Background Materials: MDI Research Methods HandbookMedia Diversity Institute The 7 Steps of Content Analysis1) Formulate your research question Remember quantative research cannot answer why questions, only concrete who, what, when, and how something in the media happened. For example, how Children are represented in TV news, but not why they are represented like that. The more specific your research question is, the more likely you will get useful results. 2) Define the evidence base What kind of media are you going to look at? Remember the different formats have different aims, e.g. the news seeks to inform but films might want to entertain. Decide your start and end date for the collection of your body of evidence. Resources will be important – what you can afford to do in terms of times and money. If you have only modest means, you must select only a modest body of evidence, or you will not have the resources to complete your research. Having two evidence bases - Comparative… Longitudinal… 3) Select a sample Unfortunately, there is no standard formula to work out how large your sample should be. It depends on the size of your body of evidence and your question and type of analysis. Stratified sampling is a way of working around this problem. Use the different strata of the media, e.g., their ratings or audience or politics or ownership. So instead of sampling all newspapers, try sampling just a broadsheet and a tabloid. Instead of sampling all TV news, use just those in the peak viewing hours. If your argument depends on talking about the media as a whole, you need to balance as far as possible, for example use a right-wing tabloid and a left-wing broadsheet. The composite week is another way of sampling if you have over a month’s worth of data. Sample one Monday from the four or five Mondays in your evidence base, then a Tuesday etc until you have a week. This is statistically better than taking a whole week from a month. 4) Define your unit of analysis This is where you begin the definitional work – if there is more than one person working on it, you must agree on what you define as your unit of analysis and later the categories too. This is called inter-coder reliability and it is very important. You will develop a codebook which is a log of all your decisions about the definition of your unit of analysis. For example, you might decide to study the representation of XXX in YY prime-time news, so XXX is your first definition. But as you watch, you may want to refine your definition to make it more relevant to your research question. You may think these groups are represented differently, so separate them into different units of analysis – and write down each of your decisions in your code book, with the date. 5) Construct your categories of analysis You need to classify your content, and make sure you agree the definitions of your categories with other coders. Some categories are necessary for most studies – such as the date, the title of the article or programme, the TV channel etc. Other categories will depend on your research question. Some common categories include: ‘sources’ – who is quoted by the media; ‘labels’ – what names are used for groups or individuals; ‘genre’ – in what types of reports does your unit of analysis appear, e.g., crime report, politics story (be sure to carefully define the categories of type) ‘numbers games’ – how many of the numbers given by the media are contextualised so the audience can understand what they mean? Your category system needs to be mutually exclusive, exhaustive and reliable. That means that there are no units of analysis that could be put into one or more categories, that you can put all or most of the content into your categories and you agree the definitions of the categories with other coders. You can have an ‘other’ or ‘miscellaneous’ category, but if it is more than 10% of the total you should see if you can break it down into smaller categories – you may have missed something. Its ok to keep developing your categories as you code, but not too much or you might end up not answering the question you set out to answer – and make sure you have inter-coder reliability. 6) Coding This is where you put your units of analysis into your categories. If you have done a good job of defining these, you should have a straight-forward job of counting units of analysis in your content, and placing the number on your coding sheet – where you keep a running total. 7) Analysis The simplest analysis is to look at frequencies – i.e., how large a category is. If you can use software for analysing numbers, such as SPSS (Statistical Package for Social Scientists), your job is much easier. What calculation you want to do will depend on your evidence and research question. You may want to use percentages, or averages such as mean, median or mode. More complex calculations can be done depending on your ability and resources, but should be supported by relevant software. 8) Report Writing Now you can write about what you have found in your body of evidence. If you have a specific research question, well-defined categories and units, a well-kept codebook, and strong inter-coder reliability you should now be able to answer your research question. Good luck!
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