Methodology
In my thesis I utilized the quantitative content analysis method. There are many definitions of this research method from different authors. Most of the definitions include similar principles. The research should be systematical, objective, quantitative and replicable. Daniel Riff introduced in his book the major definition and compiled their aspects into his own. He says:
“Quantitative content analysis is the systematic and replicable examination of symbols of communication, which have been assigned numeric values according to valid measurement rules, and the analysis of relationships involving those values using statistical methods, to describe the communication, draw inferences about its meaning, or infer from the communication
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Research question no. 1: What were the most written about topic in articles related to the invasion to Iraq?
Research question no. 2: What type of sources the journalists used?
Hypotheses no. 1: The journalists were accused of marginalizing voices against the war. Therefore, my hypothesis is that there will be significantly more sources advocating the opinions of the Bush administration than criticizing it. Similarly, most of the articles will be biased towards the Bush administration.
The universe in question and selection of an appropriate sample from the population.
For my quantitative analysis I have chosen two major newspapers: The New York Times and The Washington Post. These two titles are considered as so called prestigious or elite newspapers. This type mass media is often held to higher standards of journalism because they can utilize more resources. Noam Chomsky also uses term agenda-setting media. “The elite media set a framework within which others operate.” Other non-elite media take over their topics, or often whole stories and articles. Most of their reading public are “people who are wealthy or part of what is sometimes called the political class… political managers, business managers (like corporate executives or that sort of thing), doctoral managers
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The study on television news used more categories. However, some of them were very similar and the amount of articles in each would be too small. Therefore, I decided to reduce the number of the categories and create more general ones. That means, for example, that I combined all stories about military planning or strategy; all stories about current situation in Iraq (life of ordinary people, opposition, airstrikes and sanctions); all articles about foreign country or views of foreigners composed another category. All the categories are listed below:
1 = Debate over invasion 10 = Reconstruction plans / Post-war Iraq
2 = Military planning / strategy 11 = Terrorism / Al-Qaeda
3 = Speech by official (American or Iraqi) or prominent citizen 12 = First Gulf war / History
4 = Domestic politics 13 = Protests / Rallies
5 = International views / Impact on allies 14= Public Opinion
6 = UN resolution / meeting 15= Costs of war
7 = Situation in Iraq 16 = Other
8 = Weapons
Stories are no longer respectable and virtuous as they were at modern journalism’s beginning. Thus, by journalists Fallows and Rothman have named the media as unethical. Another way that modern journalists have transformed today’s media is that the media now relies on the popularity of its stories and articles. Journalist Jack Shafer uses his article, “The Rise and the Fall of the Obama Media Romance” as an example of popular opinion reflecting
Have you ever listened to a news story and thought it sounded one-sided? Or have you thought the news didn't seem to report the whole story or the most important aspect of a story? Journalists possess the power to influence a whole group of people with their work. When writers input their opinion, they generate bias. Consecutively, this influences a reader's reaction to a topic.
A different quote in this article states “The news media is extremely powerful, and that it can inject particular points of view into its audience. At the other extreme, scholars have contended that the media has minimal effects on individuals because of various mediating conditions, including their selective exposure to media they find congenial to their views, selective perception in accordance with preexisting
When destruction strikes many newspapers and try their best to cover it. This paper looks at how local newspapers will cover a story that happening in it’s area compared to how a newspaper with more national coverage will cover the same story. Thus, newspapers with different target audiences will cover the same event in different ways. On March 11, 2011 there was an earthquake just off the coast of Japan that spawned a tsunami that hit many coastal communities in California and beyond.
On September 11th, 2001, a group of terrorists led airplane attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon (Merskin 375). The American government would eventually blame the attacks on terrorists of “Arab/Middle Eastern descent,” an American enemy that, according to Debra Merskin, had been well in place since the Gulf War of 1991 (Merskin 375). Given this, when Bush delivers his speech on the morning of the attacks, it is important to keep in mind that an enemy is already firmly in place (though the President does not explicitly identify the enemy). Further, it is crucial that we note George Bush’s credibility prior to the attacks. Bligh, Kohles and Meindl remark that, “Despite earlier doubt in the President’s tenure regarding voting scandals,
Occasionally we all meet someone with contradicting view than ours, for it is in human nature to be in conflict. However, there are those occasions when someone’s views, whether they agree with the view held by one’s own opinion or not, are underdeveloped. They acquire what they read or see around them and take these as the only facts of the case. The opinions held are hardly their own, just fragmented compilations of others formed by the reported news on skewed media outlets. McCombs and Reynolds once reported in 2002 within an article on the influence news that, “News media may not be successful in telling people what to think, but they are stunning successful in telling them what to think about”.
