Depends on how many papers are covering the protests. If it is a national phenomenon, the major national papers, as well as some local/regional papers for comparison.
I think that it depends on the scope of the study, and how many stories you end up with. The ideal is to analyse ALL stories
I did a content analysis of news stories for my doctoral dissertation. Based on the criteria I used, there were a little under 200 individual news stories. I did content analysis on all of them myself. Then I had a group of other scholars also analyse a 10% random sample of the stories to determine inter-coder reliability.
I don't think there is any answer in terms of sampling formulas, such as you would use for survey research.
Instead, you would be better to use what is known as a purposeful or purposive sampling. That would involve consciously selecting a set of sources according to the kinds of comparisons that you want to make. For example, you might compare national newspapers to local newspapers, or sources with private ownership versus official state status, etc.
I would add that if you have pretty much an unlimited supply of newspapers that you sample until you reach a point of saturation - everything you are finding at a point in your content analysis has already been seen before.
My take is that the scope of the study you are conducting is critical in the sense that the protest may have lasted a week, a month, a year, etc. Then all the news items in the available newspapers within the identified time frame would be useful. So, set you scope and the logic will come through...
You can look at one newspaper, or several -- the number of papers is not extremely important (although the number of articles may be of more importance). Usually you pick the paper in the geographic location where the event happened -- or you pick major papers that set the agenda for others. So if the protest were in Boston -- you would pick the Boston Globe, and the New York Times (provided that these papers did in fact cover the event(s). You could also do like a campus paper versus the mainstream daily in the area. Or you could do weeklies versus dailies. Or, well the list goes on.
But there are some items to consider. We need to know more specifically what you are researching. Your topic is a bit broad. You can go about this in a couple of different ways. Qualitative analysis, or quantitative analysis, or a bit of both.
Basic way is that you determine the specific events you are interested in. Then pick the relevant paper(s). Then decide what "lens" you will use to examine these (by lens we usually mean theory). Then, you determine when the events occurred to create your time frame. Then from within the time frame, you can search for articles using "keywords". If you return few hits, you do a census of the articles. If you return many hits, you can sample from within the results. Usually two constructed weeks will suffice within a one year time period. Or you can take a percentage of the "hits". You need to explain your sampling plan clearly in your paper.
You then have your sample or census. Then, you come up with the variables that are related to the "lens" that you have chosen. The variables can vary a lot, and you should seek out previous literature to create your list. You should explain how you chose these variables and how you are measuring them. Then you get two people to read at least 10% of the articles that you have collected -- and see if you agree on what you are measuring. There is more to it - I will attach a link to a book that is very helpful for this.
https://books.google.ae/books/about/Analyzing_Media_Messages.html?id=M3l2Cp7Kgl0C&redir_esc=y
Osake Omoera and Bradley Freeman, thank you very much for your feedback. You have been a great help, truly appreciated
I think that you have to decide first what content analysis you wish to do. There is a big difference between qualitative analysis and quantitative analysis. In the quantitative approach, you have to reach a representative sample. In the qualitative approach you might want a purposeful sample. In either way I think that you have to decide what kind of newspapers you will sample. Do you have someone close to consult with?
A better inclusion filter is time: first and last appearance of posts on newspapers and then sample as many as possible for better quality and accuracy.
There are two ways you can approach this subject. One is to define student protests. Is it simple demonstrations, showing of anger in small groups, etc. If you find that you had many student protests in a year you might like to sample some of the protests and do a study on them. I do not think you have that many protests in your country. If you have that many then your country may be too lively. 2/ The second is your concern to know how many times the media make coverage of student protests. You might then like to sample your newspapers ( by structured week?) and do a content analysis.
Kia ora. two parts to your question as I understood it. (a) how many newspaper titles and (b) how many issues. Syed Is right to ask if student protests are reasonably common or rather rare. If they're common go for major local titles and, if possible a paper of record as that will take a national perspective. As for the number of issues - if your concern is 'any student protest' you need to trawl back through the newspaper archives to pick up reports. If it is protests about a particular issue you might be able to use a database. Wilkes, Corrigall-Brown et al, 2010 studied Canadian Indigenous peoples protest so they could be a good example to follow.
Sayed, thank you very much for your feedback. 2015 was year of student protests in south africa, almost one a month. but the october protests, over proposed varsity fee increases, exclusion and outsourced workers, was the biggest both in terms of numbers, the issues and outcomes. protests have continued into the new year
Hello.
In my article- Reflecting a diversified country: a content analysis of newspaper advertisements in Great Britain, I did a content analysis of advertisements obtained from nine national newspapers of the UK collected over twelve months. The criteria used to select the newspapers were category, popularity (circulation figures) and the readership demographics (range and variety of the audience).
http://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/abs/10.1108/MIP-07-2014-0129
Instead of many newspaper, you should select different newspapers form different point of views or different ideological publishing policies.
