One of the ways social scientists examine group dynamics in the media is to examine latent framing in the form of "our side" or "in-group" and "their side" or "out-group" pronoun use. Pronouns can alternatively emphasize in-group dynamics ("us", "we", "our" and "ours") or out-group dynamics ("they", "them", "their" and "theirs"). (These eight words are not exhaustive, but capture a reasonable approximation of the two categories). How might these dynamics look through the eyes of television news?

We explored group dynamics in television news several years ago, finding that the release of the Mueller Report in April 2019 led to a permanent fracturing of the media landscape, with MSNBC exhibiting a marked shift towards "our side" language, Fox News towards "their side" and CNN remaining relatively the same. The timeline below (using a 6-month rolling average) updates this analysis through present (adding BBC News London since 2017), showing how this fracturing remained stable through the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, with all four channels surging towards in-group language with a peak in April 2020 (the rolling average in the graph below makes this peak appear a bit later) as the media and governments emphasized togetherness and shared societal responsibility. All four channels have sharply and steadily pivoted away from in-group language in the two and a half years since, back to their pre-pandemic levels, with only BBC News retaining far greater reliance on in-group language than it did before the pandemic.

Creating this graph required just a single query:

SELECT DATE, SUM(COUNT) TOTWORDS, SUM(OURCOUNT) TOTOURWORDS, SUM(OURCOUNT) / SUM(COUNT) * 100 perc_ourside, SUM(THEIRCOUNT) TOTTHEIRWORDS, SUM(THEIRCOUNT) / SUM(COUNT) * 100 perc_theirside FROM (
SELECT SUBSTR(CAST(DATE AS STRING), 0, 6) DATE, WORD, 0 COUNT, COUNT OURCOUNT, 0 THEIRCOUNT FROM `gdelt-bq.gdeltv2.iatv_1grams` WHERE STATION='MSNBC' and WORD in ( SELECT * FROM UNNEST (["us", "we", "our", "ours"]) AS WORD )
UNION ALL
SELECT SUBSTR(CAST(DATE AS STRING), 0, 6) DATE, WORD, 0 COUNT, 0 OURCOUNT, COUNT THEIRCOUNT FROM `gdelt-bq.gdeltv2.iatv_1grams` WHERE STATION='MSNBC' and WORD in ( SELECT * FROM UNNEST (["them", "they", "their", "theirs"]) AS WORD )
UNION ALL
SELECT SUBSTR(CAST(DATE AS STRING), 0, 6) DATE, WORD, COUNT, 0 OURCOUNT, 0 THEIRCOUNT FROM `gdelt-bq.gdeltv2.iatv_1grams` WHERE STATION='MSNBC' 
) group by DATE order by DATE asc