bcm102 assessment 1

8/9/2019 Bcm102 Assessment 1

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Part 1

Section 1.1 Introduction

The conflict between Japan and the Sea Shepherd on whaling has

aroused the attention of that media around the world. This topicinvestigates the representation of both the Sea Shepherd and theJapanese whalers in Australia media texts including The Australian,The Illawarra Mercury, The Sydney Morning Herald and TheTelegraph. By gathering information from these sources, we areable to produce a research question and an answer to grasp aclearer idea on the topic.

By conduction a content analysis on each of the articlespresented, we will be able to observe the clear patterns, trends anddifferences between the sources.

The research question that I have produced is what are theclear patterns, trends and differences between the content of thearticles concerning the topic of the Japanese whaler attack on theSea Shepherd?

The hypothesis for the research questions answer is that thesources will mainly look at the significance of the crash on thevictims on the Sea Shepherd and the damage of the ship. Also, thatthe articles will mainly look at the perspective that Japan is in the

wrong and the Sea Shepherd did nothing to provoke actions by theJapanese.

By analysing the sources through content analysis, answering theresearch question and discussing the hypothesis can achieve aclearer understanding of the topic.

Part 2

Section 2.1 Content Analysis

There are two main descriptions of content analysis that explains itsconcept. The first is by Macnamara (2006) who described contentanalysis as the focus on basic quantitative elements and aninherent assumption that quantitative factors indicated likely socialimpact. Macnamaras description looks back at the work of Bergerand Luckman (1966) The second description is by Neuman (1997)stating that content analysis is a technique for gathering andanalysing the content of text. The content refers to words,meanings, pictures, symbols, ideas, themes or any message thatcan be communicated. The text is anything written, visual or

spoken that serves as a medium for communication.


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Both these descriptions of content analysis embody the main ideathat content analysis deals with the messages that are displayedwith a text by taking a quantitative approach on dealing with thetext.

Section 2.2 Content

The content selected for the assessment comes from print mediasources including The Australian, The Illawarra Mercury, The SydneyMorning Herald and The Telegraph. These print media sourcesinclude a range of articles including front page articles to letters tothe editor, which all concern the topic of the conflict betweenJapanese Whalers and the Sea Shepherd.

Section 2.3 Coding sheet

(See attachment 1)

Section 2.4 Coding Categories

The coding categories assist in defining your content as they allow aclear analysis of what the content states. The categories chosen forthe coding sheet that I produced enabled a clearer understanding ofthe articles concerning the argument between Japan and the SeaShepherd over whaling.

The first part of the coding sheet is for general informationabout the article. The section includes the name of the newspaper,the articles headline, date, page, author, source of captions, roughword count and the type of article. This section allowed me toproduce a graph about the type of articles from each of thenewspapers (see graph 4) and a graph of what type of article wasbeing produced the most frequent in each of the newspapers. This isimportant for my study of the argument between Japan and the SeaShepherd as it shows how the Australian newspapers presented thisargument.

The second section refers to the articles substance. The firstpart of this section looks at the perspective of the article, is it mainlylooking at an Australian, Japanese or Green peace view. After thatwe define what the articles point is, does it look at the money loss,the crash, the argument after the crash, whale killing or a politicalview. We than decide if the article is for or against this issue. If thearticle is for the point, it shows that this is a positive decision andthis should be in place. If the article is against this shows that thisshould be abolished and this is a negative decision.

Also in the article substance section we look at the quote sourceswithin the article. Firstly we define where the article is coming from,


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is it an Australian, Japanese, New Zealand, Green peace or UnitedNations quote. Than we define whom the quote was coming from,examples of these are the captain of the Sea Shepherd, a publicmember, an activist or a policy.

By having the article substance section of the coding sheet, we areable to distinguish the different perspectives and the differentsources of quotes presented in each of the newspapers.

The final section of the coding sheet looks at the images within thearticles. By analysing what type of image, what the imagerepresents, the number of images within the article and the size ofthe image, we can determine which newspaper represents theargument visually rather than through the text. Also by analysingthe images we can determine the trends between the newspapersof which image is being represented the most and least.

I determined my own categories for the coding sheet by analysingwhat the common features are in newspaper articles. Examples ofthese common features are headlines, authors, captions, quotes andimages.

Part 3

Section 3.1 Graphs and Tables

Graph 1 Amount of article from each of the newspapers

Sydney MorningHerald

10

The Australian 32The Telegraph 5

The Illawarra Mercury 1

Sydney

Morning

Herald

The

Australian

The

Telegraph

The Illawarra

Mercury

These results show that the topic of the argument between the

Japanese whalers and the Sea Shepherd was presented the most inThe Australian and the least in The Illawarra Mercury.


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Graph 2 Amount of times the word was mentioned in headlines

Japan or Japanese 8

Sea Shepherd or Ady Gil 14Whale, Whales or Whaling 16

(Other words) 169

Japan or

Japanese

Sea Shepherd

or Ady Gil

Whale, Whales

or Whaling

Other words

This graph enables us to determine that the word group of whale,whales or whaling was the most common, besides the other wordsgroup.

Graph 3 Date range of when the article was released by each ofthe Newspapers

0

2

46

8

1012

1416

18

20

7-Ja

n

8-Ja

n

9/10

-Jan

11-Jan

12-Jan

15-Jan

18-Jan

13/14

-Mar

19-Mar

The Illawarra

Mercury

The Telegraph

The Australian

Sydney

Morning Herald


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This graph shows that most of the articles on the topic werereleased around the period of the 7th of January to the 9th of January.The date with the most released articles was the 8th of January (thesecond interval) with 19 articles released from all of the newspaperscombined.

