The dichotomy between "shirkers" on the one hand and "strivers" on the other is the backdrop against which the coalition is reforming welfare. Building the narrative, however, relies upon a friendly, nay compliant media.
The dichotomy between “shirkers” on the one hand and “strivers” on the other is the backdrop against which the coalition is reforming welfare. Building the narrative, however, relies upon a friendly, nay compliant media.
The graph below, created by Gavin Edwards using data from Lexis Nexis, show the number of times the word “scrounger” has been mentioned in UK newspapers annually since 1994.
I’m not sure there’s anything to add; the graph speaks for itself.
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12 Responses to “(Graph) Number of times the word ‘scrounger’ has been used in UK newspapers since 1994”
Robert Kaye
No it doesn’t. When you’re doing LexisNexis research you have to control for the number of newspapers archived on the service. Many local newspapers don’t go back very far. Try doing a search on a neutral word like ‘associated’ or ‘evidence’ and you’ll see what I mean. Or you could try limiting it to UK national newspapers, most of which do go back to 1994 in full.
OldLb
Quite right. No control.
However, I suspect that the trend is there.
Google trends which is adjusted shows the rise too
http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=scrounger&cmpt=q&geo=GB
Sparky
Another day, another poorly-researched and flawed piece of thinking from James Bloodworth.
If you graphed the phrase ‘greedy bankers’ you would see a similar explosion. Does that mean that Left wing politicians had control of the media too? What rubbish.
Hank
I know. Search for the number of times Taylor Swift was mentioned in the media. And then draw a line showing when the coalition was elected. This will prove once and for all that Taylor Swift’s career only really took off because we had a change government.
Ed Morrow
That’s a totally duff comparison. Taylor Swift is a proper noun. It’s not value-loaded – it’s rate of occurrence would tell you nothing about people’s opinions of her – merely that she was being talked about. Whereas ‘scrounger’ IS value-loaded – it gives you an opinion as well as a subject, thereby it’s rate of occurrence is far more informative.