I would always advise people to try out a few different ways when doing their first qualitative project. For example, I, like many of my colleagues, prefer to hand code data i.e. having the transcript on paper in front of me, and going through it line by line with a pen and annotating as appropriate. However, I have other colleagues who use software to store, analyse, and compare transcripts in their corpus. Most universities will have access to NVivo or Atlas.ti or something similar which are good pieces of qualitative software. However, I notice two things about your study. The project says you are using discourse analysis [DA] - in which case you should read some of Foucault's work on DA. But I also realise you are looking at 'media framing'. If you are using media sources content analysis might be an avenue to explore - Giuseppe Tipaldo has written some guides on content analysis and the mass media.  If however you are interviewing people on how they perceive the media then basic interviewing followed by working up the data in an empirical way would be the avenue to pursue.  Attached is a really helpful guide on Thematic Analysis which has lots of literature to guide you to different forms of analysis. 

Article Using thematic analysis in psychology

Since you are working with media, some version of content analysis would be the most commonly used form of coding in that field. There are two basic forms of content analysis: inductive and deductive. In the inductive version, you create your own codes through your immersion in the data. In the deductive version, you have a set of prior available that you can apply to the data.

Also, the term "discourse analysis" has a number of different meanings, depending on which field you are in. As Sergio notes, there is Foucault's version, but this is very different from the version used in conversation analysis.

Dear Andrew, hope this finds you well. I started using Atlas.ti in February last year. It took some time (2 to 3 days) to get a functional understanding of how it works. After watching the videos on the Atlas.ti Youtube channel and reviewing the resources on the website (http://atlasti.com/), I was convinced. The aforementioned resources takes you from start to finish and the rest is up to you. There are also online training and talks that you can engage with. I am sure there are other views out there (i.e. NVivo), but my personal experience was pleasant and I am continuing in my journey to exploit the potential offered by Atlas.ti.

Best wishes Andrew

Marcel

Please refer to the following sources which should also be helpful: 

• Auerbach, C. F. and Silverstein, L. B. (2003) Qualitative Data: An Introduction to Coding and Analysis, New York University Press, New York.
• Basit, T. N. (2003) Manual or electronic? The role of coding in qualitative data analysis, Educational Research, 45, 2, pp. 143-154.
• Fereday, J. and Muir-Cochrane, E. (2006) Demonstrating Rigor Using Thematic Analysis: A Hybrid Approach of Inductive and Deductive Coding and Theme Development, International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 5, 1, pp. 80-92.

 Thank you all for you advice, I will read the articles and have a look at the software suggested. 

This may be useful: Johnny Saldaña The Coding Manual for Qualitative Researchers, Sage, 2009.

Best wishes

I just finished my dissertation and I hand coded my interviews first and then I moved on using Nvivo to review and refine my codes. To guide my coding I used The Coding Manual for Qualitative Researchers by Johnny Saldana. It is pretty comprehensive and offers many different approaches to coding. I would highly suggest you review this book before you code so you know how to look at your data. The book is on its 3rd edition and I actually used the 1st edition for my work. I used thematic analysis and used the Braun and Clarke method as well as others to guide my analysis. Good Luck!

A couple of other references that may be of help to you are David Silverman's "Interpreting Qualitative Data" (Sage Publications) and Suzanne Eggins & Diane Slade's "Analysing causal conversation".  The first has some fine instruction on various text analyses and the second...while looking at conversation...provides some work on functional systemic analysis that might supplement the content analysis recommended by Dr. Morgan.

Dear Andrew

Attached is a chapter I wrote for an MSc programme about approaches to qualitative data analysis.  It compares and contrasts thematic analysis, grounded theory and discourse analysis.  I hope it may provide you with a useful starting point before you get into all these textbooks that have been recommended.

Hope this helps

Nick

Prior responses have given you good places to start.  I would only add a note of caution about using computerized programs. They do not do the hard part of the coding, the thinking part about what you are looking for and how you would recognize it.  And many of them depend on numerical rules that equate frequency with importance, in qualitative work, this may indeed not be true.  A seldom occurring, or seldom discovered mechanism or incident may be highly important, for example, if it had major impact on policy, or caused a shift in public support for or against a candidate or policy.  

The most sensitive tool you have as qualitative researcher is your own judgment; do not surrender it to a computer program whose algorithms you may not even know, or if you know, you might not agree with.  You might want to look at Rubin and Rubin, Hearing Data, for a general discussion of such issues.

I think your project is terrific, but framing is hard to see and count.

Irene Rubin

Hi Irene and thank you for your answer. I was after computer based software to arrange my thoughts as I'm more comfortable at digital based 'note books' than hard copies. I tried to use excel but have not found a suitable way of easily sorting and marking the data so that I can process it.  Being a trained programmer, I can imagine that software can sterilize the data to some extend and remove the research from much of the meaning. The only one I could afford and easily access is Nvivo so I will give that a go. I am still musing I've the design and what exactly to import, I'm using digital media articles, but I guess that's the learning process. 

Thanks again

Andy

unfortunately the computer will not arrange your thoughts for you...that is something you have to do for yourself.   Especially with something as complex as framing ,that is not usually captured in a single word or phrase.  Once you have done the thinking ,the software can be very helpful.

Irene

All of the qualitative data analysis programs provide essentially the resources as "mark and retrieval" systems. That is, they allow you to mark the text (i.e., coding) and then retrieve text segments according to your previous coding (i.e.., search). But it is up to you do decide both how to mark the text and what to search.

Whether or not this  "sterilizes" the process or merely mimics what people do by hand is a debate that has been around since the first attempts to computerize qualitative analysis. My opinion is that it very much depends on what you are trying to do in your analysis. If you already have a codebook of things that amount to "manifest content" (i.e. text that is easy to recognize and label), then the software will be especially useful. But if you are doing exploratory, interpretive work that might generate over a hundred initial codes, then the software is less useful.

Also, here is a link to a relatively simple way to do this in Excel, but of course NVivo is designed to do this exact task:

https://www.academia.edu/5062702/Using_Excel_for_Qualitative_Data_Analysis

You would have to find instances of framing yourself, and mark them.  The programs that retrieve them can be useful in suggesting linkages you might not have thought of between codes, or instances of this but not that, or of this and that.  But you have to judge the usefulness and meaning of each possible suggestion.  

No program can find instances of framing for you.  Defining what you mean by framing is going to be your major conceptual work.  you will need to go back and forth between the text and your definitions, is this an instance of framing?  what does it mean for my definition, do I need to modify it to include this type of example?

the computer can help you find and compare all the instances you have marked.

Irene

Great question! I am following.

Unique answer(s) from Irene S. Rubin.