Analysis of Linguistic Complexity in Professional and Citizen Media

Abstract

Structural linguistic characteristics are an important aspect of written communication. Previous research shows that linguistic complexity plays an important role in how people process information. With increasing popularity and readership of citizen journalism, questions of how structurally different this medium is from its professional counterparts and how this difference potentially affects readers become salient. Using automated content analysis methods, the present study investigates the differences in linguistic complexity across various citizen and professional journalism outlets. The analysis shows that the patterns of presenting political information across various media are different. These findings have direct implications for various branches of communication and journalism studies such as the knowledge gap hypothesis, language expectancy theory, and credibility research.