The Daily Nexus stands firmly committed to upholding our values of diversity, equity and inclusion within our coverage and newsroom. In 2018, we initiated our first diversity, equity and inclusion survey to measure these efforts and have since continued seeking ways to expand how we tangibly and transparently reflect on areas of achievement and improvement at the Nexus. This report, the third consecutive one of its kind, serves as a comprehensive reflection of our past 2024-25 academic year of coverage.
We aim to make this data publicly accessible to our readership in line with our commitment to transparency in our practices, coverage and staff demographics. Additionally, this approach places the onus on the Nexus to maintain accountability in journalism, helping us to identify specific shortcomings and overall progress.
Since the implementation of the Diversity Task Force in 2020, our staff has worked considerably to integrate diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) values into the Nexus’ coverage. Illuminating these efforts are three tenets ideated in 2020:
1. Ensure that our editorial and general staff reflect the diversity of the UC Santa Barbara community.
2. Strengthen representation in our coverage by improving relationships with the campus and community.
3. Provide training on diversity and inclusion for all Nexus staff, including writers, editors, content creators, artists and collaborators.
Notable milestones in the history of DEI initiatives at the Nexus include the 2021 addition of the Community Outreach Beat within our News coverage as well as the 2022 creation of the Spanish section La Vista, among others.
Tangible efforts the Daily Nexus has taken specifically during the 2024-25 academic year to improve our coverage and internal organization include increased dissemination of journalistic style guides to staff during Heritage Months, extending directly upon last year’s goals. Furthermore, our DEI team expanded from one to three members, allowing for more consistent oversight and integration of inclusive practices across all sections.
Currently, this team continues to expand upon the early work of the Diversity Task Force. In addition to conducting this annual report in conjunction with the Data section, the team reviews relevant articles to ensure consistency with DEI-conscious language and ethical guidelines, and creates workshops in which staff may reflect upon how Daily Nexus content affects and is perceived by our audience.
This article is a companion piece to our report on DEI within the 2024-25 Daily Nexus staff, which highlights the demographic breakdown of the editors, staff writers and content creators in our newsroom.
To assess trends in DEI-related reporting from 2020 through 2025, the Nexus filtered articles using a curated set of keywords and measured their annual frequency by calendar year. An article was classified as DEI-related if it included at least one keyword. This follows the same process implemented in last year’s analysis, ensuring consistency and comparability across years.
The keywords were chosen to capture a broad range of language tied to diversity, equity, inclusion and social justice. Many directly referenced historically marginalized or underrepresented groups, such as Asian, Hispanic, Latine, Black, Middle Eastern, Indigenous, neurodivergent, transgender, nonbinary and other members of the LGBTQIA+ community. These terms ensured that reporting related to identity and representation was included in the dataset.
Other terms — such as diversity, equity, inclusion, equality, privilege, microaggression, discrimination, identity and justice — reflected the broader discourse around DEI efforts and institutional initiatives. The list also incorporated words tied to human rights and global conflicts, including Palestine, Gaza, West Bank, Ukraine, refugees, asylum seeker, ICE detention, deportation, occupied territories, stateless and genocide, which often appear in coverage of displacement, marginalization and systemic inequities.
Finally, the set included terms related to health and rights, such as suicide, reproductive rights, reproductive justice and human rights, to capture coverage connected to mental health, bodily autonomy and access to care. To maintain accuracy, the Nexus manually reviewed ambiguous terms to confirm their relevance to DEI contexts and expanded the list by incorporating a broader superset of DEI-related words.
The Nexus conducted sentiment analysis of article headlines and content to better understand tone and emotional impact. For headline analysis, we used the Natural Language Toolkit’s Valence Aware Dictionary and Sentiment Reasoner (NLTK VADER). Originally designed for short-form text such as social media, VADER is particularly effective for headlines because it evaluates polarity (positive/negative), intensity (strength) and nuance of sentiment. Each word is scored, and the results are aggregated into a compound score that classifies the text as positive, negative or neutral.
Title Sentiment Analysis
It is important to note that sentiment results reflect both the subject matter of events covered and the editorial framing. While VADER can miss contextual nuance, it provides a reliable overview of emotional trends in the data.
Between 2020 and 2025, Daily Nexus headlines overall leaned neutral, with a modest tendency toward positive tones. Headlines specifically related to DEI topics displayed a similar distribution, most often falling within neutral and positive ranges. This pattern suggests that DEI coverage may center on events framed more positively or that such reporting consistently adopts optimistic or constructive language.
For more detailed sentiment analysis, the Nexus referenced the National Research Council Canada’s (NRC) Word-Emotion Association Lexicon, which consists of approximately 10,000 frequently used English words and their strengths of association with certain emotions. The eight basic emotions chosen include anger, anticipation, disgust, fear, joy, sadness, surprise and trust.
The Nexus calculated the average proportion of emotion-related words within each article and its title by comparing the number of such words to the total word count of the piece.
The most commonly-evoked emotions within the NRC Word-Emotion Association Lexicon include anticipation, trust and joy. Similarly, anticipation and trust were the two relatively strongest emotions associated with Daily Nexus titles and content, regardless of the presence or absence of DEI keywords in a given article.
Keyword Analysis
As was the case in last year’s analysis, anticipation and trust continued to emerge as the most prominent emotions in Daily Nexus titles and content, independent of the presence of DEI keywords.
Moving into the 2025-26 academic year
As we move forward into a new academic year, the Daily Nexus remains steadfast in its commitment to DEI in the newsroom despite federal challenges to these values and journalistic integrity at large.
To prepare for the year, the DEI Team has established a new DEI Archive, featuring a comprehensive internal style guide addressing reporting on a wide range of topics, from global conflict to individual mental health. The archive also includes a curated terminology dictionary designed to promote accurate, respectful and people-first language across all coverage. These resources will be sweepingly integrated into newsroom practices over the upcoming year, equipping staff with the tools to report in a manner that is both culturally competent and authentically representative.
Another notable development is the introduction of a dedicated DEI page in the Daily Nexus print edition. This new platform aims to elevate a broader range of historically underrepresented voices, with special issues for DEI-related topics such as Heritage Months. With this initiative, we hope to address gaps in our coverage and make our newsroom more reflective of the diverse readership we serve.
We also recognize the fear and uncertainty many in our community are experiencing in response to elevated Immigration and Customs Enforcement (I.C.E.) activity and the targeting of Latine, immigrant and undocumented individuals. In response, the Daily Nexus has launched the I.C.E. Sighting Tracker, a resource developed by Editor-in-Chief Anusha Singh and Lead News Editor Michelle Cisneros to provide timely and accurate information following recent raids in Goleta and the greater Santa Barbara area. We aim to minimize misinformation and remain a trusted, useful source of information for those most impacted.
We hope this report will provide our readers with insight into the inner workings of the Nexus newsroom, particularly when it comes to areas of achievement and shortcoming. We look forward to another year of making growth in our coverage an institutional norm as we continue to assess how to best meet the needs of the community we serve.
A version of this article appeared on p. 8-9 of the Oct. 2, 2025 print edition of the Daily Nexus.
