Risk in The New York Times

The analysis starts with descriptive findings focusing on general lexical and grammatical trends. It progresses from surface-level features (number of risk words, word classes of risk words) towards more complex, linguistically nuanced patterns (e.g. risk as pre-head nominal modifier). Subsequently, we test hypotheses and try to find answers to the questions raised by social theories. In doing so, we conduct more specific corpus interrogations and use both statistical and concordance output to build a picture of discourse-semantics and to link risk language to key sociological claims. Among many other findings, we found clear evidence for the institutionalisation of risk practices, trends towards the negative meaning of risk, ongoing risk colonisation and decreasing agency and social inequalities in news coverage.