Media Analysis
Discourse Analysis
Patrick Prax
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Today
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Groups
Qualitative Methods
Quantitative Methods
Discourse Analysis
Discussion
THE PAPER – instructions for the final paper
of the course
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Groups
1. Is the group work going ok?
2. Are all the members there and working?
3. Everybody who is not present at a seminar
please write me a mail.
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Qualitative Methods
• Based on interpretation and in-depth analysis
of a limited range of texts/interviews/…
• High Reliability, low Validity
– Probably measures what it is intended to
measure, but maybe not correctly
• Discourse, genre, narrative analysis
• Cannot be generalized (or not easily)
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Quantitative Methods
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Counting and measuring quantities of content
Statistics
High numbers of studied texts/interviewees/…
High Validity, low Reliability
– Probably measures correctly, but maybe not what
it is intended to measure
• Content analysis
• Can be generalized
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Combinations
• What could be a combination of both?
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Content Analysis
• Quantitative
• Show recurring
processes
• Good for more
apparent meanings
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Discourse Analysis
• Qualitative
• Good for more
hidden meanings
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Discourse I
• “Social action and interaction, people
interacting together in real social situations”
- Fairclough, 1995
• “a discourse as a social construction of reality,
a form of knowledge”
- Foucault, 1977
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Discourse II
• Determines what is knowable,
sayable and doable in a
particular historical context
• Let´s stay at this for a while.
What examples can you come
Michel Foucault
up with?
• Faiclough is somewhat incorporating this also
focusing on the social and cultural process
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Why Discourse Analysis?
• Analyze language in social use
• Look at the connection between the use of
language and the exercise of social power
• Can be called critical discourse analysis
• After Fairclough and Teun van Dijk
A “useful working assumption is that any part of
any text … will be simultaneously representing
[the world], setting up identities, and setting
up relations”
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Representations, Identities and
Relations
1. How is the world (events, relationships)
represented?
2. What identities are set up for those involved
in the program or story (reporters,
audiences, “third parties” referred to or
interviewed)?
3. What relationships are set up between those
involved (for example, reporter-audience,
expert-audience or politician-audience
relationships)?
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However, …
• …the point is “not only to reveal the
specifically linguistic properties of media texts.
It is also to work from this to the sociocultural
implications of the media.”
• Fairclough uses two tensions affecting media
language:
– Information – Entertainment
– Private – Public
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Spotlight on Laurent
• Now tell us about the
riots in France please.
• Who are real
Frenchmen?
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“Us” and “Them” (van Dijk)
• Example: Racism
• Racist world view in a more subtle way
“they are expressed, enacted and confirmed by
text and talk, such as everyday conversations,
board meetings, job interviews, policies, laws,
parliament debates … movies, TV programmes
and news reports in the press, among
hundreds of other genres” (van Dijk, 2000)
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Van Dijk’s Toolbox
• Rhetoric, hyperbole, metaphor, rhetoric
repetition – persuasive function of language
• Passive sentences, comment, topicalisation –
language structure
• Register, lexicalisation, ingroup designator –
selection of words
• And: association, implication, capital letters,
quotation marks, number game, thematic line,
jargon
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persuasive function of language
• Metaphor - A figure of speech, talking in
pictures
• Rhetoric – persuasive language use
• Rhetoric repetition – persuasive repetition
• Hyperbole – exaggeration
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language structure
• Passive sentence - the subject of a sentence is
turned into the object.
• Topic – the thing being talked about
• Comment – the thing said about the topic
• From which point of view is a story told? What
is the centre? How else could the story be
presented?
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Selection of Words
• Register – a group of words with a certain
association
• Lexicalisation - choice of vocabulary
• Ingroup designator – “us” or “them”
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The Number Game
• Consider…
• FV > T
• 60% of all rapes in Gävle where committed by
foreigners
• women over the age of 18 represent a
significantly greater portion of the gameplaying population than boys age 17 or
younger
• Give me some examples. Where is this used in
media?
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Discussion
• Where do you think the following tools are most
useful in analysis?
• Register, Lexicalisation, Metaphor
“You are fired!”
“150 people where laid of!”
“He fell defending his country.”
“We had to put Fluffy to sleep.”
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THE PAPER/INDIVIDUAL WORK
• Method: 2 Methods of your choice
• Media text: A media text of your choice
• Reading: Analysing Media Texts, all the
articles used in the course and at least 2
scientific sources (e.g. articles) that are not
course literature
• Credits: 3 hp
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Research question, purpose
and methods
It is important that you formulate your own precise
research question(s) and purpose before you set out to
do your analysis and write your paper. Try to answer what
you want to analyse and why, and with what focus. It is
based on these questions that you should choose your
particular methods. As the methods are part of the topic
in this paper, you should also discuss the choice of them,
and how the two particular methods function together.
Motivate why exactly these methods serve the purpose of
your study well and show how exactly these methods
work well with the medium you are analysing! Explain
also critically the limits of your chosen methods and point
out possible probolmes with them.
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Formalities
• Length The paper should be 4-5 pages long (12 p. 1,5
spaced)
• References Adequate acknowledgement of sources should
be applied. Choose one scientific reference system, and use
it consistently – either referring to your sources in
footnotes or in brackets in the text, and a complete list of
references at the end of the text.
• Plagiarism is strictly forbidden! Everything in the text that
is not referenced, is interpreted as your own thoughts and
conclusions. To copy or to just briefly re-formulate
someone’s text is regarded as plagiarism. All quotes have to
be quote marked and clearly referenced.
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Assessment
• (1) The content – which is partly about how much you are discussing the
methods and methodological discussions from the course literature, and
how relevant the discussions are, and partly about what you do with the
analysis: how well you use it to discuss a certain theme / analytical focus
(e.g. gender, “we” and “them”, class etc)
• (2) Density of concepts – is about how many and how relevant theoretical
(and methodological) concepts you are using in your analysis. Did you select
the most relevant ones for your analysis? Did you define them well?
• (3) Clarity – this refers to your writing capability in terms of clear
argumentation and definition of the concepts you are using; that you
perform an understanding of them.
• (4) Analytical skills – has to do with your ability to use the analytical tools
to really get
• under the surface of your “text”, and to see trends and tendencies, signs
and structures that you can relate to things outside the text.
• (5) Independence – considers how well you manage to create a discussion
of your own, in your own words, without just repeating what has been said
in class
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Thank You
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