Shifts in National Entrepreneurial Culture: The Promise of Linguistic Cultural Artifacts and Machine Learning Analysis

Abstract

We develop a dynamic view of national entrepreneurial culture by examining the linguistic evolution of media-produced cultural artifacts--entrepreneurship related newspaper articles. Applying machine learning to 690,088 articles from 103 newspapers across the U.S. between 1996 and 2016, we identify a growing positivity bias towards entrepreneurship at the national level evidenced by rising emotional tone and declining analytical thinking. This bias varies by topic, with 'entrepreneurial aspirations and journeys' driving the trend. Our analyses also suggest this bias may encourage the creation of new ventures but limit venture growth potential. We highlight theoretical and methodological contributions to research on national entrepreneurial culture and identify promising avenues for future research.

Keywords: entrepreneurship, national culture, emotion, cognition, machine learning, LIWC, topic modeling, big data