This paper examines the meaning of violence in contemporary Western societies. Scholars have argued that in contemporary Western societies, the concept is expanding toward a broader understanding of violence, beyond its “traditional” usage in the context of crime and war. The current paper aims to generate empirical evidence that speaks to this question. We take the Netherlands as a case study and apply machine learning techniques to discourse on violence in 80,000 articles published in national newspapers between 2012 and 2021. Results show that the public discourse on violence in the Netherlands has a component that can be described as the familiar or “traditional” usage of the term violence—referring to violent political conflicts, or interpersonal violence such as child abuse. Beyond this, the term violence is associated with discourse on societal challenges. It appears in discourse on social media, political polarization, and social injustice faced by ethnic minorities, women, and the LGBT+ community. The later stages of the analysis demonstrated that the terms associated with social injustice in particular (e.g., “racist”) become more closely associated with the concept of violence over time. In short, our findings support the notion that the collective understanding of violence in the Netherlands is developing toward a broader understanding of violence, beyond the context of crime and war. Specifically, in recent years the term violence is increasingly used in association with issues of social injustice.

中文翻译：

---

通过机器学习技术研究“暴力”的含义


本文探讨了暴力在当代西方社会的含义。学者们认为，在当代西方社会，这个概念正在扩展到对暴力的更广泛理解，超越了它在犯罪和战争背景下的“传统”用法。本文旨在生成说明这个问题的经验证据。我们以荷兰为案例研究，并在 2012 年至 2021 年期间在全国性报纸上发表的 80,000 篇文章中应用机器学习技术来讨论暴力。结果表明，荷兰关于暴力的公共话语有一个组成部分，可以被描述为暴力一词的熟悉或“传统”用法——指的是暴力政治冲突，或人际暴力，如虐待儿童。除此之外，暴力一词还与关于社会挑战的话语有关。它出现在少数族裔、女性和 LGBT+ 社区面临的社交媒体话语、政治两极分化和社会不公正中。分析的后期阶段表明，随着时间的推移，与社会不公正相关的术语（例如，“种族主义”）与暴力概念的联系变得更加紧密。简而言之，我们的研究结果支持这样一种观点，即荷兰对暴力的集体理解正在朝着超越犯罪和战争背景的更广泛理解发展。具体来说，近年来，暴力一词越来越多地与社会不公正问题相关联。