07299-3
Open DOI Search in Google Scholar Back to article
van Dijk, Teun. A. 2009. Society and Discourse: How Social Contexts Influence Text and Talk. Cambridge University Press. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511575273
Open DOI Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Varul, Matthias Z. 2010. “Talcott Parsons, the Sick Role and Chronic Illness.” Body & Society 16(2): 72–94. DOI: 10.1177/1357034X10364766
Open DOI Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Vaughan, Davis. 2024. DavisVaughan/furrr [R]. https://github.com/DavisVaughan/furrr (Original work published 2018).
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Wang, Xuefeng, Xuemei Yang, Xinglu Wang, Mengge Xia, and Jiayun Wang. 2020. “Evaluating the Competitiveness of Enterprise’s Technology Based on LDA Topic Model.” Technology Analysis & Strategic Management 32(2): 208–222. DOI: 10.1080/09537325.2019.1648789
Open DOI Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Weiss, Gilbert, and Ruth Wodak. 2003. Critical Discourse Analysis: Theory and Interdisciplinarity. Palgrave Macmillan. DOI: 10.1057/9780230288423
Open DOI Search in Google Scholar Back to article
WHO. 2011. World Health Organization: World Report on Disability. https://www.who.int/teams/noncommunicable-diseases/sensory-functions-disability-and-rehabilitation/world-report-on-disability
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Wodak, Ruth, and Paul Chilton. 2005. A New Agenda in (Critical) Discourse Analysis: Theory, Methodology and Interdisciplinarity. J. Benjamins. DOI: 10.1075/dapsac.13
Open DOI Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Wodak, Ruth, and Michael Meyer. 2009. Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis (2nd edition). Sage.
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Worrell, Tracy R. 2018. Disability in the Media: Examining Stigma and Identity. Lexington Books.
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Zola, Irving Kenneth. 1977. “Healthism and Disabling Medicalization.” In Disabling Professions, edited by Ivan Illich, 41–67. Marion Boyars.
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Zola, Irving Kenneth. 1993. “Self, Identity and the Naming Question: Reflections on the Language of Disability.” Social Science & Medicine 36(2): 167–173. DOI: 10.1016/0277-9536(93)90208-L
Open DOI Search in Google Scholar Back to article

Articles in this issue

DOI: https://doi.org/10.16993/sjdr.1248 | Journal eISSN: 1745-3011

Journal RSS Feed

Language: English

Page range: 240 - 253

Submitted on: Jan 3, 2025

Accepted on: Apr 22, 2025

Published on: May 14, 2025

Published by: Stockholm University Press

In partnership with: Paradigm Publishing Services

Keywords:

Topic Modeling,

Critical Discourse Studies,

Norway,

Representation,

Latent Dirchlet Allocation

© 2025 Håvard Tvedt Bakka, Jan Grue, published by Stockholm University Press
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Volume 27 (2025): Issue 1