To What Extent Does the Diversity of the Student Body Affect the Content Diversity of Student Newspapers? A Case Study of the LSE

by Shin Hye Wi^[1], Abubakr Karbhari^[2], Jason Chan^[3], Imogen Young^[4], London School of Economics

Abstract

Debates on diversity in higher education have been the focus of many studies. However, few have explored the diversity of expression in student media, especially in the UK context. A mixed method strategy was employed to study The Beaver, the newspaper published by students at the London School of Economics (LSE), from 1964 to 1999. November issues were chosen from every academic year for regression analysis and four semi-structured interviews were conducted. We found that greater student diversity on campus corresponds with some measures of content diversity of student newspapers. Factors such as broad discretion of the editors, structural difficulties for non-British students to attain editorship, lack of interest on the part of those who are underrepresented on the editorial board, and the availability of alternative media outlets complicate the relationship between the demography of the student population and the viewpoints expressed in student newspapers.

Keywords: Student newspapers, content diversity, population diversity, demography, access to opportunities, diversity in education

Introduction

Debates on diversity in the popular destinations of higher education like the UK and the US have been the focus of study by many academics (Sims, 2007; Bowman, 2011). However, few have explored the diversity of expression in student media, especially in the UK context. This is important due to its implications for public knowledge creation and the assimilation of different identity groups on campus.

We hypothesised that an increase in the diversity of the student population in terms of continent of origin, age, and gender would lead to an increase in the diversity of student newspapers in terms of geographical and topical coverage. We also hypothesised that there would be an increase in female authors and a decrease in the masculinity of sports coverage. The reasoning behind these hypotheses was that the UK experienced great social upheaval between the 1960s and 1990s which increased the number of students of different backgrounds, thereby raising the expectation that this would be reflected in media content. Globalisation and greater movement across borders also played a role in creating a diverse student body.

The LSE was used as the location for this pilot study and a mixed method strategy was adopted. Articles from the student newspaper (The Beaver) from November issues of each year between 1964 and 1999 were categorised using content analysis. This period was chosen for two reasons; earlier editions of The Beaver were closer to satire than news, while post-2000 population data has different categorisations which make it inconsistent with earlier data sets. Quantitative methods were then employed to find possible trends in the diversity of newspaper content and its correlation with the diversity of the student population. Semi-structured interviews conducted with four former editors of The Beaver provided valuable insights into the editorial decision-making process. Conclusions drawn from both strands of study were integrated to provide a broad understanding of the notion of diversity on campus and in student media.

We found that there was a statistically significant positive correlation between the overall population diversity and some measures of content diversity, such as the geographical coverage and gender of authors. However, independent variables were mostly not individually significant. Interviews with four former editors suggested various factors that demonstrate the complex nature of the relationship between population and content, which potentially explains results from our statistical analysis. This article fills the gap in the academic literature and produces several conclusions worthy of further investigation.

Literature review

There are numerous studies that explore the relationship between the content of newspapers and the communities they serve. Hindman et al. (1999) used qualitative analysis to determine that news editors in ethnically pluralist communities are more likely to cite stories about ethnic minorities as important news stories; furthermore, editors who include minorities as news sources are also more likely to deem it important to cover stories concerning that community; Jeffres et al. (2000) use a similar approach. Armstrong finds that 'female mentions and ethnic pluralism were strongly correlated' (Armstrong, 2002: 83) and newspapers with enterprise journalism as a goal were more likely to value producing content for women (Armstrong, 2006). Outside of the US, Haque found homogeneity in the news covered by Indian dailies across the country despite the cultural and linguistic differences (Haque, 1986).

Some studies choose to focus on the role of editors in deciding newspaper content with respect to their audience. Wu and Izard found that although a larger Asian American population leads to more stories about that group, the presence of Asian Americans on the staff has a more significant effect (Wu and Izard, 2008). Johnston and Flamiano reported that strategies were adopted to ensure reporters were more engaged with minority groups and the subsequent reporting avoided biased or stereotypical framing (Johnston and Flamiano, 2007). Pritchard and Berkowitz studied the coverage of crime stories in ten American newspapers and found that letters to the newspapers actually had a greater influence on the number of crime stories on the front pages than the number of editorials on the same topic (Pritchard and Berkowitz, 1991). McKenzie et al. (2011) add weight to the view that feedback from readers helps to shape the content of newspapers.

