Next week, for our monthly open seminar, we will be hosting Carlos Castillo (they/them) who is an ICREA Research Professor at Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona, where they lead the Web Science and Social Computing research group. Their background is information retrieval, and currently they focus on algorithmic fairness and crisis informatics.

The presentation will take place on January 17, 2:30-3:30 pm, in Room 40.249 (Roger de Llúria building). If you can´t attend in person you can join us online: https://upf-edu.zoom.us/j/95211876939

Abstract

We perform automated content analysis of 500 news articles posted in 13 popular Spanish news outlets, and find various biases that are aligned with those described in the literature about the coverage of sexual violence in the news. For instance, sexual assault cases are covered more often than sexual harassment cases, despite the latter being more frequent. More worryingly, crimes happening at home are underrepresented in the media, and crimes happening in leisure spaces are over-represented. In general, Spanish media outlets portray sexual violence in a manner that perpetuates and reinforces harmful preconceptions and myths. Work done with Marilena Budan.

See you all there!