The Daily Nexus has made a dedicated effort to uphold the values of diversity, equity and inclusion within our publication and in our coverage. In 2018, we initiated our first Diversity, Equity and Inclusion survey to measure these efforts and have continued to do so each year. This report, last issued in 2023, serves as a detailed review of these efforts. We aim to make this data available to the public because we are committed to transparency in our practices, coverage and staff demographics. Additionally, this approach holds the Nexus accountable in our journalism and helps us identify areas for improvement.

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion became a permanent initiative at the Daily Nexus with the establishment of the Diversity Task Force in 2020. In the midst of global protests supporting the Black Lives Matter movement, journalists across the country called for increased integration of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives in the newsroom. This journalistic movement included members of the Nexus’ own editorial staff, who strived to better how we as a publication serve the UC Santa Barbara and Isla Vista communities. 

In the years following the initiation of the Diversity Task Force, our staff has made significant headway in integrating DEI values into the Nexus. Guiding this are three tenets ideated in 2020: 

  • Ensure that our editorial and general staff reflect the diversity of the UCSB community
  • Strengthen representation in our coverage by improving relationships with campus and community 
  • Provide training on diversity and inclusion for all Nexus staff, both writers and editors 

Originally consisting of 15 editorial staff members—such as Opinion or Artsweek editors—who dedicated extra time beyond their primary roles, the Diversity Task Force has subsequently evolved into two permanent, dedicated DEI chair positions. Currently, the chairs continue to expand the work of the Diversity Task Force. In addition to conducting the staff survey in conjunction with Data, the DEI chairs review identity-related articles and create workshops in which staff may reflect upon how Daily Nexus content affects and is perceived by our readers.

This article is a companion piece to our report on DEI within the 2023-24 Daily Nexus staff. That report highlighted the demographic breakdown of the Daily Nexus editors and staff writers and content creators.

Other notable milestones in the history of DEI at the Nexus include the 2022 creation of La Vista, our Spanish section. This significant step came in light of an internal drive to recognize and include our campus’ strong Hispanic and Latine communities, especially considering UCSB’s recent designation as a Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI) in 2015. Furthermore, former DEI Chairs Devanshi Tomar and Pricila Flores presented at the Associated Collegiate Press Spring Conference in 2023 on the intersection of identity and journalism, with a report entitled “It’s Not About You: Understanding and Illustrating Perspectives and Identities to Inform Journalism.”

To track the frequency of DEI-related coverage for 2018 to 2024, the Nexus filtered for the keywords found in the graph below, tracking the annual frequency of DEI keywords per calendar year. For an article to be considered DEI-related content, it is required to have at least one keyword. The Nexus manually checked keywords that could have multiple meanings to ensure as many as possible fit a DEI-related meaning and also scraped DEI-related words which are a superset of the keywords.

Siddharth Chattoraj / Daily Nexus

Most recently, 58% of all articles published in June covered at least one related topic: the primary focuses were identity and culture. 

Headline sentiment analysis 

The Nexus also analyzed the sentiment of both our article titles and article content to better understand the tone and emotional impact of our reporting. To perform this analysis on our headlines, we utilized the Natural Language Toolkit Valence Aware Dictionary and Sentiment Reasoner, commonly known as NLTK VADER. 

While initially designed for social media and microblog-style content, VADER is particularly well-suited for short-form content because it analyzes the polarity (positive/negative), intensity (strength) and nuance of sentiments. VADER works by assigning a score to each word or phrase in the text, reflecting its sentiment. These scores are then aggregated to provide an overall sentiment rating — its compound score — for the entire text, which can be classified as positive, negative or neutral. 

It is important to note that the sentiment analysis below of the headlines and content of the articles is influenced by the nature of the topics and content being covered, rather than simply the specific framing approach taken by the reporter. Consequently, the sentiment observed may be indicative of the inherent tone of current events, rather than an editorial choice to convey a particular perspective or influence reader sentiment. Sentiment analysis can misinterpret specific contexts or nuances due to the limitations of the model used, but it does provide an overview of general emotional trends across the article headlines and content.

The overall sentiment of Daily Nexus article titles has generally been neutral each year, with a slight tendency toward positive tones. However, examining titles specifically related to DEI topics, the primary sentiment tends to be primarily a mix of neutral and positive. 

This pattern suggests that the Nexus' headlines relating to DEI topics may either predominantly cover events that are “positive” in nature or adopt a more positively worded tone overall compared to the rest of our headlines. While both possibilities are plausible, it is unclear to what extent each contributes.

Content sentiment analysis 

To perform sentiment analysis on our content, the Nexus used the National Research Council Canada’s (NRC) Word-Emotion Association Lexicon. The lexicon was created through crowdsourcing strengths of association between a word and a certain emotion on Amazon Mechanical Turk. According to Saif Mohammad and Peter Turney — the authors of the lexicon’s methods paper —  the lexicon consists of approximately 10,000 words used commonly in existing language lexicons and from the most frequently used nouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs in the English language. The eight emotions chosen represent the basic and prototypical emotions: anger, anticipation, disgust, fear, joy, sadness, surprise and trust.

