Computer-aided Content Analysis Research Articles

Intermediary Perception of Narcissistic and Humble CEO Traits

AbstractThe media plays a key role in bridging information asymmetries between parties such as CEOs and third-party observers. However, current research suggest that the media is not just a carrier of information but can actively shape the impression of the audience. An open question remains, hence, whether media reporting is affected by certain CEO traits such as narcissism or humility, two key constructs in the literature. For instance, narcissistic CEOs’ belief in their own superiority may spillover to the media, thereby distorting the function as information carrier and favoring directly or indirectly certain CEO traits. Therefore, by drawing on the differential effects that narcissism and humility can have on the impression of an audience, the study employs a computer-aided content analysis of factual narcissistic and humble CEOs, identified via a video metric approach, and their evaluation through three key journalistic intermediaries (New York Times, Washington Post, and Financial Times). The quantitative data suggest that actual CEO narcissism is related negatively to external performance evaluations of CEOs in subsequent years. In addition, the data suggest that narcissism as well as humility scores increase the emotional tone employed depending on the journalistic orientation of the media outlet. Humble CEOs receive on average more media attention than narcissistic CEOs yet this result is insignificant, providing limited evidence for a systematic (i.e., number of articles) bias across and within journalistic outlets towards either narcissistic or humble CEOs. This suggests that widely considered “quality” media outlets resist to portray CEO traits in an overly positive/negative light.

Mitsprache oder Mitbestimmung?

This article addresses the questions of the foreign policy competencies of the Federal Assembly and how it made use of them in the negotiation of the institutional framework agreement with the EU. After a historical classification and a discussion of the relevant legal basis, the author undertakes a computer-aided content analysis of the parliamentary debates on the agreement in the Official Bulletin of the Federal Assembly. The results are then analyzed with recourse to previous insights. In doing so, he shows that there is an interplay between the expansion of parliamentary powers and diminishing opportunities for shaping them and that the Federal Assembly strives to fulfill its partial responsibility for foreign policy. In his conclusions, the author states that the increasing internationalization challenges the cooperation between the Federal Assembly and the Federal Council and that the rights to information and consultation play a key role in this debate.

Digital Pseudo-Identification in the Post-Truth Era: Exploring Logical Fallacies in the Mainstream Media Coverage of the COVID-19 Vaccines

Because of China’s new wave of COVID-19 in May 2023, the issue of tackling COVID-19 misinformation remains relevant. Based on Lippmann’s theory of public opinion and agenda setting theory, this article aims to examine the concept of digital pseudo-identification as a type of logical fallacy that refers to supporting journalists’ opinions with ‘false’ arguments that lack factual evidence. To do so, the study applied computer-aided content analysis, as well as rhetorical and critical discourse analyses, to examine 400 articles related to four COVID-19 vaccines (‘Oxford-AstraZeneca’, ‘Pfizer-BioNTech’, ‘Sputnik V’ and ‘Sinovac’) published on the online versions of two major British and American mainstream media sources between August 2020 and December 2021. The results of the study show that journalists of the ‘The New York Times’ and ‘The Guardian’ used similar logical fallacies, including the opinions of pseudo-authorities and references to pseudo-statistics and stereotypes, which contributed to creating distorted representations of the COVID-19 vaccines and propagating online misinformation. The study also reveals political bias in both of the mainstream media sources, with relatively more positive coverage of the European vaccines than non-European vaccines. The findings have important implications for journalism and open up perspectives for further research on the concept of digital pseudo-identification in the humanities and social sciences.

Making fun of power

The paper deals with Ukrainian President’s Zelensky image in political cartoons and memes. They are forms of political humour and can be examined in an interdisciplinary manner. The first part describes theoretical aspects, functions, and elements of political humour and political satire, main features and types of cartoons and memes. In the second part, the corpus of 198 political cartoons and 1121 memes from March 2019 to December 2020 is analysed with computer-aided content analysis and multimodal discourse analysis. The analysis units are social context, formed by the domestic and foreign political events in Ukraine in the research period, joke techniques and communication levels in the cartoons and memes. These units are examined chronologically and thematically. The research is based on the hypothesis about the interdependence of social context and subversive/supportive humour in the construction of Zelensky’s image.

