What rather than how : A DMR topic modeling analysis of news coverage on the British Museum

The British Museum founded in 1753 is one of the largest museums filled with looted artifacts. Countries of origin of cultural properties are demanding the return of the artifacts held by the British Museum, but the museum is refusing their requests. The issues were studied including legal, and historical perspectives. However, there was a lack of research in the field of media or communication. This study introduced the topic distribution of each country’s coverage of the British Museum and its cultural assets. Dirichlet Multinomial Regression (DMR) topic modeling method was used to analyze news topics. The country where each article was reported was set as metadata. With the DMR model, 25,744 major news data collected from LexisNexis were investigated. News reports in the United Kingdom (UK) identified a relatively less tendency to deal with the topics of looted artifacts and repatriation. This research confirmed how the country has reported on specific issues by using the DMR method. Additionally, by applying agenda-setting theory, mass media’s role in the repatriation issue of the British Museum was discussed.