Discussing The Research Of Media On Methodology Media Essay

How do British newspapers frame the 2008 Beijing Olympics in their news?

This chapter presents and justifies the research methodology. To begin with, the general introduction of the overall strategy will be provided. Secondly, why a combination of content and discourse analysis was necessary in assessing media texts in this study will be explained. Then, it presents reasons for the selection of newspapers; and finally shows a detailed design of content analysis.

3.1 The Research Strategy

Content analysis was applied to analyze the coverage related to the 2008 Beijing Olympics in British press. In addition, discourse analysis of newspaper articles was utilized in order to detect the extent to which media bias exists in the British newspaper towards China human right issue. The quantitative and qualitative measures could be complementary in this research, and it is believed that the combination of these two methods would contribute to provide effective and valid results. The merits and drawbacks of each method are discussed briefly below.

3.1.1 Content Analysis

The purpose of this research was to analyze news coverage related to 2008 Beijing Olympics; thus, content analysis is an appropriate data collection method for this study. As Neuendorf (2002: 1) puts it, content analysis is 'the systematic, objective, quantitative analysis of message characteristics'. This research method codifies the text (or content) into various groups (or categories) based on selected criteria (Milne and Adler, 1999). In practice, Content analysis is frequently used in the field of media studies to evaluate the news coverage. The application of quantitative content analysis can offer an approach that measures "all variables as they naturally or normally occur" and avoid the researcher's deliberate deletion or omission of independent data (Neuendorf 2002: 49). In this sense, it also enables the researcher to discover problems and represent outcomes from all kinds of verbal, pictorial and symbolic data.

In this study, it is considered that content analysis was the best method to adopt in order to evaluate the way the British Newspaper covered the Beijing Olympics and China human right issue as well as the extent of media prejudice in different titles. This approach emphasis the counting and measuring of the news items and is highly practical in terms of comparative evaluations of variables (Hesmondhalgh 2006: 154), this helps the researcher to present findings of data and then demonstrate effectively how the newspaper covered the human right cases during a particular period. What's more, it is possible to make comparisons from the results obtained from by data analysis, and empirical data were most comprehensive when a examining how different newspapers reported issues in their distinct ways.

Nevertheless, this approach also has narrow limitations when conducting the research. To mention first, content analysis is a text-driven analysis; and the samples selection of newspaper texts might closely depend on the researcher's personal decision. In spite of the aid of the quantitative text analysis software, as Krippendorff (2004: 341) suggests, the text explorations are "essentially limited to a single analyst's conceptions". This would result in subjective selections of samples. Furthermore, the implication of news language might be related with different perceptions by different viewers, and the researcher could have intrinsic limitations on the interpretation and recognition of the texts. From this perspective, qualitative discourse analysis as an important complement, was deemed necessary to overcome the weakness of content analysis and could aid the analyst to disclose the essential implication of words and detect the extent to which media prejudice exists in the British Newspaper.

3.1.2 Discourse Analysis

Discourse Analysis is one of the more practical ways of examining language as a form of cultural and social practice, and is an approach which allows the description and interpretation of social life as it is presented in texts. As Phillips and Jorgensen (2002: 67) propose, "discourses contribute to the construction of systems of knowledge and meanings in a social context". In effect, discourse analysis is applicable to a wide variety in the field of mass communication research. Critical Discourse Analysis, which focuses particularly on the relationship between power and discourse, studying the way in which 'social power abuse, dominance, and inequality are enacted, reproduced, and resisted by text and talk in the social and political context' (van Dijk 2001: 352), has arguably become the standard framework for discourse studies and it can help the researcher to maintain a critical view of the author (Garrett and Bell 1998: 4-6). Fairclough and Van Dijk are linked discourse to power and social interest and particularly concerned with its ideological effects of discourse. In this regard, a great advantage of using Critical Discourse Analysis is that it can offer an approach that enables the analyst to manifest how significations were articulated in particular discourses.

In this piece of research, the qualitative Critical Discourse Analysis was adopted to reveal how the different British media framed the 2008 Beijing Olympics in their news and what the frameworks of the stories were as events progressed. To this point, the application of discourses analysis helps the researcher to analyze the specific human rights issues. Moreover, in consideration of different political stance, how the reports about the human rights case were recreated by different titles is concerned as well. In effect, frames analysis in discourses has long been a practical approach to identify different selections and structures of specific words or sentences in a text (Entman, 1991).

Discourse analysis has been judged as an effective approach in numerous media researches. Critical discourse analysts seek to make visible the 'common-sense' social and cultural assumptions (or ideologies) which, below the level of conscious awareness, are embedded in all forms of language that people use (Fairclough, 2001); it is considered that discourse analysis is a practical method in examining media language and might make a profound influence on demonstrating the relationship between language and ideology in news text.

However, discourse analysis which remains text-based encounters a series of problems: firstly，the issue of the accuracy of representations and the need to go beyond the text to check these, the second is the question of the significance of the text to the audience, the final point which are called "whose rhetoric" and also relates to the need for an account of the social and political structures which underpin the content of texts(Greg, 2007) .In this sense, discourse analysis adopted in this research might limit without the analysis of production and reception processes. "is a complex task but it is the way forward if we are to come to terms adequately with the generation and reproduction of social meanings in media accounts"(ibid). In other words, words in discourse may only be interpreted precisely in the context in which they occur.

In this regard, quantitative structural analysis of news articles appeared to be necessary to provided overall framework, furnish supporting evidence and information for the analyst. In particularly, it enables the researcher identify the possible differences when data were compared. Thus, qualitative discourse analysis and quantitative content analysis were used to complement each other, which was conducive to reduce the feasibility of subjectivity and enabled the findings of the study to be more productive.

