This document summarizes key aspects of experimental design and methods for coding texts from media research. It discusses the components of experimental design including causality, theory, control, and ecological validity. It also outlines different types of intentionalities to analyze in media texts, such as those of the author, text, audience, and interpreter. Finally, it provides guidance on coding texts by establishing the texts of interest, analytical approach, unit of analysis, coding scheme, and analysis.

1. Media Research Methods:
Understanding Metric and
Interpretive Approaches ni James
Anderson
Randy T. Nobleza
11481161/ CLA PhArFil
3rd Term 2014-15
AFL 521d: Riserts sa Araling Filipino

2. Cross section
 Chapter 11: Protocols for Experiments
 Chapter 12: Coding Text
 Chapter 13 Discursive Protocols: Creating Texts

3. Chapter 11: Protocols for Experiments
 Experiments are the method of choice when testing
questions or hypotheses that involve causation – the
effect of one variable on another.
 Experimental design attempts to isolate the relationship
between the variable that is thought to be the cause the
variable that will show the effect so that only those two
variables are in play.

4.  The arguments follows Mill’s classic canon for A being the
cause of B: whenever A, then B (the sufficiency clause);
and no A, no B (the necessity clause). We demonstrate
Mill’s canons every time we flip a light switch: when the
electricity flows (A), the lamp glows (b): no flow, no glow.

5. Components of Experimental Design
 There are four overarching components of experimental
design:
 Causality
 Theory
 Control
 ecological validity


6. Causality
 Experimental design is built on a causal model. It is a test
of the possibility that one condition or set of conditions is
the result of another condition or set of conditions. The
first requirement of a competent experimental design,
then is the reasonable basis to hold the possibility of a
causal relationship between two variables or variable
sets.

7. Theory
 Smith and Boster (2009)
 This study begins with the premise that individuals attend
to mediated messages in the copresence and under the
extended influence of others/ that presence and
influence creates some part of the context in which
messages are interpreted.

8. Theory
 Smith and Boster (2009)
 This study begins with the premise that individuals attend
to mediated messages in the copresence and under the
extended influence of others/ that presence and
influence creates some part of the context in which
messages are interpreted.

9. Control
 The purpose of experimental control is to establish
conditions such that the hypothesis provides a complete
explanation for the outcome. If the hypothesis fails to be
supported, it can be declared falsified. If it is supported, it
can be certified as supported.

10. Ecological Validity
 Refers to the transferability of the results found under the
conditions of the experiment to the ordinary conditions
under which the constructs under study might present
themselves. Unfortunately, the issue of transferability is
fundamentally irresolvable

11. Chapter 12: Coding Text
 Coding is a process that seeks to reach below the
surface manifestations of symbolic and discursive texts for
the purpose of identifying the underlying characteristics,
structures, social meanings and cultural work that such
texts have, produce, or enact.

12.  Coding is done in both metric and interpretive research.
In metric research one typically has a template that
guides the investigation; in interpretive research, that
templates emerges from engagements of the texts.

13. Introduction to coding texts
 A text is any symbolic or discursive form. A symbolic form
might be a framework of dance, a set of photographs, or
a visual narrative as well as a genre of music or natural
sound recordings.

14. Introduction to coding texts
 Discourse is any extended language and symbolic use
that is under some common governance. A classroom
lecture, a magazine article, a strategic communication
campaign, a newspaper story, and even a tweet are all
discursive forms, because there are implicit rules that
govern topic, construction, word choice, and
performance that are recognizable in their performance
in their violation.

15. Introduction to coding texts
 The analysis of texts is the bridge between metric and
interpretive in order to be complete. Theorists and
methodologists, naturally disagree on the relative
balance between these two. One of the reasons for this
disagreements is that the balance changes according to
the purposes of the analysis.

16. Analysis of Intentionalities
 Any media text will show all of these intentionalities –
author (industry), text, auditor (audience), interpretation
(auditor/analyst) – either encoded in material fact or
latent in its potential for actualization.

17. Author (industry)
 The usual method is to hold the source of the effect of
interest constant or common and let the other sources
vary. For example, if an analyst was interested in the
contributions of an author (actor/artist/auteur/etc.) the
analyst would look at a body of works by that author.


18. (Media) Text
 of course a text cannot have an intention in the sense of
a foresight as to what the author should write next or how
the reader should make sense of it. But clearly, both
writer and reader have a set of expectations as to what
will come next based on what has preceded. Once even
the first few words are written or read, only certain
subsequent elements can be competently elaborated
while others will necessary be excluded and suppressed.

19. Auditor (audience)
 Content analysis has a conflicted relationship with
audiences. On the one side, the reason we study content
is because we presume there is an audience for it and
that the content characteristics interact with or have
effects on that audience. On the other side, content
analysis, per se, cannot demonstrate either of those
presumptions.


20. Interpretation (Auditor/Analyst)
 The intentionality of an auditor’s interpretation – the
action initiated or behavior produced – or the
governance of an interpretive community is even more
distant from the content analysis itself. Again, however it
is part of the justification for the analysis. The real
consequence of one’s engagement with content occur
in how the individual lives her or his life in interaction with
that content.


21. Chapter 13 Discursive Protocols:
Creating Texts
 Producing and coding research texts
 Whether it is a list of responses to an “Other” response
alternative or a set of stories told by respondents,
researcher-initiated or produced texts need to be
examined for both the conditions under which the texts
are produced and the analytical framework that is
applied to the subsequent texts themselves.

22. Coding texts: pulling it all together
 The current fashion in media analysis is to use the term
text to refer to any semiotic (meaningful) object or
performance around which the analyst can place
plausible boundaries.
 Consequently, radio and television programs, magazine
articles, the front page, blogs, tweets, social networking
site pages, the family performing “watching television”
interviews, stories, recorded observations, and even field
notes are all considered texts.
 Any text can be coded.

23. Coding texts: pulling it all together
 The texts of the problem
 Approach to analysis
 Unit of analysis
 Coding
 Analysis

24. Implications and Conclusions
 Discursive protocols are not journalistic reviews of
particular programs, articles or other texts. Their purpose is
to draw some conclusion about larger issues.