Amidst global concerns over financial markets, terrorism, and outbreaks of disease, the term “risk” pervades contemporary Western media discourse. Manish Nag’s dissertation is interested in the overall landscape of risk in contemporary news media discourse, using the full text of the New York Times from 1987-2006. What are the predominant threads of discourse related to risk, how does this discourse grow and change over time?  Manish’s presentation presents how topic modeling can be used to help answer these questions.