4.1 Analytical Practices: Rationale for Codes
Codes were, for the most part, built inductively.16 This means I created them from
the content in the articles. Whenever something appeared to be an important part of the media narrative or the construction of the topic, I created a code for it. This includes both overt messages such as politicians vowing to combat terrorism, and more subtle factors such as the sort of people quoted or presented as authorities in the article.
Another way I created codes was by using my theoretical and substantive knowledge of issues surrounding terrorism in the media. This is how I formed my first few codes; about 10-15 in total were developed this way. Both ways of code-building were informed by the literature I consulted: existing publications showed me things I might expect to find in articles about terrorism, and other scholars’ definitions and distinctions helped support my confidence in my own. Nunn (2007, p. 90), for instance, makes the (somewhat intuitive) distinction between “[human] victims or property-based targets”, similar to my separate codes for Deadly Attack and Potential Damage/Violence to People versus Damage to Property.
I completed nineteen rounds of coding, divisible into two phases: the first, to identify and define the codes, and the second, to make sure I did not miss any instances in the articles. This was a concern of mine because of the inductive process. Some codes took shape later than others, necessitating retroactive coding in certain articles. I kept notes detailing when I developed a new code, including the name of the article I first used
16 Exceptions were my few starter codes, such as the Speaker variable, or Deadly Attack – elements I knew
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it in – thereby, I knew which articles were ‘behind’ in the coding. Using these procedures, I developed roughly 91 codes by the time data analysis was finished.
Additionally, I kept track of how much time I spent during each coding session. Overall, more than sixty hours went into reading, developing, coding, and refining the data.
Not all of the codes proved fruitful beyond the article or two that inspired them; nevertheless they were useful to have as ‘benchmarks’ to refer to when assessing the codes as a whole. A few of these less frequent codes were included in the final discussion and analysis because I felt they were significant or interesting to talk about.
For a full list of codes as they appeared in MAXQDA during the data analysis, including definitions, examples, and frequencies, see Appendix (A).
4.2 Analytical Practices: Building Frames
After both rounds of coding were complete, I began the actual frame analysis. Frames were developed from thematically convergent combinations of codes, or from particularly potent codes. Certain frames were built upon comparing a set of two or more codes which answer the same question or cover the same theme, for example, Pro-
Academic/Pro-Knowledge Sentiment and Anti-Academic/Anti-Knowledge Sentiment, or any of the over seven codes ascribing motive to the terrorist (such as Terrorists Socially Motivated, Economic Causes of Terrorism, and Anti-Western Goals or Motives). Sometimes frames contributed to other frames: for example, Relevance of the Terror Suspect’s Personal History and Character is a frame unto itself, but also helps support Terrorism (Especially Domestic) is a Serious, Escalating, and Deadly Threat. Further and much more specific information on how each frame was built can be found in the data analysis section.
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4.3 Analytical Tools: MAXQDA
Coding and analysis in this thesis was accomplished with the aid of a computer- assisted qualitative data analysis software (CAQDAS). The use of CAQDAS enjoys great support in the social sciences, including endorsement from Hafner (2015, p. 104), who used MAXQDA to identify patterns in transcribed interviews and field notes, and Koenig (2004, p. 1), who proposes that CAQDAS can serve to “extend… recent advances in the empirical measurement of frames”.
I chose to use CAQDAS to ensure that I was, as much as possible, basing my frames on tangible, concrete evidence that would be available for continuous review of my own or by other researchers. I found this to have been a good decision, one which I would recommend or repeat in the future. I have a better idea of which codes/themes in my data are the strongest or weakest than I would if I had not used CAQDAS to perform coding. I am better able to discuss and defend my conclusions, and furthermore, my research is more open to examination by others. As an additional benefit, my finished coding is accessible for future research. I can continue the research by adding and analyzing more articles, and/or articles from different years.
I used the VERBI GmbH software MAXQDA (1989). MAXQDA is a CAQDAS that has been used for over twenty years to accomplish “qualitative and mixed methods data analysis” (VERBI GmbH, 2015). The software performs a variety of helpful
functions, such as basic word counts, coding and categorizing, and visualizations such as maps, word clouds, and code relations.
I found MAXQDA suitable for several reasons. First, I found the interface more intuitive than that of competing software like nVivo. Creating and tagging codes were
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simple click-and-select or drag-and-drop processes. Additionally, MAXQDA allows the researcher to assign different colours to different codes and subcodes: this was a great boon when trying to visually assess an article or paragraph with a lot of codes, and when editing, deleting, or recoding specific instances. Another point in MAXQDA’s favour was its purported versatility in handling different types of documents (some articles in my database were in .doc or .docx file format, others were .pdf). While it is true that one can create MAXQDA databases with all of these filetypes and more, I still ended up having to go through the tedious process of editing and re-saving certain articles in a new format due to serious bugs in the original files. After dealing with several bugged files, I decided to convert each article to Microsoft Word. I experienced no more article-related impediments after that. Finally, one moderately influential reason I chose MAXQDA is that I was gifted a copy that I could install on my personal computer. As a graduate student on a very tight budget, this alone made the software an efficient choice compared to the alternative programs, which would either have required me to buy them, or to code/analyze exclusively in university computer labs.
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