Files
Download Full Text (607 KB)
Document Type
Poster
Publication Date
Fall 10-1-2026
Abstract
This project was based primarily in Greencastle, IN, with regular research trips to Indiana University in Bloomington to conduct in-person, archival research at the Kinsey Institute. During these visits, the team explored the Institute’s scholarly collections on sexuality, particularly on subjects related to queer women’s sexuality, criminal trials, and the occult. Extensive notes were taken – recording gender issues and language patterns, specifically. Three promising collections were identified to compare – abortion trials, obscenity trials, and murder trials. Guided by Moral Foundations Theory, differences were hypothesized in how journalists’ language emphasizes the five facets of morality across the three contentious topics. Relevant documents were collected, digitized, and transcribed from the Kinsey Institute and several other newspaper archives (e.g., newspapers.com, Library of Congress, Smith College). Once a total sample of 300 newspaper articles was reached (n= 100 for each topic), Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) software ran word-frequency text analysis, then ANOVA and pairwise comparisons were performed in SPSS. Significant differences were found for several care/harm, loyalty/betrayal, and sanctity/degradation – with some results in the hypothesized directions. These findings indicate how the institute of journalism is a vehicle of moral enculturation in ways that may shape readers’ beliefs and policy positions on morally salient social issues, especially with regards to marginalized populations.
Department
Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, DePauw University, Greencastle, IN
Project Mentor
Phoenix Crane
Recommended Citation
Crane, Phoenix R.; Mensel, Calvin '27; and Collins, Claire '28, "Moral Language Analysis and the Archives of Sexuality" (2026). Annual Student Research Poster Session. 256.
https://scholarship.depauw.edu/srfposters/256
Funding and Acknowledgements
Supported by student-faculty collaborative research fund