I think before deciding on the number of newspapers or which ones to include, we need to be clear on the nature of your research question. Particularly, what population of interest you want to generalize your findinga to. If you want to generalize your findings to newspaper press in your country in general, then you would need a sampling frame of all newspapers published in a particular time period. So what are you interested in. Are you interested in particular protests or particular types of newspapers or what? Clarity on research question should predcede determining a sampling strategy.
It depends on your interest: in case you want to find out how these student protests start to frame the national agenda months ahead of the elections you should pick 2 representing the different segments of the SA society. If you are more focussed on whether and how the ANC is reacting you can reduce the amount of newspapers. Why are you only interested in newspapers? i would take a look as well how the different SABC news are responding. Maybe you want to chat with Theresa Lotter, she could provide you with some insights of her most recent work.
1. Pick the issue you want to look for [in your case protests you indicated] . 2. Time frame i.e. from which time to which time are you going to look into the issue? are you picking a particular protest or several protests? 3. Newspapers to focus on...sometimes looking into too many newspapers can be overwhelming. If you want PARTICULARITY you can pick one newspaper and look at its coverage of the issue over time or in one particular protest. Or do a comparative analysis between differently owned newspapers: private vs government or regional vs national newspaper.
Five different papers will do. But they must be differently owned.
Okey ownership is a good but what about publishing policy or ideological tendencies
In addition to the above suggestions on ownership and publishing policies of the newspapers, it is also good to consider the coverage and location of the newspapers in relation to the geographical scope of the study to ensure adequate diversity.
Doreen,
It comes back to your intention or objective of doing the study. Are you studying student protests over a certain period of time , say comparing protests under two different regimes? Then you have to take a longitudinal scope by taking newspapers over a long period of time covering the different regimes.
Are you comparing how papers under different ownership or ideology give coverage to student protests? If that is your case a slightly short duration would be advisable as ownership can be immediate. You have then to get newspapers of different ownership in your study.
Or are you interested to cover how newspapers cover student protests in different countries? If that is your intention then you need to obtain newspapers of different countries to make a study.
There are various ways of sampling your newspapers. You can make references to books/articles written by Weber, Kripendorff, or Neuendorf.
You can also go to other media forms to conduct your study. You need not be limited to coverage by newspapers.
Hi Doreen,
This link may be useful:
https://books.google.com/books?id=FixGDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=content+analysis&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiXu7738dfcAhVFi1kKHRTQAk8QuwUILDAA#v=onepage&q=content%20analysis&f=false
Have a great day!
--Adrian
You can follow the approach of building data corpus for examination I have followed Flowerdew (2004) and built mine with some modifications. You can consult my thesis 'A study of identity construction in political discourse'.
Simply pick your indicated segment "students protest" and see how many days its coverage has prevailed in the newspaper(s) you are going to select. Then frame the days of the issue's coverage and then analyse the content in terms of language words etc. Then, You will have a right track to walk on.
I dont think it is about having a specific number of newspapers. You can have a few, for instance, especially if resources are an issue. I am more of a qualitative person so go for a few samples and pick out the themes from there. You should have a good criteria though on why you made that selection. I have a content analysis paper published last year. It's in my page in Researchgate, it might be helpful. Thanks!
it depends on the purpose of your research. In case you aim for getting representative data how the agenda is framed for your country or several countries, it is necessary to capture atleast one newspaper covering more the liberal arguments, one more the conservative, one those who are less interested, 2 regional ones in order to ensure, that this theme is truly on the national agenda. If you are aware with the English system this would mean: The Guardian representing those in society following the more liberal view on society, The Times representing the more conservative view, THE SUN for the Tabloids and then the regional newspaper from south of England with the highest readership and one from the North. Does that help?
I agree with Roland Schatz that you need to be clear what you are investigating and that you do not distort the answer by failing to include papers known to have views about 'student protest'. A further point that is less obvious: always remember you are analysing (creating a picture of the coverage) and not arguing with those providing the coverage. So you record, categorise, summarise, etc even if what you are reading is distasteful, ludicrous, or simply out of this world. Do not allow yourself the luxury of contending with it.
I would like to state how helpful your tips are and how grateful I am. It is obvious that many others too benefit from your share of wisdom.
Just wanted to say thank you.
I think that for your approach it would be useful to take into account the ideological orientation of the publications that will constitute your corpus of analysis (in the sense of choosing a uniform distribution, as much as possible, of publications with similar ideological orientations). In addition, it is important to focus on the media representations during the protests that you are discussing and that are the subject of your analysis. Another aspect is how you define the variable you want to analyze, namely "student protests".