Week 1-4

Question 1

The sociological imagination

Answer 1

A process sociologist use to develop questions about the connecting between individuals and their social context
- context (tied to broader context)
- individual problems are often tied to large things

Question 2

Critical media studies

Answer 2

To think carefully and thoughtfully about research
- the context of the research
- Kearney: composed of interlocking and overlapping critical literacies over time

Question 3

Qualitative research qualities

Answer 3

• collected through the research
• focused on meaning- making, social context
• exploratory and emergent
• non-numerical data

Question 4

Three main qualitative tools

Answer 4

• material or textual analysis
• interviews
• participant observation

Question 5

Emergence

Answer 5

Research remains open
- always adapting to new data findings and information
- qualitative researchers often view their subjects as dynamic
- highlights that there are interactions people have with that subject

Question 6

Deductive research methods

Answer 6

• begin with a theory or hypothesis
• draw on existing literature and findings
• through data collected/analysis create broader theories / generalizations
• hypothesis is either confirmed or refuted

Question 7

Inductive

Answer 7

• begin with a broader explorations about a topic and accumulating lots of data
• formulate research questions and design as info accumulates
• generate detailed context-specific findings and more questions

Question 8

Qualitative research qualities

Answer 8

• involves little or no advance knowledge of dat to be collected
• allows participants to define how the study progresses and what data means
• strives for accuracy : dont assume viewpoints
• relies on subjective observations
• of then involves in-depth interviews
• literature reviews are often found at the end of a study

Question 9

Grounded theory

Answer 9

• claims are grounded in evidence and accurate data
  -data collection and analysis are happening simultaneously
• flexibility : goes back to emergence
• inductive

Question 10

Research inspiration

Answer 10

• serendipity
• hanging around
• personal experience

Question 11

Unobtrusive methods

Answer 11

• ways of amassing data without interacting with research participants
• interpretive/ textual analysis
• semiotic analysis
• frame analysis
• discourse analysis

Question 12

Content analysis

Answer 12

• used often in a general sense to design approaches that gather and evaluate text content
• used for counting and coding methods

Question 13

Coding and codes

Answer 13

Codes are names for topics, events, people that appear in texts and notes
- used by researchers to group or categorize data
- construct patterns, find meaning, condense material
- describe what’s present, focus attention, identify meaningful or significant elements
Initial and focussed coding

Question 14

Salience

Answer 14

Where the focus and meaning is emphasized

Question 15

Random sampling

Answer 15

• each text or person has an equal chance of being selected

Question 16

Non-random sampling

Answer 16

Targeted groups, categories or topics to pull samples from

Question 17

Importance of frames

Answer 17

• dictates how something is portrayed which directly impacts audience
• entman: frames have for locations in communication : the communicator, the text, the receiver and the culture

Question 18

Frames

Answer 18

“framing, as the process of frame building, refers to how issues are cast by those who control or influence the discourse. It entails selecting particular aspects of reality and making them more salient than others ‘to promote a particular problem definition”