Postgraduate Research Fellowship Progress Report - Michael McRae
Title of Project
Uncovering Media Influence on Gender Norm Perceptions: Evidence from Mass Media Messaging
Use of Funds
The funding provided by TRISS was instrumental in the successful completion of two major data collection efforts:
1. Historical Newspaper Circulation Database: I digitized and transcribed a unique
and previously untapped dataset on historical newspaper circulation. This work
involved converting archival records into a structured, research-ready panel dataset that links newspaper outlets to their geographic reach and estimated audience demographics.
2. Massive Text Corpus Creation: I developed a new, large-scale dataset of historical newspaper articles, encompassing over 58 million articles from more than 250 newspaper outlets across the United States between 1960 and 1973. This is, to my knowledge, the largest textual corpus ever assembled for this historical period. The data includes detailed metadata and enables analysis of local media coverage across space and time.
These datasets now serve as the empirical backbone for a research program examining how media content influences perceptions of race, gender, and identity — including, as outlined in the proposal, a focus on gender norm formation in response to public policy messaging.
Impact
The project has had a substantial scholarly and professional impact:
• Academic Reach: The foundational paper using these data, which focuses on the diffusion of the term "Black" in U.S. newspapers and its determinants, has provided new insights into how media outlets respond to civil rights pressure and racial conservatism. It offers an empirical lens on label adoption and linguistic agency, shedding light on editorial incentives and audience pressures.
• Broader Research Program: The data infrastructure has seeded multiple new
projects. Several co-authored and solo papers are now underway, including ones
explicitly investigating gendered media portrayals and policy framing effects, aligning with the original proposal’s aim to examine gender norm misperception.
• Conferences and Community Engagement: This work gave me access to highly selective academic forums. I have presented or am scheduled to present at:
o 3rd Workshop in Economic History (Uppsala)
o CEPR Text-as-Data Workshop (Online)
o Irish Economic Association (Belfast)
o Royal Economic Society (Birmingham)
o Society for Institutional & Organizational Economics (Sydney)
o Several other conferences focused on political economy, media, and text analysis.
This exposure has sparked ongoing dialogue with leading scholars in the field, raised the visibility of the research, and positioned the project within a broader international conversation on media and social norms.
Expected Outputs
• Main Paper: The lead article from the project is under preparation for submission to a top 5 Economics journal, with a focus on media framing, racial terminology, and the interaction of local markets with civil rights messaging.
• Future Gender-Focused Paper: A forthcoming solo-authored project will examine the gendered portrayal of policy issues across newspapers with varying audience
demographics and political alignments. This work builds directly on the TRISS funded datasets.
• Open Access Data Infrastructure: I am preparing a cleaned, anonymized version of the circulation and article datasets for sharing with the academic community, which will enable replication and secondary research on media, identity, and norm
formation.
Contribution to Researcher Development
• Professional Growth: The TRISS award catalysed a step-change in the scope and ambition of my research agenda. Developing and analysing such large-scale data has significantly deepened my technical expertise, particularly in machine learning and natural language processing methods for text analysis, and allowed me to frame original, high-impact questions.
• Networking and Collaboration: Through conference presentations and data-sharing initiatives, I’ve formed connections with prominent scholars in gender economics, media studies, and political economy. These networks are already resulting in coauthorships and mentorship opportunities.
• Career Trajectory: This project has positioned me as a researcher working at the frontier of media economics and identity formation. The outputs from this work are central to my job market portfolio and will play a key role in the next stage of my academic career.