Direct Coding Multimedia Data to Facilitate Nuanced Findings About Racialized Media Coverage of College Football

• In Event: Tell Me How It Really Happened: Qualitative Analyses in Education Research

Abstract

Purpose
Video data is multi-modal and layered (Table 1). In this presentation, we describe the data analysis for a study of racialized media coverage of ESPN’s College Game Day (CGD) broadcasts (Authors, date1) as an exemplar to support our argument that directly coding multimedia data, rather than transcriptions, can enrich educational analyses and research.
Perspectives
Our methodology was informed by Interpretive Content Analysis and a constructivist lens, allowing for analysis of manifest and latent content (Drisko & Maschi, 2016; Krippendorff, 2018). Agenda-Setting Theory also informed our analysis. Media and broadcasters direct the public’s attention to specific subjects, thus influencing the foci of public discourse and salience of topics (McCombs & Shaw, 1972). Priming, for example, looks at how media associates or “primes” a topic with specific concepts or attributes (Moy et al., 2016).
Methods and Data
We analyzed 118 hours of video data, using the constant comparative method (Glaser, 1965) to compare similar occurrences within the data, in ever more specific groupings, solidify categories, and analyze them for meaning. Dedoose, a cloud-based qualitative data analysis application, was essential for employing the constant comparative method on video data, facilitating the data’s categorization into themes that we could seamlessly review and subcode clip-by-clip. We will show examples of this in our presentation.
Findings: The Case for Direct-Coding
In addition to considering each layer of video data independently, multiple components are happening simultaneously. It was therefore important to analyze them in relation to each other rather than in isolation. Further, the impact of video as a whole is a source of data; transcription, even a thoughtful, comprehensive transcription process (Fields, 1988), is unable to maintain/document the overall impact/effect of the video. Thus, direct-coding can lead to qualitatively richer findings than if the data was transcribed and subsequently coded. The layered complexity of this video data in turn impacted data management and the coding and analysis process.
Paradoxically, a frequent response to us having coded video directly has been an assumption that direct-coding video is simply a short-cut to the same analytic destination. In response to this, we note that direct-coding also complicated the analysis by maintaining the layered complexity. For example, by coding for “mismatches” between the audio commentary and the accompanying visual(s), we found that the discordance between the visual(s) and commentary served to normalize and underestimate Black players’ injuries (and potential injuries) and argue it served a priming function. This nuance would have been rendered invisible had we conducted analysis using transcriptions.
Significance
The methods and analytic choices we make profoundly impact our findings—either constraining or expanding what our research can address. The significance of that impact on research is self-evident. In our exemplar study, we were able to speak to more profound societal significance because of our thoughtful use of this method. Namely, evidence supported our assertion that CGD broadcasts contributed to the rationalization of using excessive force against Black people by priming audiences to see Black people as impervious to pain and violence (authors, date1).

Authors

• Siduri J. Haslerig, Boise State University

• Sara E. Grummert, Institute for Mixed Methods Research