The linked pre-print[1] is very interesting - this is my first time seeing NLP content analysis and Middle Eastern studies (two fields I'm passionate about) come together like this.
The author does two analyses in the preprint:
1: Looking at passive vs. active voice (the author cites another paper that contends that passive voice is often used to obscure the perpetrators when describing unpalatable actions), they find "a disproportionate use of the passive voice to refer
to negative or violent action perpetrated towards Palestinians." So, a pro-Israel bias.
2: They find "use of more negative and violent rhetoric in
reference to Palestinians compared to Israelis." Again, a pro-Israel bias.
I think it's important to be mindful of how much math-washing[2], willful or not, is taking place in this analysis. The author mentions a few steps taken to reduce the code's bias (such as blindly tagging the keyword corpus), but even the types of analysis chosen may introduce bias. I'd love to see a few groups with different affiliations attempt similar papers and see if the same results persist.
I have trouble poking any holes in the analysis for #1 - all I can think of is challenging the assumption that passive voice reduces perceived culpability.
I think the analysis for #2 could introduce some bias, as any definition of "negative and violent rhetoric" will be subjective, but I haven't looked at the word bank or anything yet.
I wonder if similar analysis will be done on a corpus containing isis related stories from nyt will arrive to a similar conclusion where because isis is often mentioned in violance related context, its because they are in fact misrepresented and there is bias that depicts them in negative manner.
From the accompanying pre-print "The New York Times Distorts the Palestinian Struggle: A Case Study of Anti-Palestinian Bias in American News Coverage of the First and Second Palestinian Intifadas":
Said defines [orientalism] as the West’s stereotyped perception of the Middle East – based in Western domination, both colonial and postcolonial, of the East
Ah yes, such domination as the 300,000-900,000 Greeks killed by the Ottoman Empire during the Greek genocide [1], or the brutal suppression of Bulgaria's fight for independence during the Bulgarian horrors [2]. Or the 700 years Spain spent under Muslim rule [3]. Or the two (!) sieges of Vienna itself [4,5]. Had they been successful, maybe everything east of Vienna would have shared the fate of the Byzantine Empire and Constantinople [6], once part of Europe, but now not even considered colonized.
What is today still called Europe is simply the land Arabs failed to take. Implying the domination and colonization were one-way affairs, with the West always dominant and the Middle East always the victim, is beyond brazen. How often similar statements are left unchallenged brings to mind a saying about forgetting history.
In the field of Middle Eastern Studies, Edward Said's Orientalism is seminal. It's the bedrock of how the field is taught in undergraduate classes, and as you observed, it's cited in a lot of papers. What you're doing here is like me jumping into a C++ conversation and talking about how Bjarne Strousop is Wrong about object oriented programming because the original Rollercoaster Tycoon was written in assembly. You're ignoring a lot of context about why this is an important frame of reference for the field, and bringing in a bunch of largely unrelated counterexamples.
Now, let's address those counterexamples: First, let's look at that quote again:
> Said defines [orientalism] as the West’s stereotyped perception of the Middle East – based in Western domination, *both colonial and postcolonial,* of the East
That knocks out your latter three examples right there. We know that European nations haven't always been the dominating force in global affairs (as much as my dead comment sibling would like to believe that). We know that all kinds of societies are capable of imperialism and war and genocide. Orientalism concerns itself specifically with how "Western" scholars and intelligentsia portray "Eastern" people, societies, and concepts in the service of imperialism. That is to say, Orientalism necessitates Western imperialism. If we're looking at an era before Western colonialism, orientalism is not a helpful academic framework - it doesn't apply.
Likewise, the atrocities the Ottoman Empire committed doesn't affect the premise that Western scholars portray the Middle East in a reductive light. The contention of Orientalism is that the West stereotypes the East as static and incapable, and that this perpetuates Western subjugation of the East. Said does not actually believe that Western societies always dominate Eastern ones, or that the east is incapable of domination themselves, quite the opposite.
a huge part of Orientalism is about defining the concept of the Middle East. Said contends that the "East" as we know it is a construction of the Western world, and that it is a perspective that serves to whitewash and perpetuate imperialism. In that way, Said's work is much less about forgetting history and much more about seeing the "East" for what it is: a multitude of different, not strictly related societies that aren't static and undeveloped, but rather equally capable, just now affected by the most recent round of empire. On that point, I think you and Edward Said actually agree.
Said defines [orientalism] as the West’s stereotyped perception of the Middle East – based in Western domination, both colonial and postcolonial, of the East
How can he tell which parts of this stereotyped perception are based in Western domination, and which on experiences of invasion? Keep in mind his book was published in 1978, just 56 years after the Greek genocide.
Even if it could somehow be done, it's very disingenuous to turn a blind eye to the historical suffering of Europe under the 'Orient', and construct a field of study dealing only with those aspects of Western perception of the Orient stemming from Western domination.
The author does two analyses in the preprint:
1: Looking at passive vs. active voice (the author cites another paper that contends that passive voice is often used to obscure the perpetrators when describing unpalatable actions), they find "a disproportionate use of the passive voice to refer to negative or violent action perpetrated towards Palestinians." So, a pro-Israel bias.
2: They find "use of more negative and violent rhetoric in reference to Palestinians compared to Israelis." Again, a pro-Israel bias.
I think it's important to be mindful of how much math-washing[2], willful or not, is taking place in this analysis. The author mentions a few steps taken to reduce the code's bias (such as blindly tagging the keyword corpus), but even the types of analysis chosen may introduce bias. I'd love to see a few groups with different affiliations attempt similar papers and see if the same results persist.
I have trouble poking any holes in the analysis for #1 - all I can think of is challenging the assumption that passive voice reduces perceived culpability.
I think the analysis for #2 could introduce some bias, as any definition of "negative and violent rhetoric" will be subjective, but I haven't looked at the word bank or anything yet.
[1] http://web.mit.edu/hjackson/www/The_NYT_Distorts_the_Palesti...
[2] https://www.mathwashing.com/