Number Soup: Case Studies of Quantitatively Dense News

ABSTRACT

Numbers don’t speak for themselves–yet taking numbers for granted (numerism) is widespread. In fact, journalists often rely heavily on numbers precisely because they are widely considered objective. As a team of journalists and social scientists, we undertook a qualitative exploration of clauses and entire news reports that are particularly quantitatively dense. The dense clauses were often grammatically complex and assumed familiarity with sophisticated concepts. They were rarely associated with explanations of data collection methods. Meanwhile, the dense news reports were all about economy or health topics, chiefly brief updates on an ongoing event (e.g., stock market fluctuations;COVID-19 cases). We suggest that journalists can support public understanding by Providing more detail about research methods;Writing shorter, clearer sentences;Providing context behind statistics;Being transparent about uncertainty;and Indicating where consensus lies. We also encourage news organizations to consider structural changes like rethinking their relationship with newswires and working closely with statisticians. © 2022 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.