Graph 4 Type of articles represented in each of the newspapers

Name of Paper ai co fp fpa

in le p r

Sydney MorningHerald

2 0 1 1 2 3 1 0

The Australian 2 4 1 3 0 18 3 1The Telegraph 1 0 0 0 4 0 0 0The Illawarra Mercury 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

TOTAL 6 4 2 4 6 21 4 1

0

2

4

6

8

1012

14

16

18

ai co fp fpa in le p r

Sydney Morning

HeraldThe Australian

The Telegraph

The Illawarra

Mercury

This graph highlights that the letter to the editor (le) is the mostpopular article in the newspapers. (To find out the type of articlerefer to reference sheet)

Graph 5 Amount of times a perspective is portrayed

This graph shows that political perspectives are the most commonin newspapers regarding the argument between Japanese whalers

Amount oftimes

Type of article


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and the Sea Shepherd. Articles regarding the crash is the secondhighest perspective being portrayed, stating an argument againstthe crash, that is was negative. (Refer to coding sheet articlesubstance section for categories)

j/c/f

j/c/a

j/ar/a

j/wk/f

j/wk/a

j/pol/f

au/m/a

au/c/f

au/c/a

au/ar/f

au/ar/a

au/wk/fau/wk/a

au/pol/f

au/pol/a

g/ar/f

Table 6 Amount of Quote Sources and their origin in each of theNewspapers

Newspaper

SydneyMorningHerald

TheAustralian

TheTelegraph

TheIllawarraMercury

j/cj 0 0 1 0j/p 0 1 0 0j/ac 0 0 0 0j/n 0 0 0 0

j/jg 1 2 0 0j/b 0 1 0 0


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j/po 0 0 0 0j/tv 0 0 0 0j/ex 0 1 3 1j/c 0 0 0 0j/inv 1 0 0 0

un/p 0 1 0 0g/ac 0 1 0 0nz/ac 1 0 0 0cs 2 5 1 0au/ag 4 5 8 0au/p 1 0 2 0au/ac 0 2 4 1au/n 1 7 0 0au/b 0 0 0 0au/po 0 0 0 0

au/tv 0 1 0 0au/ex 2 0 0 0au/c 0 0 1 0au/inv 0 0 0 0

TOTAL 13 27 20 2

This table enables us to comment on the amount of quotes withinarticles of each of the newspapers. (Refer to coding sheetattachment 1 for categories)

Graph 7 Articles with/without images


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0%10%

20%30%40%50%60%70%80%

90%100%

Sydney

Morning

Herald

The

Australian

The

Telegraph

The Illawarra

Mercury

No Image

Image

Graph 8 Type, size and perspective of image in the articlesbetween the newspapers

0

0.5

1

1.5

2

2.5

3

3.5

4

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15

Sydney Morning Herald

The Australian

The Telegraph

The Illawarra Mercury

Amount it isin anewspaper

Please refer to the table below for each of thenumbers


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Number fromgraph above

Code from codingsheet

1 w/ca/s

2 w/ca/l3 ss/act/s4 ss/act/m5 b/act/s6 b/act/l7 ch/ca/l8 g/act/m9 ma/ca/l10 ce/act/l11 j/act/m

12 r/act/s13 bc/ca/s14 ssw/ca/l15 j/ca/l

Section 3.2 Analysis

After analysing the results we can determine the trends, patternsand differences between the articles represented in each of thenewspapers. These trends, patterns and differences determine theway that we evaluate the content in each of the articles and helpsdraw a conclusion for the research question.

The first trend that we can determine is that one third of the articlesdid not have a heading; these were all letters to the editor. Fromthese 16 articles 14 came from The Australian, showing that theirletter to the editor articles do not need headings to draw attentionto the articles.

A clear pattern between all of the newspapers is that the articleswere mainly released around the date when the incident first

occurred (7th

of January) and than had a peak of articles releasedthe following day. This is due to more information being released ofwhy the incident occurred and the Australian public were able toaddress their interest to the editor through the letter to the editorsection. Another pattern from this study also shows that the articlesslowly decreased from the 9th of January, as the interest from thepublic moves onto other areas. (This is shown in graph 3)

In graph 4 clear differences and patterns on the article typesbetween newspapers can be observed. The graph highlights that thecommon type of article between the newspapers was that the

article was in the first 4 pages of the newspaper. (Symbolised by ai)A difference that the graph highlights is that The Australian clearly


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has an outstanding amount of letter to the editor articles comparedto the other three newspapers.

Another pattern that can be observed is the amount of articlesrepresented by each of the newspapers; The Australian has the

most articles with 32, while The Illawarra Mercuryonly has 1. Thispattern is mainly due to The Illawarra Mercurycovering local newsand a few international/national stories. The Australian has a largeramount compared to the other two national papers The SydneyMorning Heraldand The Telegraph as it is a larger paper and has alarger section for letters to the editor.

Another pattern is the amount of articles without an image. Over 64percent of articles did not have an image with the article. A largemajority of these articles were letters to the editor.

The hypothesis was incorrect, as a majority of the article looked atthe political issues of the accident, and how the Australiangovernment was reacting to the crash. Even though graph 5highlights that the crash was not the most occurring perspectivebetween the articles, there was still 11 articles that looked at thecrash from both Japanese and Australian perspectives.

Section 3.3

To modify this research assignment and my research question I

would gather more articles from different newspapers in Australia.Also by gathering articles from Japanese newspapers we would beable to compare the ways that the different countries contrasted theincident. To make this assignment more reliable I would count theamount of times that a specific word was in the article to determinethe theme of the article.

Reference list:

Macnamara, Jim (2006) Media Content Analysis: Uses, benefits &Best Practice Methodology Carma Asia Pacific

Neuman, W (1997) Social research Methods: Qualitative andQuantitative approaches. (3rd ed)

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