Razones para realizar el Análisis de riesgos

Content analysis is a well-established method for the analysis of media texts. A frequently cited definition by Berelson (1952) identified this method as “a research technique for the objective, systematic, and quantitative description of the manifest content of communication” (p. 18). As this definition suggests, content analysis has been primarily conceived as a descriptive, quantitative process that centres on denotative meaning, the meaning that most people share. Jensen (2002) explains that Berelson recognised the aim of this type of research to be the interpretation of media but, according to Berelson, such interpretations follow the analytical process and are not part of it. With this quantitative approach, the content analyst measures specifically defined textual features and then uses this data as the basis for general inferences about the meaning of the texts and their implications regarding social circumstances. In effect, Berelson sees quantitative and interpretive practices in content analysis as separate activities occurring at different points in the content analytic process.

objective or value-free (see also Krippendorf, 2004; Jensen, 2002). Even in the case of quantitative content analysis, certain dimensions of a text rather than others are selected as the focus of an analysis. Moreover, these subjective choices are made in relation to other factors external to the object of study, such as the research objectives and theoretical framework (Hansen et al., 1998). Furthermore, although content analysis entails quantitative practices such as the identification and calculation of the frequency of some characteristic of a text, the inferences that can be drawn from this descriptive information alone are limited. This point was clearly made by Holsti (1969) who insisted, “simple descriptions of content are of limited worth without comparisons and relationships drawn from theoretical concerns” (quoted in Kaid, 1989, p. 198). One should not assume from this, though, that a descriptive content analysis is not useful. Riffe, Lacy and Fico (2005), for instance, point out that descriptive analysis can provide a “reality check”, or a real life standard, against which a representation of a person, group or phenomenon may be compared to identify media distortion or bias. Also, descriptive content analysis can play an essential role in early stages of a research project to prepare the way for other types of research (Riffe et al., 2005).

Departing from Berelson’s definition, Krippendorf (2004) advanced an alternative, less restrictive, view of content analysis as “a research technique for making replicable and valid inferences from texts (or other meaningful matter) to their context” (p. 18). Krippendorf agreed that content analysis should be replicable, and therefore systematic, but not necessarily quantitative. Another significant difference is that Krippendorf calls for analysts to make replicable and valid “inferences from texts…to their context”; in other words, interpretation occurs throughout the research process (Crano & Brewer, 2002; Jensen, 2002).

These scholars’ divergent views reflect the quantitative/qualitative debate among researchers concerning the observational technique and substance of content analysis (Crano & Brewer, 2002). Many quantitative researchers contend that the analyst should only code and not interpret observed, or manifest, elements; qualitative researchers, on the other hand, require the analyst to interpret the intentions or motives that might underlie the observations. Crano and Brewer (2002) point out that the inferential approach may offer “a richer, more meaningful picture of the event under study”, but often “at the cost of lower reliability and validity” (p. 246). A number of scholars have

viewed such distinctions concerning content analysis as “artificial” (Schreier, 2012, p. 14; see also Krippendorf, 2004; Martin, 2002; Neuendorf, 2002). Overall, as Ridenour and Benz (2008) argue, the qualitative/quantitative opposition represents “a false dichotomy” and actually, they claim, the two strategies interact within “a continuum of scientific inquiry” (p. 17).

The problem of how and whether to represent contextual perspectives is addressed in this study by the use of field theory. As discussed earlier (see Chapter 2), Bourdieu’s field concept seeks to overcome the epistemological divide between structure and agent, or between an “objectivist” perspective that treats “social facts as things”, and a

“subjectivist” one that “can reduce the social to the representations that agents have of it” (Bourdieu, 1989, pp. 14-15). Instead, Bourdieu calls for a dialectic relationship between the two ways of thinking to overcome “the artificial opposition between structures and representations” (Bourdieu, 1989, p.15).

Thinking relationally means looking beyond the obvious or manifest features of the social world to locate the relations between the positions in a particular social field. Just as the journalistic field can best be understood through its differentiation from other fields, the same is true in terms of the interrelationship of the various agents and entities that constitute the journalistic field itself. According to Bourdieu (2005), “Part of what is produced in the world of journalism cannot be understood unless one conceptualizes this microcosm as such and endeavours to understand the effects that the people engaged in this microcosm exert on one another” (p. 33). To understand the New Zealand field relationally, the content analysis approach articulated in this study incorporates the relational and critical framework of field theory to analyse the relation between agents within the New Zealand journalistic field and the interrelation of the journalistic and visual arts field within the New Zealand context.