Society expect to be constantly entertained; they have become so concerned with things such as who the latest star is dating, scandals, or dumb people doing rather idiotic things. Much of society have been consumed in their personal instant gratification and what makes them “happy”. When on an off chance that news does show things that are serious and impactful(not necessarily positive things that is happening in the world) people have become so numb that the best they could do is feel sympathetic and at worst continue on with their day. The other part of the problem is that those behind what is being published and shown on the news media have been absorbed in their avarice nature, whatever allows them to make as much profit they do. “Writing thousands of hours of coverage from what could have been summarized in a couple of minutes every few weeks, a new rhetorical strategy was developed, or-let’s be generous-evolved”(6), Saunders describes the new formula formed by mass news firms that would yield the most profit.
When I was looking for an argument to analysis, I realized that they were all about politics. I looked at the multiple source examples that you had given us: New York Times, The Guardian, and Al Jazeera. I also added CNN into the mix of things, but I was really shocked that all of these big newspapers had the same topic. Because to me I would think that if they were competing against each other that they would have different topics they wrote about. They were all talking about the Presidential Elections.
The Iraq War’s opposition was polled at rates as high as 91% in both Italy and Spain, while this same opposition spread throughout countries in Eastern Europe as well (Arie). United Nations Secretary, Kofi Annan, describe the war as “illegal” as it was “not in conformity with the Security Council” (Tyler). However, after invading, Bush then looked to his allies for support, which he received from the United Kingdom and Australia, followed by other allies (Williams). President Bush saw that invading unilaterally was in the United States best interest in order to protect the nation and seek regime change in Iraq and Afghanistan without receiving support from other nations first. Under Bush’s administration, the main focus was on acting preemptively and unilaterally if necessary to protect the United
By having access to instruments of mass media and other systems of public opinion, elites are able to shape the opinions of people and this makes their opinions to be taken seriously even when people do not necessarily agree with them. They use this aspect to control events and shapes attitudinal postures in how people relate with events that occur in the society. Indeed, elites can use their power to shape the complex processes of social cognition to line up with their preferences and ideals. The opinions of these elites are not necessarily adopted by the society at large. With this aspect in mind, elites can as well use their powers to suppress or marginalize alternative options (Dijk, p.44,
Former President George H. W. Bush during his term has involved the U.S military in several international conflicts. These conflicts include the invasion of Panama in December year 1989, the forcible eviction of Iraqi forces from Kuwait in the year 1991, and the intervention in Somalia beginning in December of 1992 to January 1993. During Bush’s first inaugural speech, he expressed unity between the executive and legislative branches in concerns to foreign affairsThe conduction of the foreign policy by Bush’s administration was considered very successful, this can be attributed to the fact that Bush possesses deep foreign policy experience. A foreign policy is a strategy or policy that is put into place by governments as a way to protect national
When thinking of the media you think they are reporting the appropriate and accurate information not based on any personal opinions and feelings. Also one would not think the media would be reporting based on one side of politics or the other. The media is extremely biased when it comes to politics and news. While some of the media is conservative-biased I believe the mass media is liberal-biased. Majority of media outlets are liberal companies, media personnel and journalists will identify themselves as democrats and liberals more so than republicans or conservatives and lastly the left side (liberals) of the mass media is persuasive on what information to report.
The Role of Media in the feminist movement The term media refers to several different types of methods used to communicate and educate society for a socially aware nation (Pradesh, 2014). It is regarded collectively as ‘mass media’, which includes broadcast media (television, cinema and radio), print media (newspapers, magazines, and journals) and Internet based-web sites (“Role of Media in Social Awareness”, 2013; Pradesh, 2014). Through its different marketing segments, media is a fundamental source for information and idea exchanging.
The initial posed questions were whether a linguistic approach is the best way to analyze political text in the media and which approaches tend to be the most reliable in sense of analyzing political discourse in the media. (also, see: Richardson, 2006; Reah, 2002) As a result, an independent systematic analysis was conducted, which provided the existing literature of developments from political, linguist, communitive and psychological perspectives. In addition, as a part of the systematic analysis, 50 news items on the United Kingdom’s membership in the European Union were extracted from the leading British quality press and the headlines and lead sentences were evaluated in accordance with the discussed approaches, models and frameworks based on their political grounds, if any, and the relationship between the political orientation of the newspaper owners in reflecting their favored political party’s ideology on the media had been scrutinized. That study concluded that analyzing the same text based on different approaches, models and frameworks leads to a diversity in the findings.
3. Methodology 3.1 Introduction The purpose of this chapter is to outline the methods used in the gathering of data to answer the dissertation question. Limitations of the method, a description of the research tools and why it is being undertaken will be discussed. Research can be defined as “a systematic and organised effort to investigate a problem that needs a solution and encompasses the process of inquiry, investigation, examination and experimentation” (Sekaran 1992, p.4).