Sociology: Government Documents and Mass Media

The examination and coding of documents, texts, and media output


Analysis can be of printed, visual, audio, or virtual content:
Who writeseports?
What gets writteneported?
Where is it writteneported?
Why is this issue writteneported?
When it gets writteneported?
Most importantly, what is left out?


Can be quantitative or qualitative

study of recorded human communications

Unobtrusive research- research that does not collect data directly from people
- not going to interact with people whatsoever

conceptual analysis- analyzing the existence and frequency of concepts in human communication

Relational analysis- analyzing the relationship of concepts in human communication

Manifest content which is observable content

Latent content which is the underlying meaning of the content

research question
operationalization variables
creating a coding scheme
sampling- Determine how many different kinds of data you want, what time frames you will collect data, random sampling, cluster sampling etc.
coding... and then quantify the codes

unobtrusive
low cost
allows for quantitative / qualitative research

Coding error... especially with relational analysis (how codes relate to one another)
time consuming
may not take context into consideration

can be any source of data that:
- can be "read"
- was not produced specifically for the purposes of social research

For example, letters, diaries, autobiographies, websites, photographs, etc.

If not produced for the purposes of social research, they are unobtrusive measures

- authenticity
- credibility
- representativeness
- meaning

Genuine and of unquestionable origin
- Did the "author" actually write the piece?

Free from error or distortion, factually accurate

- Is the report factual?
- Does it reflect the true feelings of the author?

Typical of what it is supposed to represent
- Do the documents accurately reflect people of different classes and genders?
meaning

Clear and comprehensible
- May be somewhat elusive in writing

- diaries
- letters
- autobiographies
- visual objects (photos, videos)

used to illustrate points
sources of data
used as prompts to get people to talk

- Idealization: formally posed
- Natural portrayal: candid, not posed
- Demystification: revealing, atypical portrayal
visual objects- representativeness?

The photographs available may not be typical of the event or episode depicted

- What is not photographed may be very significant

Selection biases (filtering)
- What is chosen to be photographed
- What is chosen to be kept

Ask the following questions:
- When were they taken?
- Where were they taken?
- Of whom were they taken?

Include census information, voting records, official reports, etc.

Can be seen as authentic and having meaning

Credibility- Are the documents biased?
- What does bias reveal?

include documents produced by companies and other private organizations
- Are likely to be authentic and meaningful

Biases based on organizational structure (hierarchy) may lead to a distortion of data

Access to information requires permission

- To what information is the researcher granted access?
- private source data can be very hard to get

Newspapers, magazines, TV, films, etc.

Authorship may be hard to ascertain

often the uncovering of error or distortion that is the objective of the analysis.

Publications represent particular interest groups and must do so to keep an audience
- Context is important (e.g., culture, humour)

Include websites, email, listservs, discussion groups, chat rooms, etc.

Anyone can setup a website so the knowledge claim may not be valid

The posted information may not be correct

Posted information is constantly changing

Search engines vary one to the other and only access a portion of the available sites on a specific topic
- What bias exists in the selection of those sites?

What is the context of the website?
- Often a "webspeak" or "language" barrier

- Words, including the pairing of certain words
- Subjects and themes
- Value positions

Frequency of words and pairing

- For example, feminist/spirituality, race/politics, rave/drugs, etc.

This includes both manifest and latent content

- For example, the subject of "women in politics," and whether gender stereotypes are invoked or implied

Positive or negative view
- For example, the subject of "multiculturalism"

What is the presentation front?
- For example, personal ads

1.) Designing a coding schedule

2.) Designing a coding manual

The form where the data are recorded

- The set of instructions to coders

- Lists what is to be coded, the categories subsumed under each dimension, the numbers (codes) that correspond to each category, and general guidance for coders

- The categories must be mutually exclusive
- The categories must be exhaustive
- The instructions must be clear
- The unit of analysis must be clear

The entity being analyzed (e.g., newspaper article) vs. the problem analyzed (e.g., study of crime)

Pilot test will reduce risks of error

Reliability of coding is important:
- Inter-coder reliability (consistency between coders)
- Intra-coder reliability (consistency within coders)

Qualitative content analysis looks for underlying themes present in a unit of analysis

- The researcher decides herself what themes are to be extracted and how the presence of a theme is established

- Themes are recurrent topics mentioned in a text or in a recording

- Themes could be anticipated or emergent in the text

Ethnographic content analysis (ECA) (Altheide, 1996)

- Differs from quantitative content analysis in that the researcher is constantly revising the themes or categories as the data are examined

- Emphasizes the context in which the documents were generated

- Follows a recursive and reflexive movement between concept development-sampling-data, collection-data, coding-data, and analysis interpretation
semiotics
- seeks to do what?

the study of signs and symbols and their use or interpretation

"the science of signs"
- Studies systems of communication and meaning by looking at signs

- Seeks to expose hidden meanings in texts
- The sign is something that stands for something else, such as a yellow traffic light
- It has two components, a signifier and a signified

- denotation
- connotation
- myth

- The most immediate level of meaning. Eg. A picture of a face denotes a specific person

- first, surface level of meaning. Most immediately it is what you see when you look at a text, what is immediately present.

