Transcript researching media texts

MC53001B
MEDIA AND SOCIAL RESEARCH:
CRITICAL SKILLS AND APPROCHES
LECTURE TWO: RESEARCHING MEDIA TEXTS
Veronica Barassi, PSH240
[email protected]
@veronicabarassi
RESEARCHING MEDIA TEXTS
THE LECTURE
Lecture One: Social Research, Studying Society and Culture
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Foundations of Social Research in sociology and anthropology
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Qualitative vs Quantitative methodologies
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Understanding media research and the relation between question/method
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Three different media research approaches 1) understanding media as texts 2) understanding
media as organisations 3) understanding media as practices
Lecture Two
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Understanding Media as Text: Ideology, Semiotics and Cultural Analysis
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Content/Textual and Discourse Analysis
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Defining your method/ and approach
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http://www.boredpanda.com/sexism-women-objectification-advertising-womennotobjects/
Understanding Texts
RESEARCHING MEDIA TEXTS
THE INFLUENCE OF SEMIOTICS AND STRUCTURALISM
• Developing a social science that studies the role of
signs in social life
• Language is a social thing (signifier/signified;
parole/langue)
• Understanding the structures of language - e.g.
Barthes (1957) and Levi-Strauss (1978) on myth
F Saussure (1857-1913)
RESEARCHING MEDIA TEXTS
THE INFLUENCE OF MARXISM AND THE FRANKFURT SCHOOL
• Marx and Engels (1846) – Ideology and False consciousness/ Ideology as a
top-down process and ‘camera obscura’
• Marxism Influence on the Frankfurt School in the 1920s-1930s
• Adorno and Horkheimer (1944) – the cultural industry and the
subservience to consumer capitalism
RESEARCHING MEDIA TEXTS
POSTMODERNISM, FOUCAULT, AND CULTURAL STUDIES
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Foucault (1978) Discourse and Power – Discourse is not a top-down
rational/cognitive processes ( like Marxists notion of ideology) but involves the
construction of knowledge (historically specific truths about something)
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Power/Knowledge – the institutions/agents who construct knowledge have
power
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Discourse is not a rational process but a complex embodied process. We
construct ourselves as Subjects on the basis of discourse
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Hall (1980) Representation is a constructed discourse, which enables the
production of specific truths (through stereotyping) and the construction of the
subject (by exposure to these truths)
Researching Texts
RESEARCHING MEDIA TEXTS
HOW DO WE STUDY TEXTS/DISCOURSE: PREPARATION
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What is text? – Newspapers articles, TV programmes, Films/ documentary,
photography, advertising, radio programme, art, social media posts, websites, etc.
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Sampling your text – (you can find texts on online and offline archives; or you can
decide to collect your texts over a period of time e.g. one month observation of
women magazines)
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Choose your sample carefully, you can do what you want but need to be coherent.
Don’t be too ambitious (e.g. reality TV programme – up to five episodes)
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Choose your approach: content/textual or discourse analysis
RESEARCHING MEDIA TEXTS
DEFINING YOUR APPOACH: CONTENT, TEXTUAL OR DISCOURSE ANALYSIS?
• In the media research methods literature, there is an overlap between the
different uses of terms.
• Overall, however:
– Content analysis/textual analysis (focus on text - study of the
content/study of context, quantitative/qualitative - overlap) –
– Discourse Analysis (focus on flows of representations – study of
creation of systems of truths and subjectification) – usually based on
case studies
RESEARCHING MEDIA TEXTS
DEFINING YOUR METHOD:
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Analyse your text: Lasswell (1927) model of propaganda communication
analysis basic questions: -who? Says what? In which channel? To whom? With
what effect?
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Sytagmatic Analysis/ Narrative Analysis – Understand your text as a narrative
with specific functions and characters (e.g. Propp/Barthes)
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Look at elements of Intertextuality
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Decide whether you want to focus on a content/quantitative analysis or on a
qualitative analysis, or both
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Be flexible, creative and open
RESEARCHING MEDIA TEXTS
DEFINING YOUR METHOD: CONSIDER EXAMPLES (Ideological Criticism)
• Dorfam and Mattelart (1971) – qualitative textual analysis of Disney’s
ideology.
– The role of women and the missing mother
– The noble savage – the imperialist discourse
RESEARCHING MEDIA TEXTS
DEFINING YOUR METHOD: CONSIDER EXAMPLES (Discourse Analysis and
Subjectivity)
• Stuart Hall (1980) – The
Representation of the Other/Race
– Focus on interconnected case
studies and how meaning
circulates across the media
– Attention to the constructions of
truths about race which are
internalised by the subject/
stereotypes
RESEARCHING MEDIA TEXTS
Fairy Soap (1860) / United Colors of
Benetton (1982)
RESEARCHING MEDIA TEXTS
DEFINING YOUR METHOD: CONSIDER EXAMPLES
(Online Textual Interactions)
• The Guardian ‘The Web We Want Project’(Dr Becky Gardiner, 2016)
– quantitative content analysis of 70m comments focus on ‘blocked’
comments
– The Dark side of the web – 10 most abused writers (8 are women and
2 are black men)
– Abusive comments widespread on current affairs issues
(Israeli/Palestinian Conflict; Feminist Issues; Rape)
THANK YOU
[email protected]