The literature on student newspapers is less common and studies approach the subject from different perspectives. Several publications (Bryks, 1989; Felder, 2000; Abrams and Goodman, 1988) look at the issue of censorship, in particular the case of Hazelwood v Kuhlmeier in the United States. This legal ruling concerned a student newspaper funded by the school and gave staff the right to censor content under certain circumstances, thereby overruling the First Amendment rights of the students; the case of Hosty v Carter extended this ruling to cover publications at university level (Finnigan Jr, 2006).

The influence of student-produced media is another subject of study for academics. Francesca Polleta suggests that the ambiguous framing of student demonstrations in the 1960s as 'spontaneous' created an engaging narrative that made their activities more attractive to others and helped mobilise students (Polletta, 1998). Wang analysed poor coverage of Chinese news in a student newspaper and concluded that 'such a low priority-ranking … can only lead student-readers to a limited and poor understanding of China' (Wang, 2001: 63).

Tasha Hayton analysed two student-produced newspapers, one from a privately funded university and the other from a public university, and found similar, stereotypical portrayals of ethnic minorities in both despite one being significantly more diverse than the other (Hayton, 2010). Hayton underlines the importance of further research into college newspapers because 'journalism students learn how to write and disseminate the news in college' and therefore student newspapers are an important pedagogical experience (Hayton, 2010: 59). In addition, Bressers and Bergen found that over 40% of students at a Midwestern state university read their campus paper daily and that only 4.5% read a national newspaper daily (Bressers and Bergen, 2002), thus making them a potentially powerful tool in shaping students' views.

Diversity within the population on a university campus is recognised as having multiple positive effects on students. Milem et al. present a synthesis of papers that demonstrate 'the educational benefits of diverse learning environments' (Milem et al., 2005: iv) such as broadening the range of views students experience and better preparing them for participating in society. They recommend several measures to help universities reap the benefits of diversity; these include providing opportunities for cross-cultural dialogues and creating spaces for minority groups to express their identity. A meta-analysis conducted by Bowman concentrated on how diversity at college impacted on the level of civic engagement by citizens in the US (Bowman, 2011) and found a positive impact. Smith and Schonfield found that 'having diversity in the population creates greater opportunities for individuals to be seen as individuals, thus breaking down stereotypes' (Smith and Schonfield, 2000: 21)

A British charity, the Runnymede Trust, published a study looking at the experiences of students in UK universities (Sims, 2007). It found that students chose their university because it had a strong reputation for its diverse student community but some felt segregation along ethnic or religious lines limited their opportunities to learn about other cultures. An administrator at the university felt that they were making progress towards greater inclusiveness but this was not being properly communicated to students.

Many of the papers cited above are focused on American media. While this is informative and instructive, it is difficult to generalise the results so as to be able to apply them other settings. Content analysis of British newspapers is relatively thin, with papers mostly looking at specific issues and themes rather than overall diversity. Examples include national identity amongst the devolved nations (Rosie et al., 2004), the framing of terrorism coverage (Papacharissi and Oliveira, 2008) and the portrayal of women in the run-up to the 2010 British General Election (Ross et al., 2013). A study by Eaves et al. analysed the portrayal of women in British newspapers and categorised them under various broad themes (Eaves et al., 2012).

This study aims to contribute to the literature pertaining to British print journalism and to occupy the relatively empty space where newspaper content, population diversity and student experience intersect by taking a holistic approach to content analysis and investigating trends in the LSE student population.

Methodology

In this study, our broad research agenda 'How does population diversity affect the content diversity of student newspaper?' is broken down to three narrower research questions (RQ), each leading to a separate hypothesis (H):

RQ1: Were there changes in the diversity of the content coverage of student newspapers?
RQ2: Is there a correlation between the demographic composition of the student body and the content of the student newspaper?
RQ3: Is the correlation or the lack thereof affected by the editorial process?