Linguistic cues of chief executive officer personality and its effect on performance

Chief Executive Officer (CEO) personality belongs to the most important constructs for business practice and research, but its measurement remains a major obstacle. Therefore, I propose a language‐based approach of freely available, large‐scale corporate documents to study linguistic hints regarding CEOs' personality dimensions by applying a validated, closed‐based approach developed to a sample of Fortune 500 companies. I compare the results to validated, machine learning‐trained open‐based results obtained from conference calls of 3000 CEOs of S&P 1500 companies. In order to provide a basis for comparison, I supplement these linguistic personality profiles with a sample of convicted criminal CEOs that provide an archetype of extreme linguistic cases. Finally, after controlling for commonly used content analytical constructs (e.g., entrepreneurial orientation, market orientation) to capture CEOs' cognitive state, I link these cross‐sectional linguistic profiles to longitudinal firm‐level performance data. The analysis indicates that the linguistic manifestations of CEO personality explain a great share of firm performance in conjunction with observable individual, industry, and firm‐level data. While there appear to be complementarities between open‐based and closed‐based language approaches, the analysis also indicates that the open‐based linguistic trait of neuroticism is negatively related to various measures of firm performance. In particular, these measures appear to be more robust against genre effects and language that are unique among CEOs (self‐selection effects). Therefore, the approach sheds light on the important role of validation procedures in the realm of computer‐aided content analysis (CATA) and the conducive and detrimental effects of CEO personality cues on firm performance. The paper discusses practical implications for stakeholders and shareholders wishing to infer personality cues of key decision‐makers from large‐scale corporate documents and theoretical implications for the advancement of the upper echelon research.

Red sport, blue sport: political ideology and the popularity of sports in the United States

ABSTRACT This exploratory study examines correlations between political ideology and the popularity of 53 sports in the United States using geographical units of analysis. Regional interest in sports was measured using Google Trends search data from Nielsen’s 207 designated media market areas. Voting data from the 2020 Presidential Election (percent Trump vote) was used to characterise each area’s political ideology. A measure of the sports’ cultural dominance was developed through a large-scale, computer-aided content analysis of sports news. Areas with high levels of Trump support tended to favour dominant sports like football, basketball and baseball and showed less interest in fringe sports like ultimate Frisbee, rock climbing and badminton. These correlations generally held for large, mid-sized and small areas. There were, however, sports that contradicted this relationship. Focusing on outliers and inconsistent cases, the study concludes by suggesting next steps for establishing a robust link between political orientation and sport popularity.

Signaling innovativeness in crowdfunding entrepreneurial narratives: the moderating roles of entrepreneurial passion and social endorsement

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of the innovativeness-related language of crowdfunding pitches on funding outcomes under different boundary conditions specified by two context-relevant signals, entrepreneurial passion and social endorsement.Design/methodology/approachThis study develops six hypotheses about the focal impacts of innovativeness-related language (i.e. incremental and radical) and the moderating effects of entrepreneurial passion and social endorsement. The hypotheses are tested with a sample of 1,057 real projects collected from a typical platform with a computer-aided content analysis method.FindingsThis study finds that pitches containing more incremental innovativeness language can generate more funds and that those containing more radical innovativeness language can lead to less favorable funding outcomes. While incremental innovativeness language interacts with entrepreneurial passion language to positively affect funding outcomes, radical innovativeness language requires social endorsement to diminish its negative effect on funding outcomes.Research limitations/implicationsThis study demonstrates that the content of messages of entrepreneurial narratives does indeed drive funding success in the context of reward-based crowdfunding and confirms the relevance of the consumer perspective of reward-based crowdfunding by using a real dataset.Originality/valueThis work joins a number of entrepreneurial narrative studies investigating the impacts of the innovativeness-related language of pitches (issue-relevant content) and their interactions with informational signals (i.e. entrepreneurial passion and social endorsement) on funding outcomes in the context of reward-based crowdfunding.

