Qualitative Media Research, A foundation

My name is Prudence Motswatswe. I am a twenty-six years old Bachelor of Arts (Honours) student in Media Studies. My choice to undertake the study of this particular discipline of study, including Media Research as part of my modules stems from the desire to acquire a deeper understanding of the relationship between media and its audiences. I am a Professional in the media industry, working as a Senior Communications Officer for Audiovisual Productions. Through the many encounters with society, I have witnessed the gaps which I need to understand from a research and a theoretical point of view. The gaps mentioned above include amongst many: the interactions and issues of power between media and its audiences. The purpose for my blog is to explore in-depth if media, with the main focus on the analysis of whether newspapers texts are ethical in their education responsibility in the South African society or audiences. It will further critically analyse and establish whether media in its type of content plays a role in the societal divides e.g. in terms of socio-economical divides that exist in society. At the end of the year I would like to have developed more insight into the relationship between media and society as well to be able to have a critical mind when engaging with different media texts.

In the today’s fast paced changing world, the changes equally apply to the general media concept. What will always be central to media is the audience. This is the main factor which influences this blog to explore media and audiences. McQuail (2010:398) mentions that “the audience concept implies an attentive, receptive but relatively passive set of listeners or spectators assembled in a more or less public setting.” This is not the truth, and it is a problematic statement when analysing the today’s audiences and media. These are the kind of issues that this blog will challenge throughout the course of the media research period. The media research will end with recommendations determined and influenced by the collected data and its analysis.

 

I have chosen the qualitative method of research in my approach to media research. This is so because my media research study will be explorative and descriptive in nature and choosing the alternative method which is the quantitative method, which focuses on numbers and statistical data, will not be sufficient in exploring the dynamics of my study. Qualitative research is described by Dawson (2006:16-17) as “research that explores attitudes, behaviour, and experiences through such methods as interviews, or focus groups. It attempts to get an in-depth opinion from participants. While Quantitative research generates statistics through the use of large scale survey research, using methods such as questionnaires and structured interviews.”  Dawson’s definitions on these types of research methodologies, prove that the most relevant methodology for my study is the qualitative approach.

In this regard, this blog considers one of the most important aspects of the qualitative method of research which Altheide and Schneider (2013:41) discuss which is the “the ecology of communication” model which suggests and also illustrates the importance of history and context especially the technological changes that contributed to the formats for news presentation particularly the development of cable and satellite television as well as the signal expansion of news-related programs about the turn of the century.”

The analysis of these media texts will include doing a comparative analysis between newspapers with different types of audiences and the content (this target audience will be clarified as the research study progresses). This blog finds the following as the core principles to qualitative research ethics and textual analysis in media studies: Context, History, Fairness in evaluating and comparing research phenomenon, Honesty and respects for research participants and Keeping an open mind when it comes to research. These principles will be briefly discussed below:

1. Context

In considering context the research will be free of pre-determined expectations, and every single data collected and analysed will be done with open objective mind that is welcoming any changes of evolutions that may exist. Comparative analysis will be done so only to determine if there are any trends or differences.

2. History

The history of any phenomenon under study has a direct influence in the behaviour of a phenomenon. The history of a phenomenon, in this case, newspaper texts will be explored.

3. Fairness in evaluating and comparing research phenomenon

Similar to the aspect of context, fairness in approach will be exercised by applying the same equal conditions to the participants and where comparisons are made it will still under fair conditions.

4. Honesty and respect for research participants

The data presented in the last stage of the research process will be not faked. It reflect the true conditions perceived from analysing the data collected.

5. Keeping an open-mind

This principle includes not going into the research with pre-determined ideas, and having the openness to accept changes as swayed by the collected data from different sources and participants.

Last but not least this blog would like the reader to be familiar with the research process that will be the guide to the overall research which includes: the collection of documents e.g. documents that are to analysed as part of the study, Protocol development and data collection, data coding and organisation (including the categorisation of collected data), Analysing data and lastly reporting the findings (Altheide and Schneider. 2013:39).

Bibliography:

Altheider, D.L and Schneider, C.J. 2013.Qualitative Media Analysis, second edition. SAGE Publications, Inc: USA

Dawson, C. 2006. A Practical Guide to Research Methoths, second edition. How To Books Ltd: United Kindom