- Associative meanings, generally more abstract concepts that are invoked by a representation. Eg. A woman on a magazine cover representing the concepts of femininity or sexiness.

- second and deeper level of meaning it asks what a text implies, what ideas it brings forward, what concepts it presents below the surface.

- A broad set of cultural assumptions, beliefs and values evoked and reinforced by media texts.

- more abstract and represents cultural ideas associated with specific representations. Ideas like everyone should have a car, because everybody will be happier with a car, the car enables happiness

Theory and methodology of text interpretation (originally religious texts)

- The meaning of a text involve the author's circumstances and the context in which the text was constructed

- Author's world view important for deriving meaning

- Context is critical to understanding, must be considered during analysis

- Do readers accept the interpretation at face value or do they read with critique and evaluation?

- Do they re-interpret what is written?

- Social researchers interpret data through their own frame of reference

- Conclusions reflect interpretations of a particular researcher, not all possible interpretations

No objective reality waiting to be found, no objective account of social world is possible

Tends toward a constructionist orientation

- Priority to accounts by actual participants

- Recognizes that many different accounts are possible

- Oriented to action- Considers strategies employed by actors to achieve their objectives in communication

Based in large part on the work of Michel Foucault

- For Foucault the ability to shape discourses is power in the sense that it is the ability to include or exclude certain people or ideas from society.

- Foucault's work focused in large part on how different uses of language shaped experience.

- Discourse analysis seeks to track these discourses and how they are used to shape perception.

Discourse is a topic in itself
Language is constructive
Discourse is a form of action
Discourse is rhetorically organized

Quantification rhetoric

Using variation in numbers to highlight contrast

Attention to specific details

Attention to rhetorical detail

Statements involving numbers or quantities made to supportefute arguments

Emphasizes supportive evidence to the argument

Sensitivity to the way argument is constructed: construct convincing arguments, discount a possible counter-argument

Exposes the political nature of the examined texts, considers the issues of power hierarchies, structural inequalities, and historical political struggles

- Social justice focus

In CDA, discourse is not conceived purely as the use of language, but is viewed through its links to broader social influences (structures), making this strand of DA closer to social science than to analysis of language.

- Both social factors and linguistic practices influence power relations and shape the discourse.

a sociological approach that looks at how we create meaning in naturally occurring conversation, often by taping conversations and examining them

*** detailed analysis of the structure of talk

- Indexicality
- Reflexivity

Things like pauses and sounds have meaning that depend on the context in which they exist

Examines how social order is created through communication:

- Social order is an achievement not an objective pre-existing phenomenon that we uncover
Conversation Analysis
- fits into
- focuses on

- Fits into qualitative research tradition
- Focuses on reflexivity (responds to context)
- Data from naturally occurring situations (naturalist)

Contextual understanding
A constructionist ontology

- Fine-grained detailed analysis of talk
- Structure of talk analyzed
- Positivist orientation on replicability
- Context means just the words said prior to a response

- Talk is structured
- Talk is forged contextually
- Analysis should be grounded in data

Turn-taking

Adjacency pairs- How the talk moves between parties (e.g., question-answer)

Preference organization- Preferred responses and non-preferred responses (non-preferred responses require justification)

CA is a structural analysis of talk

- Reference to cultural contexts explaining the conversation are not permitted

- CA examines the structure and history of the talk itself

- Very transparent in its quantitative form, and therefore easily replicated

- Allows for longitudinal analysis

- Unobtrusive method

- Flexible: It can be used with several kinds of unstructured information

- Overcomes social barriers to researcher access

- Limitations due to the texts analyzed (e.g., authenticity, credibility, representativeness)

- Usually some inter-coder and intra-coder unreliability

- Potential for invalid conjecture, especially in discussions of latent meanings (problems of interpretation)

- Difficult to answer "Why?" questions using this method

- Emphasis on measurement may make it theoretical in nature