Employing machine learning for capturing COVID-19 consumer sentiments from six countries: a methodological illustration

PurposeThis paper aims to illustrate the scope and challenges of using computer-aided content analysis in international marketing with the aim to capture consumer sentiments about COVID-19 from multi-lingual tweets.Design/methodology/approachThe study is based on some 35 million original COVID-19-related tweets. The study methodology illustrates the use of supervised machine learning and artificial neural network techniques to conduct extensive information extraction.FindingsThe authors identified more than two million tweets from six countries and categorized them into PESTEL (i.e. Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Environmental and Legal) dimensions. The extracted consumer sentiments and associated emotions show substantial differences across countries. Our analyses highlight opportunities and challenges inherent in using multi-lingual online sentiment analysis in international marketing. Based on these insights, several future research directions are proposed.Originality/valueFirst, the authors contribute to methodology development in international marketing by providing a “use-case” for computer-aided text mining in a multi-lingual context. Second, the authors add to the knowledge on differences in COVID-19-related consumer sentiments in different countries. Third, the authors provide avenues for future research on the analysis of unstructured multi-media posts.

Using computer-assisted content analysis to advance anal dysplasia natural history research.

Our study aim was to validate the use of computer-aided narrative content analysis in the extraction of standard diagnostic categories using an archived cytology database that included individually overread reference classification. A retrospective analysis of narrative anal cytology results collected on HIV-infected patients at the University of California, San Diego between January and December 2001. We used computer-assisted content analysis extraction methodology using Wordstat 8.0 (Provalis Research) that operated using a classification dictionary that we developed for the following diagnostic categories: NAMC, ASCUS, LSIL, HSIL. We compared its accuracy to a physician overread manually extracted method: that classified each report into the most severe diagnostic category referenced in the narrative report. Agreement between content analysis mapped diagnostic categories and the reference category was evaluated using kappa agreement. During 2001, 901 patients underwent 997 anal cytological examinations as routine screening. By reference diagnostic category: 54 (5.4%) were unsatisfactory, 460 (46.1%) were NAMC, 291 (29.2%) were ASCUS, 131 (13.1%) were LSIL, and 61 (6.1%) were HSIL. Computer-aided content analysis extracted a single diagnosis from each report in 963 (96.2%) cases and two diagnoses in 38 (3.8%) cases. The Kappa agreement was 0.96 (0.019 s.e.). There were 29 cases classified ASCUS by reference category but LSIL by adjudicated content analysis. A focused review indicated that the over reader assigned reference category was in error. Computer-aided narrative content analysis of anal cytology results yielded accurate and time-efficient classification into meaningful diagnostic categories that can be used to evaluate screening programs and modeling natural history.

“I have a dream” the vividness effect in international business communication

PurposeThe so-called vividness effect, painting a verbal picture to an audience and a key element of charismatic rhetoric, provides opportunities to make corporate communication more persuasive. The article seeks to provide evidence regarding: (1) the presence of the effect in written, international business communication and (2) whether vivid communication by top-level executives affects perception of their communication effectiveness.Design/methodology/approachThe article employs a qualitative, exploratory setting (focus groups) to examine the attitude of participants towards vivid communication of top-executives. The article also employs a computer-aided-content-analysis (CATA) in two of the most important stock indices (Deutsche Aktienindex and Dow Jones) from 2011 to 2015 to locate the presence of the rhetorical style in annual reports. Lastly, the article studies via a quasi-experimental approach whether this type of communication is perceived differently on the dimensions of communication effectiveness by Segars and Kohut (2001) using unique 485 responses from recruited US-citizens.FindingsThe article reveals empirically that companies make use of this type of communication across stock indices. The results of the conformational, quasi-experimental study (Study 3) suggests that vividness is perceived differently by an audience. Therefore, positive attributional effects are not univocally related to communication effectiveness but to the dimensions responsibility and customer commitment. The participants also attribute other desirable characteristics towards the speaker, thereby providing evidence for a partial positive effect of vividness on communication effectiveness.Originality/valueThe article employs an established measure of communication effectiveness and combines it with a key communication style from academia and industry. In addition, the article combines several methods to examine the construct (mixed-models).

