Identifying changes in popular news media articles about the transgender community from 1990 to 2023

In the past few decades, newspaper articles about transgender people and the transgender community have become increasingly more common. At the same time, language used in this type of media has continued to evolve. In order to better understand the way public discourse around the trans community has changed, this study uses a linguistic analysis of newspaper articles from the ten most widely circulated newspapers in the United States. A sampling of articles from each year from 1990 to 2023 was analyzed using the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) program to capture the authors’ attitudes. Correlation analyses were used with the LIWC categories to explore if any of the linguistic terms changed over the study period. In addition, change in the use of the terms “transsexual” and “transgender” was tracked over the same 34 year period. Results showed a statistically significant decrease in negative language used in articles about transgender people over time and a significant change in the use of the terms “transsexual” vs. “transgender”. Linguistic changes in these newspaper articles parallel changing attitudes about the trans community in mainstream American culture at large.