IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jsusta/v12y2020i12p4830-d370869.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Understanding the University-Sustainability Link through Media: A Spanish Perspective

Author

Listed:
  • Cecilia Elizabeth Bayas Aldaz

    (Department of Business Organization, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, 28049 Madrid, Spain
    Research Institute for Higher Education and Science (INAECU), 28903 Madrid; Spain)

  • Jesus Rodriguez-Pomeda

    (Department of Business Organization, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, 28049 Madrid, Spain
    Research Institute for Higher Education and Science (INAECU), 28903 Madrid; Spain)

  • Leyla Angélica Sandoval Hamón

    (Department of Business Organization, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, 28049 Madrid, Spain
    Research Institute for Higher Education and Science (INAECU), 28903 Madrid; Spain)

  • Fernando Casani

    (Department of Business Organization, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, 28049 Madrid, Spain
    Research Institute for Higher Education and Science (INAECU), 28903 Madrid; Spain)

Abstract

This article provides a procedure to universities for understanding the social perception of their activities in the sustainability field, through the analysis of news published in the printed media. It identifies the Spanish news sources that have covered this issue the most and the topics that appear in that news coverage. Using a probabilistic topic model called Latent Dirichlet Allocation, the study includes the nine dominant topics within a corpus with more than seventeen thousand published news items (totaling approximately five and a quarter million words) from a database of almost thirteen hundred national press sources between 2014 and 2017. The study identifies the news sources that published the most news on the issue. It is also found that the amount of news on sustainability and universities declined during the covered period. The nine identified topics point towards the relevance of higher education institutions’ activities as drivers of sustainability. The social perception encapsulated within the topics signals how the public is interested in these activities. Therefore, we find some interesting relationships between sustainable development, higher education institutions’ missions and behaviors, governmental policies, university funding and governance, social and economic innovation, and green campuses in terms of the overall goal of sustainability.

