What is Analyzing Media Data? Pertti Alasuutari University of Tampere

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1 What is Analyzing Media Data? Pertti Alasuutari University of Tampere

2 A Neat Way to Study Culture and Society Get rid of the obsession to do interviews! Most information can be found in existing documents no need to do expert interviews Most social practices or events can be studied by following the trail of documents, e.g. news reports, they leave behind Most discourses or repertoires people use to deal with an issue can be found in the media individuals use the pool of publicly available forms of talk

3 A Case Example A Ph.D. dissertation (in evaluation process) by Joaquim de Negreiros on patterns of family life as represented in British lifestyle magazines (King's College) Magazines addressed to girls, women and men Covers a plethora of discourses by which motherhood, partnerships, marriage, and parents-children relations are dealt with Celebrities personal views, readers letters, expert and lay advice, etc. It is hard to imagine what could be added by interviewing individuals

4 Another Example Jopi Nyman: Men Alone: Masculinity, Individualism, and Hard-Boiled Fiction (Amsterdam: Rodopi 1997) Examines the representation of masculinity and individualism in four American hard-boiled fiction novels Shows that in the novels a strong hard-boiled masculinity is represented as a norm Hard-boiled fiction functions as the field where the ultimate battles between male and female, masculine and feminine, traditional and modern, good and bad, self and other can be fought and sometimes won.

5 The Media: A Mirror of Culture and Society? Magazines, books and other media data are not made to provide researchers with an easy access to the secrets of the social world To draw conclusions from media texts the researcher needs to define the cultural position of the data The media are not a mirror of society; they are part of it The same is true of all data Observational data about a football game sheds light on some sides of the phenomenon, player interviews or group discussions on other sides, and newspaper coverage of football matches discloses yet other viewpoints

6 The Media as Partisans The idea that the media affect political agenda-setting or contribute to the formation of hegemonic discourses Often studied by comparing media coverage of a topic in different media Particular media events or moral panics may also be studied These perspectives may be complemented with analyses of the media industry and media ownership How media moguls may have vested interests in promoting certain views and policies

7 The Media as Public Spheres The media provide forums through which people learn about viewpoints by which issues are discussed in public Or they also promote particular perspectives see e.g. organs of parties and trade unions The media appeal to generally approved values and principles Party newspapers Target audiences, argumentation in the name of the general good Public service broadcasting Parliamentary control; even-handed representation of different views Commercial media Several target audiences whom the stories appeal to

8 The Media as Public Spheres In one sense, as a whole, different media constitute the nation or some other imagined community The public sphere defines what are valid and necessary viewpoints within which one may present a reasonable argument on an issue Yet the media cannot be separated from the rest of society The media are powerful but parasitic They are watchdogs, seldom sledgedogs

9 The Media Data and Other Reality What media are studied; what target groups are addressed? What premises do the texts appeal to? Can suppressed or ignored viewpoints be found elsewhere? Silences that function alongside the things said What is said openly; what kind of discretion is required, of whom, and in what issues? A division of roles between different forums? E.g. are certain views only expressed in letters to the editor?

10 The Media Data and Other Reality The audiences How popular are the texts or films studied? Blockbusters tell more about culture and society than flops Originals and their representations In many cases it is possible to compare media stories with the original sources, i.e. the raw material of which the texts are composed and which they comments on For the general public, however, media coverage is primary The uses of media contents The life of media contents in people s lives, for instance as topics; or intertextual references