Attitudes Toward Homosexuality : A Quantitative Study of Evaluative Adjectives in Digital Newspaper Articles

In this study, societal attitudes toward sexual minorities are investigated through analyzing journalists’ use of evaluative adjectives in newspaper articles regarding famous homosexual couples compared to famous heterosexual couples. In this study, differences in attitudes between male and female journalists are also investigated. The aim is to investigate evaluative adjectives and how often they occur in order to find patterns that could indicate societal attitudes toward sexual minorities. The method used for this research was a close reading of the articles chosen and determining whether the evaluative adjectives were positive or negative in each specific context. The results were then normalized for the purpose of comparison between articles. The results of the study indicate that female journalists use more adjectives in general compared to male journalists. The results also indicate that journalists use more positive adjectives when writing about famous heterosexual couples, compared to famous homosexual couples. Also, male homosexual couples are portrayed more positively than female homosexual couples.