ANALYSIS OF DATA

In analysing the primary data collected during field study interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) was applied. IPA took off from the theoretical backgrounds of phenomenology, hermeneutics and idiography (Smith & Eatough 2007; Moran 2000; Smith, Harré & Langenhove 1995; Palmer 1969). It seeks to explore in full individual personal and lived experiences, and examines how participants make sense of their personal and social world. IPA is directly concerned with the meaning made by participants of their specific experience with an event or phenomenon.

A fundamental argument of this approach is that since research is a dynamic process in which a researcher plays an active role the application of IPA involves a two-way interpretation process or double hermeneutic. This means, for example, the participants or interviewees making sense of their world just as the researcher also makes a sense of how the participants make a sense of their own world. This process, explain Smith and Eatough (2007: 35-36), involves the researcher playing a dual role. It also implies that a researcher employing this technique tries to fit into the situation of the participants as much as possible, while ensuring that the researcher equally steps back a little to ask curious and critical questions from the accounts of the researched (further probing). In the same manner the researcher makes a connection between what they say and their thinking and emotional state, which may not be easily connected. As such the researcher interprets the participant’s mental and emotional state from what they say by employing different ways of interpretatively considering the data. IPA agrees that any analytical account will be partial and cannot be seen to ever be the final word on the topic (Smith & Eatough 2007: 37).

3.6.1 Stages of IPA Application in Data Analysis

In applying IPA a researcher needs to follow a number of steps which include several close and detailed reading of the data to obtain a holistic perspective so that future interpretations are based on the participants’ account; identifying and organising initial themes into clusters and checking against the data; refining, condensing and examining themes for connections between them; and producing a narrative account of the interplay between the interpretative activity of the researcher and the participants’ account of their experiences in their own words ((Smith & Eatough 2007; Smith & Osborn 2003).

One of the criteria for the choice of IPA is that it was hoped that it would help the researcher to appropriately play a dual role in the attempt to understand and interpret the situation being studied and from the perspectives of the participants. As such, reading through the transcripts availed the researcher with the opportunity to closely look at the data and interpret the accounts of the participants to produce reasonable meanings. This was so because each interviewee’s account was considered individually and as the specific account of the participant’s experience. In the end the themes that were identified were rearranged into categories under which major issues in the research questions were identified and addressed in narratives (discussions). Thus, having had an initial considering about these possibilities the researcher decided to apply IPA and was able to effectively use it as explained above.

3.7 CONCLUSION

At the start of this chapter this researcher had explained that there might be a need to apply triangulation technique, which was applied here through three different qualitative techniques. Those were critical discourse analysis, semi-structured and focus group

interview methods. This chapter has explained how all three methods were applied in the study.

The chief aim of the discussion in this chapter was to help the researcher come up with a comprehensive picture of a methodological approach for the study. In doing this the researcher took into consideration the research questions in Chapter One and how best they would be answered using certain strategies. The flexibility regarding the researcher’s consideration for triangulation comes from a desire to avoid or minimise probabilities of errors. Since the main aim of the study is to identify how the media use enemy images and stereotypes to stigmatise others and the reasons for this as well as how this might have contributed to the violence in some parts of the country, the choice of methodology was clearly made to ensure that the researcher’s biases do not stand in the way and each side is given a fair chance to contribute evenly in the discussion. This also explains why both semi- structured and focus group interview techniques have been employed in addition to critical discourse analysis (for studying and analysing newspaper reports).

Finally, this researcher was aware that any choice of technique or methodology made at the initial point might not be by any means a final one, as new circumstances could warrant the adoption of new techniques to complement or substitute the ones already chosen. For instance difficulties in reaching a participant for any of the interviews could result in the researcher either finding someone else to replace them or adopting new means of obtaining information from the same participant. In the same vein venues that were found to be too risky to access might be changed and somewhere else used even if there might be some dissimilarity in the information that were to be obtained insofar as such data were useful for the study and could help in providing answers to the research questions. It was in view of all this that a number of changes were made to both the

interview questions and the processes of conducting the interviews. In the end, despite the challenges faced the interviews were done and no one’s safety was compromised. The next chapter of this study will discuss how newspaper reports of the Daily Trust and THISDAY were analysed leading to the phrasing of interview questions and discussions about possible enemy framing in news reporting etc. This is very crucial to the research because it is there that one will be able to identify, if at all there’s any, use of negative language or images intended to create stereotypes.

CHAPTER FOUR

Analysis of Newspaper Reports using CDA

4 INTRODUCTION

Following discussions in Chapter Three this chapter has been devoted to analysing the newspaper reportage of one of the sectarian crises in Jos, a city in central Nigeria. In the last chapter it was explained that due to the appropriateness of qualitative research procedure to this study critical discourse analysis (CDA) has been used to analyse newspaper reports during a religious crisis in Northern Nigeria. In this chapter the entire process will be further described before showing how it was suitably applied in analysing reports by two Nigerian newspapers, Daily Trust and THISDAY, during the crisis. Initially there will be an attempt to explain the research process, that is how the researcher collected the documents/newspaper copies used in the analysis. This will be followed by a description of the process of the analysis, leading to the emergence and adoption of themes under which each category of reports was analysed. There will then be a presentation of the analysis of the text/headlines of each newspaper’s report over the period mentioned in the form of narrative using the themes identified as headings. A discussion section will also be used to present and discuss findings and relate them to theories before concluding the chapter.

In the last chapter both discourse analysis (DA) and CDA were described and there was further discussion of CDA. Since this study is not concerned directly with DA, only CDA has been further described. As was previously mentioned CDA is a strand of DA (Foucault 1980) that is referred to as Foucauldian Discourse Analysis. It focuses on the critique of

ideology and power and has its root in linguistics and sociolinguistics (Wooffit 2005). It, particularly, focuses on analysing the manifestation and reproduction of social and political inequalities through discourse (Wooffitt 2005). CDA assumes, basically, that language is a social phenomenon, not only individual, but also institutions and social groupings have specific meanings and values, that are expressed in language and systematic ways; texts are relevant units of language in communication; readers/hearers are not passive recipients in their relationship to text; and there are similarities between the language of science and the language of institutions etc (Kress 1990: 94).

Fairclough (1989) explains further that CDA is used to scrutinise the language of the mass media as a site of power and struggle and also as a site where language is seen to be transparent. While the mass media tend to portray themselves as neutral by providing space for public discussion and reflecting the state of affairs without any vested interest, Fairclough (2001) illustrates the mediating and constructing roles of the media citing a wide range of examples to expose this fallacy (Wodak 2001). Against this backdrop CDA contends that language, on its own, is not powerful, but becomes powerful depending on the use it is put to (Wodak 2001). CDA poses questions that include: How does language figure as an element in social processes? What is the relationship of language to other elements of social processes (Chouliaraki & Fairclough 1999; Fairclough 1992, 1995; Fairclough & Wodak 1997; Fairclough 2001)? CDA often focuses on language just as visual images like photographs and diagrams or body language, gestures and facial expression are also considered (Fairclough 2001). Fairclough (2001) adds that semiosis means the use of language, body language, visual images or other ways of signifying to make meaning. And in order to deal with social issues and problems, CDA analyses texts and interactions as well as other forms of semiosis

material (Fairclough 2001). CDA is critical in that it is concerned with progressive social change; it has been seen to possess an emancipatory knowledge interest (Fairclough 2001). In order to achieve its emancipatory goal, Wodak (2001) explains that while CDA asks research questions, scholars act as advocates for those who suffer social discrimination.