What’s the News on Academic Freedom? Automated Text Analysis of University World News

Problem statement: Research consistently shows that in the last decade, we have witnessed a significant erosion of academic freedom worldwide (Kinzelbach, Lindberg, Pelke, & Spannagel, 2023), not only in authoritarian regimes but also in democracies (Craciun & Mihut, 2017; Craciun, Matei & Popovici, 2021; Matei, 2021; Maassen et al., 2023). A recent report based on the Academic Freedom Index shows that in the last decade academic freedom has declined in 22 countries representing over half of the world’s population (Kinzelbach, Lindberg, Pelke, & Spannagel, 2023). The paper aims to see if this reported decline of academic freedom is evident in news on higher education. To achieve this, the paper analyzes news coverage on academic freedom in higher education from University World News (UWN), a popular high-quality international newspaper and website providing coverage of worldwide developments in higher education since 2007. Research Questions: (1) What topics related to academic freedom are covered and how have these evolved over time? i.e., most frequent news topics/year grouped according to the “onion model” (Kovats & Ronay, 2023) of academic freeodm (2) What are important higher education topics covered in different places? i.e., most frequent news topics/geographical areas (countries, regions) (3) Which countries/regions are covered in the news on academic freedom? i.e., mapping frequency of news from different countries/world regions (4) Who are the most important news sources? i.e., type of actors most frequently cited. Previous research on higher education news has identified the following types of actors as the most important news sources: campus administrators, advocacy groups, experts, faculty, presidents/chancellors, professionals, public officials, and students (Devitt, 1998). Comparisons with the most important sources today could illuminate change/stability in power structures when it comes to higher education. (5) What is missing from the news on academic freedom? i.e., news gap map according to the core and supportive dimensions of academic freedom (Kovats & Ronay, 2023) and to the typology of sources of academic freedom threats (Elken et al., 2024) Research Methods: To answer the research questions outlined above, the paper makes use of structural topic modelling for text analysis and visualization of findings using Python. In addition to the content of the article which will be analyzed using automated text analysis, each article includes information on the author’s name, author’s affiliation, year of publication, and countries/region that the article discusses. This descriptive metadata can be used to efficiently answer some of the research questions of the project. Contribution: The paper will highlight a number of issues around academic freedom such as the salience of the topic in the news on higher education and what the gaps in reporting on academic freedom might be. To this extent it will represent a good resource for both news outlets and advocates of academic freedom to promote a greater understanding of the multifaceted understanding of the repercussions of infringements on academic freedom. The study will additionally provide information as to the geographical spread of news on academic freedom and highlight potential biases/gaps in reporting.