Each word is assigned a score of 0 if it is not associated with an emotion and a score of 1 if it is associated. Words can be associated with multiple languages. The Nexus analyzed the average proportion of the total number of words associated with each emotion in each article out of the total number of all words in that article. This analysis was also repeated for article titles.

According to Mohammad and Turney, “Anticipation, trust, and joy come through as the most common emotions evoked by terms of all four parts of speech.” Negative words mostly evoke anger, fear, disgust and sadness; positive words mostly evoke anticipation, joy and trust.

Anticipation and trust were the two relatively strongest emotions associated with Daily Nexus titles and content, regardless of whether the titles or content contained DEI keywords or not. 

Coverage of campus response to Israel and Palestine

This past year, a major conversation on campus regarded the student response to the continued siege of the Gaza Strip by the state of Israel following an Oct. 7 attack on Israel by militant group Hamas. The Nexus has covered varying aspects of its impact on campus including student advocacy, forms of protest, student government and more.

Within our reporting, we strived for a comprehensive approach, ensuring that the Nexus covered multiple perspectives and events related to the campus response to Israeli and Palestinian relations. In light of doxxing incidents online relating to students speaking out about Israeli and Palestinian relations, the Nexus omitted student identities in our reporting in instances where student activists wished to withhold their names. This allowed us to gather diverse opinions on campus while protecting student identities. 

With our student government being heavily influenced by global politics, Associated Students (A.S.) elections this year were broken into unofficial parties in which there were clear political alignments. The Nexus has historically endorsed candidates for executive positions based on their qualifications and potential to excel. This year was no different, with the News team focusing only on a candidate’s potential impact on A.S. based on research and interviews with the candidates.

The titles of articles related to the campus response to Israel and Palestine themselves presented a mix of sentiments — positive, negative and neutral, with a plurality of titles having neutral sentiments.

When reporting on this issue, the DEI chairs recommend the use of specific language that accurately reflects the context of each situation being reported on — such as "the continued siege of the Gaza Strip by the state of Israel following an Oct. 7 attack on Israel by militant group Hamas.” In addition to high consideration of language used, the Nexus recognized the need to consider the broader historical context of Israeli-Palestinian relations, as well as a mindful approach to how these issues impact our local audience. Additionally, this broader context was attributed to reputable news sources when necessary.

For an article to be considered related to Israeli-Palestinian relations, it is required to have at least one keyword. The Nexus manually checked keywords that could have multiple meanings to ensure as many as possible fit a related meaning and also scraped related words which are a superset of keywords. The analysis includes all articles since Oct. 7, 2023 — the date of the 2023 attack on Israel by militant group Hamas — for a total of 96 related articles.

Siddharth Chattoraj / Daily Nexus

The Nexus published an editorial in November 2023 calling for UCSB to divest from companies profiting off of war. The Nexus saw this as a humanitarian standpoint rather than a political one. The purpose of the editorial was to express concern over the role of student fees in violence and war. Through extensive research and evidence, our editorial board aimed to keep intact our impartiality and ethical beliefs as journalists while writing about this topic. 

Moving into the 2024-25 academic year

As we look forward, the Daily Nexus remains committed to maintaining and improving DEI values within the newsroom. Future initiatives include compiling relevant style guides within the larger journalistic community into a single accessible resource. We seek to disseminate these tools to all Nexus staff. The DEI chairs additionally aim to continue collaborating with staff when brainstorming content specific to relevant heritage months (for example, Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Heritage Month in May). Part of this collaboration entails providing sections with information on heritage and cultural months as well as style guides for specific communities.

Lastly, we are dedicated to maintaining reliable reporting on real-time issues, such as the campus response to Israeli and Palestinian relations, that impact our local audience. DEI at the Daily Nexus is centered around faithfully representing the voices, concerns and achievements of our diverse community.

A version of this article appeared on p. 12 and p. 13 of the Oct. 3, 2024 edition of the Daily Nexus.

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Siddharth Chattoraj
Siddharth Chattoraj is the data editor for the 2023-24 school year. He was previously the assistant data editor and eventually co-data editor during the 2022-23 school year. He loves exploring the intersection of art and technology to discover solutions to new and existing problems. He also enjoys journalism, theater, marketing, running, and forming spontaneous plans with friends. Siddharth can be reached at data@dailynexus.com.
Anushka Ghosh Dastidar
Anushka Ghosh Dastidar (she/her) is the Lead News Editor for the 2024-25 school year. Previously, Ghosh Dastidar was the Community Outreach News Editor for the 2023-24 school year and the Assistant News Editor for the 2022-2023 school year. She can be reached at anushkagd@dailynexus.com or news@dailynexus.com.