Rather than comparing across universities, LSE was chosen as the case study because of its diverse student population and long history of student-led publications. Samples of population and newspaper content data were collected across time to control for other factors that might affect the diversity of content coverage such as institutional size, institutional setting (urban/rural) and geographical location of the university. The period 1964-1999 was chosen for this pilot study for two reasons; earlier editions of The Beaver were closer to satire than news, while post-2000 population data has different categorisations which make it inconsistent with earlier data sets.

Our research design is based on the mixed methods paradigm, which rejects the notion that qualitative and quantitative research paradigms cannot and should not be mixed (Johnson and Onwuegbuzie, 2004). Rather than dogmatically force-fitting the RQs into a purely qualitative or quantitative paradigm, appropriate research methods were chosen accordingly to answer the RQs, allowing more complete research and providing greater generalisability and information otherwise unavailable to the researcher (ibid.).The quantitative methods used to address RQ1 and RQ2 yield a longitudinal review of trends in content diversity and explore whether any of the defined measures of content diversity are correlated with demographic changes on campus respectively. The qualitative interviews used to answer RQ3 enhance the findings of this statistical analysis by exploring potential causal factors that explain any correlation, or lack thereof, found through the quantitative study. The following describes how these methods were applied in the testing of our hypotheses:

H1: 'There were changes over time in the content diversity of student newspaper'

With the unit of analysis being the year of publication, only the November issues from each year were sampled to avoid seasonal variations in content diversity caused by annual festivals (e.g. Christmas) or university administrative concerns (beginning or end of term), where greater homogeneity of articles within an issue is expected. Where a November issue is missing, the February issue of the following calendar year is used as a replacement as both months are in the same academic year, meaning the same student demographics, and both months fall in the middle of a term. Two issues were analysed in the 1960s, when The Beaver was published fortnightly, and four issues were analysed when it became a weekly publication to ensure the entire month was always covered.

Figure 1: LSE Student Newspaper (The Beaver)

In order to operationalise the concept of content diversity, a number of direct and indirect measurements of content diversity were made:

Direct measurements of content diversity by content analysis

Quantitative analysis of print journalism was developed to meet the demands for empirical methods by which to judge standards and content (Krippendorff, 2004). Content analysis is used here to yield quantifiable data. Articles from the chosen issues of The Beaver were grouped according to descriptive categories, which had been decided in advance based on a coding pilot of randomly selected issues. Articles in the News, Opinion, and Features sections were classified according to their geographical and topical focuses. Articles in the Sports section were classified on the basis of the subject's gender. To ensure the classifications were consistent, a sample of articles from each of the two coders was tested for intercoder reliability; there was agreement in coding for over 70% of articles in the sample. The coding schedule and manual can be found in figure 2. The percentage of articles in each category is used as a proxy for the coverage of certain geography, topic, or gender that month.

Figure 2: Newspaper Content Coding Spreadsheet

Indirect measurements of content diversity

Data on more indirect measures of content diversity was also collected, such as the number of male and female authors as a proportion of all attributed articles, and the proportion of each section in comparison to the total number of articles. These indirect measurements pertain to source diversity (Voakes et al., 1996) and are based on the assumption that interests and concerns are partly driven by one's identity and will indirectly be reflected in the content of each article.

H2: 'There is a correlation between population diversity and content diversity.'

With the yearly data on content diversity collected, demographic data from the same period was obtained from the 'Statistics of Students' section of the LSE Calendar. Information on gender, continent of origin, types of degrees, and academic discipline was collected as these identity markers are believed to affect the opinions held by individuals. Tables of this information showing variation over time are shown in Appendix A. Data concerning religion and ethnicity was not available and thus could not be used. The demographic data is then tested quantitatively with the data based on different measures of content diversity to find correlations, where the demographic data is taken as the explanatory variable and the content diversity is taken as the dependent variable. Our null hypothesis is that there is no correlation between the content diversity and student population diversity over the years.