How and when does top management team regulatory focus influence firm environmental misconduct?

Does top management team (TMT) regulatory focus impact firm environmental misconduct (FEM)? If so, how and when? Integrating upper echelons theory with regulatory focus theory, we examine how regulatory focus, as one of the most direct and important psychological characteristics of TMT, impacts FEM. Additionally, we explore how this relationship is moderated by external and internal environmental dynamism from the perspective of regulatory fit. Based on a sample of Chinese listed firms from 2011 to 2017, we conduct computer-aided content analysis to quantify TMT regulatory focus. Results show that TMTs high in promotion focus are more likely to engage in FEM, whereas TMTs high in prevention focus are less likely to misconduct. Moreover, external environmental dynamism strengthens (weakens) the positive (negative) relationship between promotion (prevention) focus and FEM. Internal environmental dynamism strengthens the positive relationship between TMT promotion focus and FEM. By examining this motivation-based psychological characteristic of TMT, the findings suggest the need to consider TMT regulatory focus when analyzing the antecedents of FEM.

Linguistic Cues of CEO Personality and its Effect on Performance

Chief Executive Officer (CEO) personality belongs to the most important constructs to understand strategic change and performance of companies but its measurement remains a major obstacle. Therefore, I study whether freely available, large-scale corporate documents reveal linguistic hints about CEOs' personality dimensions (Big-5) by applying a validated, closed based approach developed by Yarkoni (Journal of Research in Personality, 44, 2010) to a sample of FORTUNE 500 companies. I compare the results with validated, machine-learning trained open-based results from a specifically developed tool of 3000 CEOs of S&P 1500 firms obtained from conference calls (Harrison, Thurgood, Boivie, & Pfarrer, Strategic Management Journal, 2019). In order to provide a basis of comparison, I supplement these linguistic personality profiles with a sample of convicted criminal CEOs that provide an archetype of linguistic extreme cases. In addition, these linguistic profiles are complemented with a subsample of actual personality orientation, using the “positive” leadership attribute of CEO humility identified via a video metrics approach. Finally, after controlling for commonly used content analytical constructs (e.g., entrepreneurial orientation, market orientation) to capture CEOs' cognitive state, I link these cross-sectional linguistic profiles to longitudinal firm- level performance data. The analysis indicates that linguistic manifestations of CEO personality explains in conjunction with observable individual, industry and firm-level data a great share of firm performance. While there appear complementarities between open- based and closed based language approaches, the analysis also indicates that the open-based linguistic trait of neuroticism is negatively related to various measures of firm performance. In particular, these measures appear to be more robust against genre effects and language that is unique among CEOs (self-selection effects). The video 2 metric approach confirms the importance of certain linguistic personality markers, in particular neuroticism. Hence, the approach sheds light on the important role of validation procedures in the realm of computer-aided-content-analysis (CATA) as well as the conducive and detrimental effects of CEO personality cues on firm performance. The paper discusses practical implications for share and shareholders wishing to infer personality cues of key decision makers from large-scale corporate documents as well theoretical implications for the advancement of the upper- echelon research.

