MethodologyMethodology for Trayvon Martin report - March 29, 2012This special report by the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism on the news coverage surrounding the Trayvon Martin case uses two methodologies for its media analysis. Social Media For the data regarding social media (blogs and Twitter), PEJ employed a combination of traditional media research methods, based on long-standing rules regarding content analysis, along with computer coding software developed by Crimson Hexagon. This report is based on an examination of more than 7 million tweets and 25,000 blog posts in order to look at the amount and frame of the conversation related to the death of Trayvon Martin. Crimson Hexagon is a software platform that identifies statistical patterns in words used in online texts. Researchers enter key terms using Boolean search logic so the software can identify relevant material to analyze. PEJ draws its analysis samples from several million blogs. Then a researcher trains the software to classify documents using examples from those collected posts. Finally, the software classifies the rest of the online content according to the patterns derived during the training. According to Crimson Hexagon: "Our technology analyzes the entire social internet (blog posts, forum messages, Tweets, etc.) by identifying statistical patterns in the words used to express opinions on different topics." Information on the tool itself can be found at http://www.crimsonhexagon.com/ and the in-depth methodologies can be found here http://www.crimsonhexagon.com/products/whitepapers/. Crimson Hexagon measures text in the aggregate and the unit of measure is the ‘statement' or assessment, not the blog post or Tweet. One Tweet can contain more than one statement if multiple ideas are expressed. The results are determined as a percentage of the overall conversation. The time frame for the analysis is February 26 - March 28, 2012. Because the language contained in Tweets and blog posts varies, PEJ used different keywords in a Boolean search to narrow the universe to relevant posts. For Twitter, PEJ used the terms: Trayvon OR Martin OR Zimmerman OR Zimmermann OR hoodie OR Geraldo OR (stand AND ground) OR Sharpton OR skittles OR Sanford For Blogs, PEJ used the terms: Trayvon AND -("Trayvon Robinson") Mainstream Press For the data regarding the mainstream press, PEJ used human coders to analyze the content. The method followed the same procedures used in PEJ's weekly News Coverage Index. For an in-depth methodology regarding that coding, click here. Stories across all media outlets in the NCI were first identified as being about the Trayvon case. Those stories that appeared in the cable and talk radio outlets were then coded at a second level to identify the frame or sub-story. If a story contained two or more frames, the frame that was given the most attention (in terms of seconds) in the story was assigned PEJ rotates the cable and talk radio programs coded each day as follows: Cable TV (Fifteen in all, Monday-Friday)
Daytime (2-2:30 pm) - code two out of three every day
Nighttime Fox News - code two out of the four every day Nighttime CNN - code one or two out of the four every day
Situation Room (5 pm) Anderson Cooper 360 Erin Burnett OutFront and Anderson Cooper 360 are coded every other day, and Situation Room and John King, USA are coded every fourth day
Nighttime MSNBC - code one or two out of the four every day The Rachel Maddow Show and The Ed Show are coded every other day, and PoliticsNation and Hardball are coded every fourth day Talk Radio (Three in all, Monday-Friday)
Rush Limbaugh
Code every other day: PEJ's human coding measures news coverage as a percent of ‘newshole' - the time or space given to news content. The results are determined as a percentage of the overall newshole in terms of seconds. The time frame for the analysis is February 26 - March 28, 2012, with the vast majority of the results coming from the period of March 17-28. Much of the report focuses on cable and talk radio coverage during this main time period. About this Study A number of people at the Project for Excellence in Journalism worked on this report. Research Analyst Emily Guskin, Associate Director Mark Jurkowitz and Deputy Director Amy Mitchell wrote the report. Senior Researcher Paul Hitlin and Researcher Kevin Caldwell analyzed the statistics. Steve Adams produced the charts. Additional research was conducted by Laura Houston Santhanam, Sovini Tan, Monica Anderson, Heather Brown, Tricia Sartor and Nancy Vogt. Dana Page handled the web and communications. |
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