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Heads up: it’s 2016. We wanted to remind you because sometimes it can feel awfully like it’s 1816.
Case in point: research just out about the media.
A new study has examined the 13,000 news articles published in Australian media between August 2015 and July 2016, according to The Conversation. (The study looked at articles in The Age, The Australian, The Adelaide Advertiser, The Canberra Times, The Courier Mail, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Daily Telegraph, The West Australian, The Northern Territory News and The Hobart Mercury.)
It found that the male pronoun “he” was the 16th most common word, overall.
Depressingly, the word “she” was much less common – just 66th on the list of common words. Overall, the word “he” was used 3.4 times more often than the word “she”, suggesting that we women’s voices are not being heard (or at least published) as much as those of men.
And it gets worse.
The research, by Lancaster University’s Corpus Approaches to Social Science Research Centre, also looked at the most common names used in the media. The number one most common name quoted in Australian media was John…. followed by David, Peter, and Michael.
In fact, the 20 most common names found in the 13,000 articles were all men. The name “Julie” was the most commonly mentioned woman’s name – and it came 21st.
Which isn’t depression at all. (Sob.)
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