Corporate Social Responsibility and Impression Management: ARAMCO, 1932-74

In emerging economies, economic development and corporate social responsibility (CSR) are closely entwined. Multinational corporations have presented a positive image of their economic and social activities to investors and society in general as part of their justification for exploiting the natural resources of these countries. This study examines the Arabian American Oil Company’s (Aramco) CSR programs in employment, housing and healthcare during the period 1932 to 1974. These programs contributed to economic and social development but were also a mechanism used by the Company to maintain control of the Saudi oil assets. This research uses a computer-aided content analysis program, DICTION 7.0 to analyse the text in Aramco’s published annual reports during this period. The narrative in the reports was further analysed to assess the application of impression management techniques in the presentation of content.

Introducing a Dataset of Multi-Scale Geographies of ISIS Ideology from ISIS Sources

ABSTRACT This research proposes a methodology for extracting and analyzing geographical perspectives of terrorists and insurgents from online textual media. The information age has afforded organizations platforms that can be used to control their own media messages. Given that power, terrorist groups are able to create customized messages and define themselves in their own eyes on an international scale, often generating widespread sympathies and increased popularity. Within their online messaging, important information is provided that can potentially unveil geopolitical strategies. A mixed-method approach comprised of computer-aided content analysis, manual content analysis, and cartographic visualization is applied to ISIS’s Dabiq magazine as a case study to demonstrate the utility of this methodology. This research highlights the importance of considering the territoriality of terror groups and movements in geohistorical and present-day contexts.

Content analysis of resilience in forest fire science and management

To better understand the implications of the word resilience for western forest and fire management, this study explores its emerging use in a large body of policy and management documents produced between 1980 and 2016. We performed a computer-aided content analysis on 1487 scientific journal articles and 139 western U.S. Forest Service USFS planning documents to answer three questions: 1 how has the use-rate of the word resilience changed over time? 2 are changes in the use-rate of the word resilience correlated with shifts in terminology associated with environmental values, complex systems theory, or environmental change? and, (3) how does the use of the word resilience compare between science and management documents? To ground our interpretations in the context of the word’s technical use, we conducted 25 semi-structured interviews with scientists and managers working across the region. We found that the word resilience has been used in these documents since the 1980s but that its use sharply increased in both contexts between 2009 and 2011. The use-rate trends differ between science and management documents and do not appear to be associated complex systems terms but do seem associated with increases in the use of terms “climate change” and “adapt” and biocentric values. Finally, although there are differences in how resilience is used between science and management documents, the shared meaning of the term is a hopeful framing for adapting forests to changing conditions. Understanding the emerging use of the word resilience is of critical importance for land use policies that rely on it to signify a central concept, strategy or goal.

Do more experienced critics review differently?

PurposeCultural intermediaries define the standards many consumers use when evaluating cultural products. Yet, little research has focused on whether cultural intermediaries may systematically differ from each other with regard to the standards they emphasize. The purpose of this paper is to build on Bourdieu’s theory of cultural production to examine how the type of subfield reviewed and/or the cultural intermediary’s expertise (or “field-specific cultural capital”) affect the standards an intermediary uses.Design/methodology/approachThis paper employed a computer-aided content analysis of the full corpus of “Rolling Stone” music album reviews (1967-2014).FindingsCritics with lower field-specific cultural capital reflect the same logic as the subfield they are critiquing. Critics with higher field-specific cultural capital reflect the opposite logic.Research limitations/implicationsBourdieu was ambivalent about whether cultural intermediaries will reflect the logic of a subfield. Results show that the answer depends on the intermediary’s field-specific cultural capital. The results also reinforce previous findings that individuals with high field-specific cultural capital are more likely to break with the logic of a field.Practical implicationsNot all intermediaries are created equal. Producers and consumers who rely on cultural intermediaries should understand the intermediary’s critical analysis within the context of his/her experience.Originality/valueThis is one of the first studies to examine how a cultural intermediary’s field-specific cultural capital impacts his or her work. The findings are based on a large review sample and include reviewers’ analyses as they developed from having lower to higher field-specific cultural capital.