3.2 The Selection of Newspapers

In this study, the news reports from two daily British newspapers: The Guardians and The Times will be explored. For the purpose of this research, the selection of newspapers was applied on the basis of the following two criteria:

Influence of newspapers.

Political Stances of Newspapers.

As for the first point, the broadsheets and circulation were considered. The Guardian and the Time are both prestigious national daily newspaper distributed throughout the United Kingdom and worldwide with extensive international coverage and high national circulations. Afro-Asian areas are attached more importance to these titles. In particular, the guardian has the "Asia-China" column.

In general, the larger the circulation and potential readership, the greater the newspaper's influence might be. According to the statistics from the Audit Bureau of Circulations (2009), The Times had a certified average daily circulation of 617,483 copies in January 2009, as compared to sales of 358,844 for The Guardian. According to its editor, The Guardian has the second largest online readership of any English-language newspaper in the world, after the New York Times. Hence, it is evident that The Guardian and The Times have a large readership; this enabled the analyst to collect the most representative data.

As Allen Bell (1991) points out, different media regard different things as news. Regarding the second point, consideration was given to the possibility of editorial stance of these two newspapers. In essence, the two national titles have different political tendencies and tradition, thus have different positions and reflect the different characteristics. Such as the "Guardian", the paper's editorial stance has generally been on the mainstream left of British political opinion; the reports presented to the more neutral and objective. While "The time" has been described as conservative, the reports show a certain degree of hostility and anti-China stance.

3. 3 Design of Content Analysis

3.3.1 Selection and Inclusion

The related articles of the two newspapers are selected and retrieved from the NEWSBANK Database by searching the key word: "Beijing Olympics" during the periods of 1 March 2008 and30 April 2008. There is some reason for setting up the time scale. March and April have been the most eventful months for China in the pre-game period. For instance, The "3.14 Tibet Riot", some Hollywood stars joined human rights activists worldwide in boycotting the Olympics , the torch has been shadowed on its journeys by pro-Tibet demonstrators who troubled the relay in London. Therefore, it is able to encompass a great volume of significant converges in this study, all in relation to the preparation of the 2008 Beijing Olympic and offers a proper opportune moment through which to examine the attitude of the U.K. media toward China and the human right problems.

For all the papers, both editorial and news reports were included. The refined sample which more closely related to the topic contained 453 stories; nevertheless, due to the large volume of news produced by the search, the study eliminate stories that were too short to offer any meaningful results like news briefs (less than 200 words). For instance, one piece of news talks about "Tottenham and Newcastle start ball rolling for friendly in China", (The Guardian, March 1st ,2008)only mentioned that "they are playing a pre-season friendly in China in the weeks before the Beijing Olympic Games get under way on August 8." These articles are not included in the sample. The new coverage about how the British athletes' preparation for the Beijing Olympics also excludes, unless it mentioned related issues to the administration of Beijing Olympic. The articles about the preparation of 2010 London Olympics but mentioned about Beijing Olympics as comparison also calculated.

Altogether 170 news articles were coded finally for the sample, with 72 for the Guardian and 98 for the Times.

3.3.2 Measures of Content Analysis and Explanations of Variables

In addition to evaluating how much attention these two newspapers devoted to the preparation of 2008 Beijing Olympics, this study intended to explore how ideologically opposed newspapers covered the great event of the world as well as how neutral stances were reflected in the news reports. More specifically, content analysis was designed to analyze their coverage in terms of the following three aspects:

1. Type of the news

2. Major topics

The research, through an overview of the collected news articles, identified fived major topics: Government administration, politics, economic, sports and culture. In order to minimize ambiguity over news topics, the coding of the major topics was on the basis of two criteria - the length devoted to a specific topic and the headline of the news (Jia, 2006). For instance, an article mentions both the administration and sports, but is entitled "Gebrselassie's stance fans air of concern for athletes' health"; it was coded as "administration". (The Guardian, March 18th, 2008)

3. Critical issues

(1)What are the Critical issues covered by the two newspapers concerning Beijing Olympics in the pre-game period?

(2)Are there any similarities and differences? 

4. The news resource

Which channel of information in the Olympics media focused on-the International Olympic Committee (IOC), Chinese government, Olympic squads, civil society, foreign politicians, or others?  Diversity of viewpoints was measured on the paragraph level.

In this study, the researcher classified the viewpoints of social actors into：

5. Tone of the coverage

The collected news articles are coded into four types of tones: positive, negative, neutral and mixed. The researcher here considered "offing suggestions or admonition" as a category reflected further describe of criticism. Furthermore, whether this criticism was put forward by journalists or editors directly or by quoting a source was suggested. An article that presented neutral facts was considered neutral. A piece was as coded as positive or negative when such comments definitely indicated. A story made criticisms but also expressed an affirmative regarding the achievements was coded as mixed.

3.4 Conclusion

This chapter described and justified the methods and measures for this study, and it illustrated that content analysis, discourse analysis were the best possible approaches to adopt. Firstly, it presented content analysis could help the analyst to identify problems and extract findings from all kinds of data. This approach involves the counting and measuring of news items and highly based on practical analysis of variables. It was especially helpful when data were compared to identify possible differences. Secondly, the researcher showed the considerations in integrating discourse analysis with content analysis. On the one hand, critical discourses analysis could assist the researcher to interpret the underlying meanings of words and reveal how conceptions of ideologies were articulated in particular discourses; on the other hand, qualitative discourse analysis and quantitative content analysis could be used in a complementary ways, and this could be conducive to answer the research questions and enabled the outcome of the study more productive and valid.

It goes to the next two chapters demonstrates the outcomes of the data analysis and discuss the main findings of this study.