Natural language processing research study for media narrative

Dear students,

We are part of LAUNCH, a group at the University of Michigan focusing on natural language processing. Our research is targeted towards building methods to help better understand news narrative through the lens of social psychological theories. One of our projects aims to reveal what tactics are employed by different media outlets to sway public opinions on controversial issues. As the first step towards this goal, we are investigating the underlying moral foundations embodied by the moral events. In addition to understanding the ideology and stances held by media outlets, the successful completion of this research will also allow us to understand the granular elements that give rise to particular stances between entities, and ultimately answer why these media hold particular stances and ideology. 

For this study, we are looking for students to help us annotate a collection of US news articles by mainstream media. In this task, you will read the article and label events and actions that have an innate moral basis. The labeling will be done according to Moral Foundation Theory, which was created by social psychologists to understand how morality varies between cultures. We will provide the necessary training (detailed in next paragraph) to familiarize participants with moral foundation theory. 

Before you officially participate in this project, we will provide a training session to get yourself familiar with the basis of moral foundations and other necessary materials. Prior to the training session, you will be assigned a very low workload of readings to assist you to grasp some prerequisite skills. After the training session, you will complete a trial annotation on one news article. We will collect and assess your responses to determine your eligibility for this project. The training session (including both prerequisite reading and trial run) does not count towards the total hours specified on the contract. 

The complete annotation task includes 3 articles reporting on the same news story but by different media outlets across the political spectrum. Each article has around 600 words on average. The task should take about 1.5-2 hours to complete. Each participant will receive 25 dollars to complete a single task. We expect students can finish 1-4 tasks each week, totaling a minimum of 12-48 tasks for this semester.

If you are interested in participating in the study, please fill out this survey. We will reach out to you shortly. Thank you!

We do not share your information with any third parties.

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How often do you read news articles? *
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Have you read the information at the top of this page and do you agree to participate?
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How many hours on average can you commit to this project each week *
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