How to Analyse Non-Digital Historical Archives of Large Organizations — A Text-Mining Case Study

In modern case study-based research projects, the emerging technological possibilities of computer-aided content analysis are becoming increasingly prominent. Especially in the fields of sociology, history and management and organization sciences (MOS), the amount of available data is constantly increasing, which complicates or limits manual analysis. Emerging techniques open up possibilities for analysis, and they need to be explored. In a research project on a large, non-digital archive of a large utility company, we tried several approaches to digitally analyse the documents. Through this task, we identified the possibilities and limits of digital analysis. In this paper, we present these with a case study and give other researchers concrete solutions for use in comparable projects, including the digitization, interpretation and visualization of results.

Taiwan as ghost island? Ambivalent articulation of marginalized identities in computer-mediated discourses

This study examines the conflicting self-presentations when using the term ‘ghost island’ in Taiwan, a self-mocking way to belittle the homeland. While some view this term as a form of social critique, others consider it to be suggestive of a social malaise affecting contemporary Taiwanese. Drawing on online posts and comments from the most popular bulletin board system in Taiwan, this study combines topic modeling with a discourse-historical approach (DHA) to critical discourse analysis (CDA) to examine the constructions of ‘ghost island’ by Taiwanese netizens. A computer-aided content analysis was implemented using Structural Topic Modeling (STM) to identify discourse topics associated with netizens’ discourses on ghost island. Our findings suggest that the images of ‘us’ (the ordinary people) are presented as victims as against powerful ‘others’ (e.g. mainland China and local elites). Specifically, self-mockery was often invoked to project a loser image and marginalized status living on the island, whereas self-assertive narratives were invoked to affirm Taiwanese society’s democracy and freedom. The conflicting narratives – with a mixture of grudge, helplessness, pessimism, hope and pride – point to Taiwanese netizens’ ambivalent articulation of marginalized identities that operates to strengthen affective connectedness and virtual bonding.

Giving a Voice to Gambling Addiction: Analysis of Personal Narratives.

Gambling addiction (GA) is now considered a worldwide health issue. Although the topic of disorder awareness is a central issue in clinical practice, there are few studies examining this dimension in relation to GA. To bridge this gap, we conducted a qualitative study, administering interviews focused on awareness of GA and eliciting narratives of both the disorder and the whole life of participants. We adopted both qualitative and quantitative methods of research, using computer-aided content analysis. We administered to a sample of 15 treatment-seeking gamblers the Psychiatric Interview for Gambling Addiction and performed a qualitative analysis of the text using the T-Lab software. Five main thematic domains and four factors emerged, shedding light on specific aspects underlying the development of and recovery from GA. Specifically, the results suggested that dissociation processes, materialistic thinking and difficulties in social achievement underlie the subjective experience of GA. Moreover, closeness in interpersonal relationships and awareness of the disorder emerged as core features in the process of change. As a whole, the results highlight the specificities of disorder awareness in addicted gamblers. We discuss these results within the context of previous research and suggest clinical implications for the treatment of GA.

A Social Networks Approach to Understanding Vaccine Conversations on Twitter: Network Clusters, Sentiment, and Certainty in HPV Social Networks

ABSTRACTIndividuals increasingly rely on the Internet, and social media in particular, for health-related information. A recent survey reports that 80% of Internet users search for health information online. In the present study, we employ Twitter data to understand content characteristics and the patterns of content flow of the conversations about the HPV vaccine debate. Approaching the HPV vaccine conversations on Twitter as a social network, we can identify key self-formed subgroups—clusters of users who create “siloes” of interactions and information flow. Combining network analysis, computer-aided content analysis, and human-coded content analysis, we explored the communication dynamics within the groups in terms of group members’ affective and cognitive characteristics. Our findings show that positive emotion is positively correlated with cluster density, an indicator of strong ties and rapid information flow. In the case of negative emotion, we found that anger is a significant negative predictor for graph density. We also found a correlation between certainty and tentativeness; both at cluster as well as at tweet level, suggesting that clusters bring together people who are sure about the HPV vaccine and people who are exploring for answers.