Atheism in US and UK Newspapers

May 1, 2021

We analyze coverage of atheism and atheists in American and British newspapers using computational text analysis techniques, including sentiment analysis and topic modeling. In particular, we show that greater negativity is associated with atheism as a concept than with atheists as individuals. Our findings add a new dimension to scholarship on differences between individual-targeted and group-targeted tolerance in public attitudes, establishing for the first time that media coverage mirrors such differences.