H3: 'Editorial decisions are a means through which population diversity affects content diversity'

Semi-structured interviews were conducted to capture information about the role of editorial decision making in the relationship between content and population diversity. Among the interviewees, three were editors from the same period in the 1990s, while one was from the 1970s. Broad thematic analysis (Bryman, 2012: 578-581) of commonalities and differences among the interviewees' accounts was used to understand the editorial process and how their conceptions of diversity influenced their editorial decisions.

Results and interpretations

Increase in content diversity

Data from our content analysis shows that there have been changes in the diversity of content coverage over the period, but the changes are not uniform. There is a noticeable increase in the diversity of geographical coverage despite some fluctuations, and female authorship almost doubled in the same period. However, there is no discernible pattern regarding topical coverage.

Population diversity and content diversity

	Dependent Variable	Number of Years Observed	p-value (Prob> F)	Adj. R-squared	Root MSE
(a)	Geographical Coverage	29	0.0056	0.5120	0.07316
(b)	Topical Coverage	29	0.1984	0.1661	0.13004
(c)	Female Authors	29	0.0281	0.3897	0.08604
(d)	Male Athlete Coverage	29	0.0728	0.2954	0.18199

Table 1: Overall Model Fit for each regression

Our quantitative analysis shows that there is an overall statistically significant positive correlation between the diversity of the student body on campus and some measures of the diversity of the content of student newspapers. However, our independent variables are not individually significant enough to explain this relationship further.

We broke down the regression analysis into four separate parts: geographical coverage, topical coverage, gender of authors, and coverage of male athletes. Student demographic variables for regressions were carefully selected to satisfy the rank condition. Independent variables used for each regression are 'number of departments', 'number of undergraduate degrees', '% male students', '% undergraduate students' and '% students from each continent'. Table 1 shows the summary output of overall model fit from each regression.

Geographical coverage

Using linear regression analysis for the percentage of articles with international coverage in The Beaver as a dependent variable, we found that the overall regression is statistically significant (p-value = 0.0056 and adj. R-squared = 0.5120). Therefore we conclude that the content diversity has a positive correlation with the student population diversity in terms of geographical coverage.

Our individual t-statistics show that the increasing number of students from North America (t-stat = 4.15) and Oceania (t-stat = 2.77) had a significant impact on the content diversity of the student newspaper over the years. However, we cannot assert that students from these continents drove the content diversity in student newspapers.

Topical coverage

In this regression, the percentage of articles with LSE-related coverage is used as a dependent variable, i.e. the lower the LSE-related coverage, the more diverse the year is in terms of content. It shows that this regression model is jointly insignificant (p-value = 0.1984 and adj. R-squared = 0.1661).Therefore, we conclude that the demographic diversity of the student body does not have a noticeable impact on diversity of student newspaper content in terms of topic coverage.

Gender of authors

Similarly, this regression uses the percentage of female authorship as a dependent variable for content diversity. The result shows that the regression is jointly significant (p-value = 0.0281 and 0.3897) but individually insignificant with reference to the individual t-statistics. Such insignificance for individual regressors may imply that each regressor is a necessary but not sufficient condition in explaining the relationship with the dependent variable; alternatively this may be due to random noise in the data.

Coverage of male athletes

A common perception among the editors interviewed was that sports coverage tends to focus disproportionately on males. Taking the percentage of male athletes coverage in the Sports section as a dependent variable, our result illustrates that this regression model is jointly insignificant (p-value = 0.0728 and adj. R-squared = 0.2954). As a side observation, we looked at the relationship between the percentage of sports articles about female athletes and the demographic trend of female population at LSE. We observed that there was a slight increase in the coverage of women in the Sports section while the female student population almost doubled during this time period.

Figure 3: % of Female Students and % of Female Sports Coverage in Sports Section (The Beaver)

From our regression analysis, we conclude that there is positive correlation between some measures of content diversity and overall population diversity over the years. However, our individual regressors most of the times are insignificant which may be due to random noise in the data and a small sample size. Also, it should be noted that positive correlation does not imply causation.

