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Main Authors: Hamilton, Sil, Piper, Andrew
Format: Preprint
Published: 2022
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2210.06644
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author Hamilton, Sil
Piper, Andrew
author_facet Hamilton, Sil
Piper, Andrew
contents In this paper, we explore the use of large language models to assess human interpretations of real world events. To do so, we use a language model trained prior to 2020 to artificially generate news articles concerning COVID-19 given the headlines of actual articles written during the pandemic. We then compare stylistic qualities of our artificially generated corpus with a news corpus, in this case 5,082 articles produced by CBC News between January 23 and May 5, 2020. We find our artificially generated articles exhibits a considerably more negative attitude towards COVID and a significantly lower reliance on geopolitical framing. Our methods and results hold importance for researchers seeking to simulate large scale cultural processes via recent breakthroughs in text generation.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2210_06644
institution arXiv
publishDate 2022
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle The COVID That Wasn't: Counterfactual Journalism Using GPT
Hamilton, Sil
Piper, Andrew
Computation and Language
In this paper, we explore the use of large language models to assess human interpretations of real world events. To do so, we use a language model trained prior to 2020 to artificially generate news articles concerning COVID-19 given the headlines of actual articles written during the pandemic. We then compare stylistic qualities of our artificially generated corpus with a news corpus, in this case 5,082 articles produced by CBC News between January 23 and May 5, 2020. We find our artificially generated articles exhibits a considerably more negative attitude towards COVID and a significantly lower reliance on geopolitical framing. Our methods and results hold importance for researchers seeking to simulate large scale cultural processes via recent breakthroughs in text generation.
title The COVID That Wasn't: Counterfactual Journalism Using GPT
topic Computation and Language
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2210.06644