Research design

Sceptical enquiry approach to the media: I hope this course has encouraged a spirit of sceptical enquiry when engaging with any media representation. This doesn’t mean dismissing everything one disagrees with as ‘fake news’ (that is very dismissive of good journalism and it ultimately undermining for civil society). Instead, the spirit of sceptical enquiry means being prepared to engage with and assess information from different sources, and look ‘behind the headlines’ to develop a more three-dimensional understanding of issues. Even information given in the media about a patient’s diagnosis (even from family members or some ‘expert’ commentator) may not be correct for example (e.g. family may use terms like ‘coma’ which are not clinically accurate, or experts may speculate about a diagnosis when they have insufficient information about a particular patient).

The following discussion just highlights a few issues if you are considering doing academic ‘media studies’ research:

Consider different aspects of a topic and the diverse media genre: This course covered many issues from looking at the portrayal of patients (Module 2) to the representation of law or science (Module 4). It also illustrated the range of genre that can be examined: from soap opera to TV news. If you’re designing your own research you’ll need to choose your focus and decide what genre to include. You may find it useful to look at the journal articles referred to in this course to see how the authors explain their choices.

Consider diverse methods and areas of enquiry: This course drew on research focusing of different aspects of the circuit of communication: some studies just looked at representation, others explored the sources that helped inform reports (e.g press releases) or examined how people respond to (or were influenced by) them. The methods used ranged from visual analysis to content analysis and some studies included in-depth interviews or public survey data. Where you choose to focus is an important strategic decisions. Again, you’ll find it useful to check the ‘methods’ section of some of the published research articles we’ve referred to; have a look at how the authors explained their research design and methods.

Deploy key concepts from media studies: In this course we talked  a bit about ‘framing‘. This included how an  image might be selected or a statistic presented  (such as the ‘40% misdiagnosis’ figure). We also talked about ‘agenda setting’ , for example, looking at how  front page coverage was given to questions about life-sustaining treatment. This high profile coverage helped put this issue on the agenda, making it very salient for public discussion and policy making.

Critical engagement with research studies is also key. This doesn’t mean you have to pick holes in research; rather ‘being critical’ refers to the ability to reflect on the method and conclusion of studies and consider different interpretations. You saw this in operation in Module 4 in the unit on reporting science, when we highlighted how a research article could provoke debate between the original authors and people cited within the piece.​

Questioning assumption when designing and interpreting your own research: alongside critical engagement it is important to take nothing for granted. For example,  we showed how there could be different opinions about the implications of fictional representations of miracle recoveries (Module 2)  and what counts as a ‘good’ representation may vary depending on your perspective.Who decides on what is the appropriately ‘positive’ or ‘negative’ way of representing a patient for example? Questions about whether a portrayal is ‘realistic’ or not is slightly more straightforward. For example,  you can compare how likely an outcome is ‘in real life’ (e.g. using clinical data) and in media representation (eg in a film).  It is therefore possible to argue that  fiction represents an ‘overly optimistic’ view of recovery. The implications of such ‘overly- optimism’ representations can, however,  still be debated, as you saw in the dialogue between researchers who documented and critiqued over-optimistic portrayals of recovery and those who think a bit of optimism can be helpful.

Theoretical perspective: It is useful to be explicit about your theoretical perspective and consider the pros and cons of different approaches. In the research presented in this course you will have often seen a ‘realist’ approach: contrasting  clinical facts with the myths and distortions of coma in film. You’ll also have encountered social constructionist approaches: exploring, for example, how a mother might construct an account of what happened to her daughter, crafting a narrative (Module 1) or how social forces play out to ensure a particular diagnostic category is created (Module 4).

Going forward

If you’re a student interested in doing your own study of media representation or its influence for a dissertation in the future I hope this course can help you feeling more confident, or more curious, about how to approach this. The course has been designed to give you a context in which to reflect on how to design research and consider a range of methods. However, the devil is in the detail and you’ll need to know a lot more about methods of data collection and analysis before going forward with such an enterprise, so a lot of reading about methodology may be needed too!