Discussion

The combination of quantitative analysis of demographic and newspaper content diversities and the semi-structured interviews with past editors offers a multi-faceted examination of the links between population diversity and content diversity. Despite conscious attempts on the part of the editors to cover topics with diverse origins, our content analysis shows that greater student diversity on campus does not always correspond to greater content diversity of student newspapers. Factors such as broad discretion of the editors, structural difficulties for non-British students to attain editorship, lack of interest on the part of those who are underrepresented on the editorial board, and the availability of alternative media outlets based on their own identity groups complicate the relationship between the demography of the student population and the viewpoints expressed in student newspaper.

Our findings corroborate the existing literature in highlighting the role of minority members of staff. Wu and Izard found that diversity in the staff room has a greater causal influence on increasing content diversity than diversity in the community and similar results were suggested by the experiences of the editors interviewed (Wu and Izard, 2008). Coverage aimed at the gay community while a gay student was on the editorial board is a good example of how members of a newsroom can help spotlight groups that may feel marginalised or ignored; at the same time, one interviewee highlighted the fact that despite women making up half of the student body (and editorial board), the male editors of the sports pages were more interested in their appearance rather than their achievements. There is a lesson for current and future editors of The Beaver in terms of being conscious of how the composition of the editorial board influences the content of the newspaper: it can help to shine a light on groups that feel marginalised but simply having a diverse staff does not automatically translate into content that reflects its audience.

The interviewees mentioned that they perceived a level of segregation within the student body, similar to that described by Sims (Sims, 2007) but with the limited amount of data gathered it is difficult to draw conclusions as to how this affected the diversification of content. One of the ways in which a less integrated student body might influence the newspaper content is through producing competing publications. Some studies look at the issue of competition, in particular the impact on the content of incumbent newspapers from new entrants. Lee found that traditional newspapers in Taiwan reduced their content diversity in response to new competitors and instead competed by becoming more specialised in their coverage (Lee, 2007); on the other hand, Maxwell McCombs found that competition made little difference to the diversity of content published in a Cleveland newspaper (McCombs, 1987). The interviewees were unable to remember specific publications that were distributed on campus during their time at the newspaper and whether these played a part in their editorial decisions. Further study is needed to establish to what extent both the editors of The Beaver and the student body are aware of alternative publications and their views on whether they complement or compete with the Students' Union's paper.

None of the editors highlighted an issue with censorship or other attempts by the university to influence content. This is unsurprising since universities have an obligation to ensure that students have a right to freedom of expression (subject to legal constraints) under the Education Act (No.2) 1986 (Universities UK, 2011: 44) but it would be interesting to investigate further the nature of the interactions between newspaper staff and the university's administration. Sims suggested that university administrators had to do more to create an inclusive culture on campus and communications should be part of this strategy (Sims, 2007: 10). Chiung Hwang Chen was hired to advise the students who ran a newspaper at an international school in Hawaii on the best way to publish a paper more representative of the community it served (Chen, 2007). She encouraged the newspaper to allow foreign students to publish their views in the paper on how they felt the publication represented them and to allow space for occasional guest articles on topics of specific interest to minority groups. She notes that, as with The Beaver, the editorship was dominated by domestic students and her efforts were criticised by members of the newsroom; one described her efforts as 'the blind are attempting to lead a staff with sight, and where that leads nobody knows' (Chen, 2007: 147). Universities arguably have a duty to foster tolerance and understanding between different groups on campus, both because it is intrinsically worthwhile and because it creates positive education spillovers, and there may be a role for faculty staff to work with editors in improving their coverage of a wide range of stories and interests.

Something that was beyond the scope of this paper was an assessment as to the degree to which globalisation could explain many of the changes to content diversity. A more open and interconnected world makes it easier to access new sources of information and the increasing importance of international events to domestic audiences mean that one would expect geographical coverage to increase to some extent anyway. Jihyang Choi studied the invasion of Iraq, and noted it affected the coverage of international news in US newspapers, with diversity decreasing in response (Choi, 2009); it would be interesting to assess whether the outward-facing nature of the LSE's research led to the opposite effect on its students.

