@inproceedings{longuepee-etal-2026-analyzing,
title = "Analyzing the Effect of Media Takeovers on their Political Positioning",
author = "Longu{\'e}p{\'e}e, Lubin and
Elbouanani, Akram and
Popescu, Adrian",
editor = "Lee, Hung-Yi and
Dev, Sunipa and
Li, Jessy and
Elliott, Desmond",
booktitle = "Findings of the {A}ssociation for {C}omputational {L}inguistics: {EMNLP} 2026",
month = oct,
year = "2026",
address = "Budapest, Hungary",
publisher = "Association for Computational Linguistics",
url = "https://aclanthology.org/2026.findings-emnlp.1363/",
pages = "28934--28963",
ISBN = "979-8-89176-462-0",
abstract = "We study whether media takeovers are associated with changes in the political positioning of news outlets. Across nine ownership changes spanning four languages and varied acquirer profiles, we find that aggregate outlet-level shifts are generally modest, but mask selective, actor-specific repositioning toward particular political figures and ideological blocs whose magnitude and direction vary by acquirer. A three-level decomposition {---} outlet, ideological bloc, individual actor {---} is combined with in-time placebo tests, within-outlet triple-interaction contrasts and entity-month re-estimation to separate the effects that withstand pre-trend and multiplicity checks from those that do not. We obtain these findings using a multilingual, entity-centered pipeline over CC-News that masks target politicians before zero-shot target-oriented sentiment classification and estimates changes via difference-in-differences against country-matched control media. These results suggest that aggregate stability masks a redistribution of tone across politically salient actors rather than uniform outlet-wide slant shifts."
}<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<modsCollection xmlns="http://www.loc.gov/mods/v3">
<mods ID="longuepee-etal-2026-analyzing">
<titleInfo>
<title>Analyzing the Effect of Media Takeovers on their Political Positioning</title>
</titleInfo>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Lubin</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Longuépée</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Akram</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Elbouanani</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Adrian</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Popescu</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<originInfo>
<dateIssued>2026-10</dateIssued>
</originInfo>
<typeOfResource>text</typeOfResource>
<relatedItem type="host">
<titleInfo>
<title>Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: EMNLP 2026</title>
</titleInfo>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Hung-Yi</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Lee</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">editor</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Sunipa</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Dev</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">editor</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Jessy</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Li</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">editor</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Desmond</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Elliott</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">editor</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<originInfo>
<publisher>Association for Computational Linguistics</publisher>
<place>
<placeTerm type="text">Budapest, Hungary</placeTerm>
</place>
</originInfo>
<genre authority="marcgt">conference publication</genre>
<identifier type="isbn">979-8-89176-462-0</identifier>
</relatedItem>
<abstract>We study whether media takeovers are associated with changes in the political positioning of news outlets. Across nine ownership changes spanning four languages and varied acquirer profiles, we find that aggregate outlet-level shifts are generally modest, but mask selective, actor-specific repositioning toward particular political figures and ideological blocs whose magnitude and direction vary by acquirer. A three-level decomposition — outlet, ideological bloc, individual actor — is combined with in-time placebo tests, within-outlet triple-interaction contrasts and entity-month re-estimation to separate the effects that withstand pre-trend and multiplicity checks from those that do not. We obtain these findings using a multilingual, entity-centered pipeline over CC-News that masks target politicians before zero-shot target-oriented sentiment classification and estimates changes via difference-in-differences against country-matched control media. These results suggest that aggregate stability masks a redistribution of tone across politically salient actors rather than uniform outlet-wide slant shifts.</abstract>
<identifier type="citekey">longuepee-etal-2026-analyzing</identifier>
<location>
<url>https://aclanthology.org/2026.findings-emnlp.1363/</url>
</location>
<part>
<date>2026-10</date>
<extent unit="page">
<start>28934</start>
<end>28963</end>
</extent>
</part>
</mods>
</modsCollection>
%0 Conference Proceedings
%T Analyzing the Effect of Media Takeovers on their Political Positioning
%A Longuépée, Lubin
%A Elbouanani, Akram
%A Popescu, Adrian
%Y Lee, Hung-Yi
%Y Dev, Sunipa
%Y Li, Jessy
%Y Elliott, Desmond
%S Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: EMNLP 2026
%D 2026
%8 October
%I Association for Computational Linguistics
%C Budapest, Hungary
%@ 979-8-89176-462-0
%F longuepee-etal-2026-analyzing
%X We study whether media takeovers are associated with changes in the political positioning of news outlets. Across nine ownership changes spanning four languages and varied acquirer profiles, we find that aggregate outlet-level shifts are generally modest, but mask selective, actor-specific repositioning toward particular political figures and ideological blocs whose magnitude and direction vary by acquirer. A three-level decomposition — outlet, ideological bloc, individual actor — is combined with in-time placebo tests, within-outlet triple-interaction contrasts and entity-month re-estimation to separate the effects that withstand pre-trend and multiplicity checks from those that do not. We obtain these findings using a multilingual, entity-centered pipeline over CC-News that masks target politicians before zero-shot target-oriented sentiment classification and estimates changes via difference-in-differences against country-matched control media. These results suggest that aggregate stability masks a redistribution of tone across politically salient actors rather than uniform outlet-wide slant shifts.
%U https://aclanthology.org/2026.findings-emnlp.1363/
%P 28934-28963
Markdown (Informal)
[Analyzing the Effect of Media Takeovers on their Political Positioning](https://aclanthology.org/2026.findings-emnlp.1363/) (Longuépée et al., Findings 2026)
ACL