Suggested Citation

  • Cecilia Elizabeth Bayas Aldaz & Jesus Rodriguez-Pomeda & Leyla Angélica Sandoval Hamón & Fernando Casani, 2020. "Understanding the University-Sustainability Link through Media: A Spanish Perspective," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(12), pages 1-15, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:12:y:2020:i:12:p:4830-:d:370869
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/12/4830/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/12/4830/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Grün, Bettina & Hornik, Kurt, 2011. "topicmodels: An R Package for Fitting Topic Models," Journal of Statistical Software, Foundation for Open Access Statistics, vol. 40(i13).
    2. Daniela De Filippo & Leyla Angélica Sandoval-Hamón & Fernando Casani & Elías Sanz-Casado, 2019. "Spanish Universities’ Sustainability Performance and Sustainability-Related R&D+I," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(20), pages 1-21, October.
    3. Dave Howland & Mimi Becker & Lawrence Prelli, 2006. "Merging content analysis and the policy sciences: A system to discern policy-specific trends from news media reports," Policy Sciences, Springer;Society of Policy Sciences, vol. 39(3), pages 205-231, September.
    4. Feinerer, Ingo & Hornik, Kurt & Meyer, David, 2008. "Text Mining Infrastructure in R," Journal of Statistical Software, Foundation for Open Access Statistics, vol. 25(i05).
    5. Gregory Trencher & Masafumi Nagao & Chiahsin Chen & Kentaro Ichiki & Tobai Sadayoshi & Mariko Kinai & Mio Kamitani & Shojiro Nakamura & Aiko Yamauchi & Masaru Yarime, 2017. "Implementing Sustainability Co-Creation between Universities and Society: A Typology-Based Understanding," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 9(4), pages 1-28, April.
    6. Ralf Barkemeyer & Frank Figge & Diane Holt, 2013. "Sustainability-Related Media Coverage and Socioeconomic Development: A Regional and North–South Perspective," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 31(4), pages 716-740, August.
    7. Nadine Székely & Jan vom Brocke, 2017. "What can we learn from corporate sustainability reporting? Deriving propositions for research and practice from over 9,500 corporate sustainability reports published between 1999 and 2015 using topic ," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 12(4), pages 1-27, April.
    8. Irene M. Herremans & Jamal A. Nazari & Fereshteh Mahmoudian, 2016. "Stakeholder Relationships, Engagement, and Sustainability Reporting," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 138(3), pages 417-435, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Fayez Nahedh Alsehani & Ainuddin Wahid Bin Abdul Wahab & Liyana Shuib, 2023. "Exploring Social Media and Organisational Sustainability Performance Goals: Themes, Functional Areas, and Practices Learning from the Preceding Decade," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(3), pages 1-17, January.
    2. Daniela De Filippo & Javier Benayas & Karem Peña & Flor Sánchez, 2020. "Communication on Sustainability in Spanish Universities: Analysis of Websites, Scientific Papers and Impact in Social Media," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(19), pages 1-21, October.
    3. Mercedes Gaitán-Angulo & Melva Inés Gómez-Caicedo & Maritza Torres-Samuel & Adriana Correa-Guimaraes & Luis Manuel Navas-Gracia & Carmen Luisa Vásquez-Stanescu & Rodrigo Ramírez-Pisco & Marisabel Luna, 2022. "Sustainability as an Emerging Paradigm in Universities," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(5), pages 1-23, February.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Stefano Sbalchiero & Maciej Eder, 2020. "Topic modeling, long texts and the best number of topics. Some Problems and solutions," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 54(4), pages 1095-1108, August.
    2. Daoud, Adel & Kohl, Sebastian, 2016. "How much do sociologists write about economic topics? Using big data to test some conventional views in economic sociology, 1890 to 2014," MPIfG Discussion Paper 16/7, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies.
    3. Manuel Muñoz-Suárez & Natividad Guadalajara & José M. Osca, 2020. "A Comparative Analysis between Global University Rankings and Environmental Sustainability of Universities," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(14), pages 1-19, July.
    4. Cho, Yung-Jan & Fu, Pei-Wen & Wu, Chi-Cheng, 2017. "Popular Research Topics in Marketing Journals, 1995–2014," Journal of Interactive Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 40(C), pages 52-72.
    5. João Guerreiro & Paulo Rita & Duarte Trigueiros, 2016. "A Text Mining-Based Review of Cause-Related Marketing Literature," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 139(1), pages 111-128, November.
    6. Daniela De Filippo & Javier Benayas & Karem Peña & Flor Sánchez, 2020. "Communication on Sustainability in Spanish Universities: Analysis of Websites, Scientific Papers and Impact in Social Media," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(19), pages 1-21, October.
    7. Abhinav Khare & Qing He & Rajan Batta, 2020. "Predicting gasoline shortage during disasters using social media," OR Spectrum: Quantitative Approaches in Management, Springer;Gesellschaft für Operations Research e.V., vol. 42(3), pages 693-726, September.
    8. Lehotský, Lukáš & Černoch, Filip & Osička, Jan & Ocelík, Petr, 2019. "When climate change is missing: Media discourse on coal mining in the Czech Republic," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 129(C), pages 774-786.
    9. Doblinger, Claudia & Surana, Kavita & Li, Deyu & Hultman, Nathan & Anadón, Laura Díaz, 2022. "How do global manufacturing shifts affect long-term clean energy innovation? A study of wind energy suppliers," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 51(7).
    10. Andres, Maximilian & Bruttel, Lisa & Friedrichsen, Jana, 2023. "How communication makes the difference between a cartel and tacit collusion: A machine learning approach," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 152(C).
    11. Hudson Golino & Alexander P. Christensen & Robert Moulder & Seohyun Kim & Steven M. Boker, 2022. "Modeling Latent Topics in Social Media using Dynamic Exploratory Graph Analysis: The Case of the Right-wing and Left-wing Trolls in the 2016 US Elections," Psychometrika, Springer;The Psychometric Society, vol. 87(1), pages 156-187, March.
    12. Sun, Katherine Qianwen & Slepian, Michael L., 2020. "The conversations we seek to avoid," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 160(C), pages 87-105.
    13. Rieger, Jonas & von Nordheim, Gerret, 2021. "corona100d: German-language Twitter dataset of the first 100 days after Chancellor Merkel addressed the coronavirus outbreak on TV," DoCMA Working Papers 4, TU Dortmund University, Dortmund Center for Data-based Media Analysis (DoCMA).
    14. Garner, Benjamin & Thornton, Corliss & Luo Pawluk, Anita & Mora Cortez, Roberto & Johnston, Wesley & Ayala, Cesar, 2022. "Utilizing text-mining to explore consumer happiness within tourism destinations," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 139(C), pages 1366-1377.
    15. Anke Piepenbrink & Elkin Nurmammadov, 2015. "Topics in the literature of transition economies and emerging markets," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 102(3), pages 2107-2130, March.
    16. Christian WEISMAYER, 2022. "Applied Research in Quality of Life: A Computational Literature Review," Applied Research in Quality of Life, Springer;International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies, vol. 17(3), pages 1433-1458, June.
    17. Arenas Gaitán, Jorge & Ramírez-Correa, Patricio E., 2023. "COVID-19 and telemedicine: A netnography approach," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 190(C).
    18. Polyzos, Efstathios & Wang, Fang, 2022. "Twitter and market efficiency in energy markets: Evidence using LDA clustered topic extraction," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 114(C).
    19. Jiang, Hanchen & Qiang, Maoshan & Lin, Peng, 2016. "A topic modeling based bibliometric exploration of hydropower research," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 57(C), pages 226-237.
    20. Jonas Rieger, 2019. "Mónica Bécue-Bertaut (2019): Textual Data Science with R," Statistical Papers, Springer, vol. 60(5), pages 1797-1798, October.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:12:y:2020:i:12:p:4830-:d:370869. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.