Limitations and suggestions for further research

As a number of assumptions needed to be made in the choice of methodology, there are inevitably limitations to our pilot study. For an improved, full-scale study, more samples need to be collected for statistically more conclusive evidence and more refined methods in the categorisation of news articles by content analysis can be employed. The non-digital format of past editions made it impossible to utilise other methods of content analysis such as the size of articles, the writing styles and the use of imagery.

Using LSE as a case study presents a barrier to generalising our results since the composition of the LSE student body is vastly different to the national average. For instance, in 1999-2000, the national average of international students as a proportion to total number of students was 12.1%, whereas that of the LSE was 62.7% (HESA, 2001). Similarly, the percentage of postgraduate students to all students as a national average was 22.0% and the same measure at the LSE was 54.6% (HESA, 2001).

Figure 4: % of International Students (LSE vs. National Average) (Source: HESA, 2001)

As LSE has traditionally had a relatively large proportion of international and postgraduate students compared to other universities, a more discernible trend regarding population and content diversity might be found by studying universities with a more profound change in student population diversity over time.

Further research by comparing The Beaver with other publications on campus by ethnic groups may provide further insights in the cohesion among the student body and explain patterns of assimilation and exclusion of students from certain media outlets. Comparing studies of a number of similar universities might also give us some useful generalisations. For example, similar studies on universities with similar demographic composition such as SOAS might confirm our results. Studies on other universities based in London might lead to useful observations on whether the relationship could be due more to the cosmopolitan nature of the city in which these universities are situated.

This article is an attempt to fill in the gap identified in the literature review, namely the level of newspaper content diversity on British campuses relative to student diversity. It highlights the lack of academic research on student median a UK context and presents a case study of one university. The methodology builds on the approach used in a previous study by extending the type of content diversity measured. Universities are places that can shape 'the individual's political and social consciousness' (Sims, 2007: 1) and it is therefore important to understand what part newspapers play in this environment. The paucity of evidence on newspaper content diversity in national newspapers means that further work on the subject is merited. There are many ways to define content diversity and more research is needed to judge whether these different definitions support or contradict the findings presented here. The views of the student population are also important in helping to explain any correlation - or lack thereof - a study might discover between content and population diversities.

Acknowledgements

This research was completed over two weeks as part of the LSE GROUPS 2012 programme and we are grateful to the LSE Teaching and Learning Centre for organising the event. We are indebted to Dr Claire Gordon and our supervisor, Dr Markus Ketola, for their support and advice throughout this research. We would also like to thank Dr Nick Anstead, Dr Aude Bicquelet, Heather Dawson, Abhimanyu Gupta, Maria Kyriakidou, Dr Sally Stares, and the staff in the LSE Archives for all their help. Finally, we are grateful to the past editors of The Beaver who volunteered their time to take part in this research.

Any errors or omissions are solely attributable to the authors.

List of figures

Figure 1: LSE Student Newspaper (The Beaver)

Figure 2: Newspaper Content Coding spreadsheet

Figure 3: % of Female Students& % of Female Sports Coverage in Sports Section (The Beaver)

Figure 4: % of International Students (LSE vs. National Average)

List of tables

Table 1: Summary Output of Overall Model Fit for each regression

Appendix A

% of Male students & % of Undergraduate students (1964-1999)

Departments and Undergraduate Degrees (1964-1999)

% of LSE students from different continents

% Female Students and % Female Authors in The Beaver

Notes

[1] Shin Hye Wi has recently completed a BSc in Economics at the London School of Economics and plans to further her studies.

[2] Abubakr Karbhari studied Philosophy with Economics and graduated in 2012. He spent 6 months at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and will join the Bank of England in October 2013.

[3] Jason Chan studied International Relations and has just graduated in July 2013.

[4] Imogen Young is currently studying Politics and Philosophy and will graduate in 2014. She was also elected to the Students' Union Executive, and will be Women's Officer for the academic year 2013-2014.

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