{
  "abstract": "This study introduces lexical “concreteness” – a psycholinguistic measure of vivid language – as a scalable tool for political and news text analysis. Using a dictionary of approximately 40,000 English word lemmas rated for concreteness, this construct is applied to more than two million New York Times articles published between 2000 and 2025. Exploratory analyses show that average concreteness declines over time in headlines and abstracts and varies systematically across material categories, document formats, print page placement, and article length. Descriptive formats, including news reports and biographies or obituaries, generally use more concrete language than editorial or opinion content. Taken together, these analyses suggest that concreteness may be a meaningful linguistic feature in the political news context, capturing unique stylistic features in media language.",
  "abstract_shown": true,
  "affiliations": [
    "Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut, United States of America"
  ],
  "article_type": "Research Article",
  "arxiv": null,
  "author_total": 1,
  "authors": [
    {
      "affs": [
        0
      ],
      "name": "Donald Snyder"
    }
  ],
  "bibtex": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/9rz2hcqnn7ywd.bib",
  "cited_by": 0,
  "doi": "10.1371/journal.pone.0359092",
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  "id": "9rz2hcqnn7ywd",
  "issns": [
    "1932-6203"
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  "landing_url": "https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0359092",
  "language": null,
  "licence": "CC-BY-4.0",
  "licence_label": "CC BY 4.0",
  "licence_source": "journal",
  "licence_url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
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  "native_subjects": [
    [
      "openalex",
      "3300|Computational and Text Analysis Methods"
    ],
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      "plos",
      "/Biology and life sciences/Neuroscience/Cognitive science/Cognitive psychology"
    ],
    [
      "plos",
      "/Biology and life sciences/Neuroscience/Cognitive science/Cognitive psychology/Language"
    ],
    [
      "plos",
      "/Biology and life sciences/Neuroscience/Cognitive science/Cognitive psychology/Priming (psychology)"
    ],
    [
      "plos",
      "/Biology and life sciences/Psychology/Cognitive psychology"
    ],
    [
      "plos",
      "/Biology and life sciences/Psychology/Cognitive psychology/Language"
    ],
    [
      "plos",
      "/Biology and life sciences/Psychology/Cognitive psychology/Priming (psychology)"
    ],
    [
      "plos",
      "/Computer and information sciences/Data management/Metadata"
    ],
    [
      "plos",
      "/People and places/Geographical locations/North America/United States/New York"
    ],
    [
      "plos",
      "/Research and analysis methods/Database and informatics methods"
    ],
    [
      "plos",
      "/Social sciences/Linguistics/Linguistic morphology"
    ],
    [
      "plos",
      "/Social sciences/Linguistics/Psycholinguistics"
    ],
    [
      "plos",
      "/Social sciences/Psychology/Cognitive psychology"
    ],
    [
      "plos",
      "/Social sciences/Psychology/Cognitive psychology/Language"
    ],
    [
      "plos",
      "/Social sciences/Psychology/Cognitive psychology/Priming (psychology)"
    ]
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  "openalex": "W7215102371",
  "pdf_url": "https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0359092&type=printable",
  "pmcid": null,
  "pmid": null,
  "published": "2026-10-01",
  "publisher": "Public Library of Science",
  "ris": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/9rz2hcqnn7ywd.ris",
  "sources": [
    {
      "first_seen": "2026-10-30T12:17:37Z",
      "native_id": "10.1371/journal.pone.0359092",
      "source": "plos",
      "url": "https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0359092"
    }
  ],
  "subjects": [
    {
      "field": "biology",
      "origin": "plos:neuroscience",
      "subfield": "neuroscience"
    }
  ],
  "title": "The weight of words: Applying concreteness to elite media language",
  "title_text": "The weight of words: Applying concreteness to elite media language",
  "type": "peer-reviewed",
  "updated_at": "2026-10-30T12:17:37Z",
  "url": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/9rz2hcqnn7ywd",
  "venue": "PLOS One",
  "versions": []
}