This blog post should address the reading (Chapters 5 & 6) due on Monday, Jan. 28.
Based on the Lule readings we have completed thus far—we're about two-thirds of the way through the book—begin to discuss different topics that you believe would be appropriate for the literature review of our group project/content analysis.
In proposing topics, you should be thinking about what you think we should be looking for in our content analysis. You might begin by identifying a goal of our research. The loose proposal is that we use archives of Ursinus' student newspaper, The Grizzly, to explore the presence of myth in a college publication.
Your literature review topic recommendations should also be influenced by the examples/formatting of the Messner & Garrison and Berkowitz & Eko readings from Wednesday, Jan. 23.
Your original blog should be posted by 5 p.m. on Saturday, Jan. 26. Any comments should be posted by 5 p.m. on Sunday, Jan. 27.
You can post an original blog as a comment to this prompt. Responses to a classmate's post can be shared by posting a "reply." Please email khettinga@ursinus.edu with questions or concerns.
I think that a good idea for the group content analysis project would be to look through the archives of the Ursinus student newspaper, The Grizzly, to see what myths are most popularly written about. I think this idea would give us a good understanding of the Ursinus community. Also, to keep the amount of information less vast, I would say to gather the articles in a time span of a year or some similar timing. In a larger study, I would ideally like to analyze how many times the seven major myths appear in articles in a mainstream newspaper such as The New York Times and in a college publication such as the Grizzly. I know we won’t be look at The New York Times in this study, but it’s an idea that I would like to entertain at some point. Another proposal idea I have is to see if the hero myth applies to the articles about the student athletes and how often. However, that idea might be better done in a similar way as the Berkowitz & Eko study which was a textual analysis. It wouldn't include the how often but it would be able to see how extensively the myth is used in articles on student athletes. The Messner & Garrison reading answered the question of how often because it was a content analysis. I’m guessing their study will be similar to the study we are going to do except that we won’t be analyzing the data we collect in a written paper. A thought I’m trying to keep in mind is that it is very hard to code information so I’m trying to keep the proposals simple. Although, we are doing the coding book together as a class so I might not need to be so careful. How does everyone feel about the initial proposal? Does anyone think that we could make the proposal more complicated and be okay with the amount of work?
ReplyDeleteI think that this proposal seems to be pretty interesting and would most likely be pretty easy. This makes a lot of sense to me because it really relates to the book that we are reading and I think it would be cool to incorporate the themes from the book in our research. My proposal was also similar to this and I think that it would be good to look in the past Grizzly papers and I do think that we would be able to find a trend of the seven myths and be able to relate it to the victim. This proposal really interested me and I think it would be great for the class.
DeleteLimiting the area of our study to a year sounds like a good idea. It would be much more realistic to analyze and create a code book (which type of story counts for which myth?) with a narrow focus. This would allow us to perform a qualitative analysis, but we wouldn't be able to make any long-term generalizations about The Grizzly or college news publications in general. Perhaps after the initial study we could use our knowledge such as the code book towards a more quantifiable study.
DeleteA possible idea for the group content analysis project is to examine Lule’s theme of the myth of the victim when searching through the archives of Ursinus’ student newspaper, the Grizzly. To make this idea more concise, the examined publications could be issues that were written between one to three years ago. Because there would be a specific span of time to be viewed, if executed properly, instances of the myth of the victim could potentially and easily be found in some issues. I have suggested Lule’s myth of the victim as the specific area of concentration because personally, I feel this is most frequented in the news and can therefore, be more accessible when conducting this content analysis and begin initial research. The ultimate goal of this research would be to code for and examine how common the myth of the victim is used in the student-run Grizzly and then attempt to determine or offer some insight as to why this is or why this myth is utilized in a campus newspaper. A literature review based on this idea could hypothetically include samples of other student newspapers of other colleges which have previously run stories that can be classified as the myth of the victim or any academic source which deals with this story seen in news and journalism (perhaps Lule would serve as a fair example). If the group content analysis project is focused and centered on a certain myth presented by Lule or limited to an explicit time period or number of years, then the coding and proposed coding manual for this project should not be too difficult to execute. In order to be successful, members of the group would of course have to agree that this idea would make a good premise for content analysis and follow this semester’s theme of analysis of the news.
ReplyDeleteIn thinking about our group project/content analysis I think a good approach may be to focus on articles that were published in The Grizzly over a span of at least ten years, maybe four or five articles from each year. I think that such an approach would yield a good sample, enabling us to make comparisons between different years and see if the presence of the myths changed over time.
ReplyDeleteIn terms of specific myths that we could analyze in articles from The Grizzly, I agree with Caroline’s idea of investigating the hero myth. However, in addition to sports, we can analyze different areas in which the hero myth is manifested in The Grizzly. I agree that sports will be a common place where this myth will appear , yet I think it would be interesting to see if it appears in other stories as well. We could look for common words or themes that Lule (2001) suggests are related to the hero myth, such as humble beginnings, initiation and undertaking of a quest, and embodiment of societal values. Also, I think it would be interesting to analyze gender within the hero myth; that is to say whether the myth of the hero in The Grizzly is seen more for females or males.
Another myth that we can investigate is the myth of the victim, and how it appears in different areas of coverage in The Grizzly. Because this myth is constantly utilized in news coverage, it is reasonable to think that there will be many examples that will be found within Grizzly articles. Again, I think it would be interesting to investigate how the myth of the victim is presented in relation to gender.
Regarding the literature review for our content analysis, the study by Messner and Garrison (2011) provides a good template of how we should complete this part. We should first find previous research about myth in news media. Then we could find articles relating to the more specific topics that we choose, such as portrayals of heroes and victims in news media. Finally, we could look for articles that investigate how different genders are portrayed in these different situations in the news media.
I think that a good idea for the content analysis project would be going to look through the archives of the Grizzly Ursinus Students newspaper, and finding common themes of the victim from the seven different myths. I think since the Grizzly has been around for a while, we should look at a time span of articles for maybe the last five years. Possibly what we could do is find common themes and trends, and look at how the victim was portrayed. While doing this we could see if the news coverage has changed over the years and how the victim role has been portrayed. It would also be interesting to see how the seven myths have been portrayed in the newspaper as well. I think it would also be cool to look at the Ursinus Newspaper and their coverage versus larger newspapers that are published to the public. With the victim role in the grizzly I think we would be able to look at the hero aspect very closely. With having sports, community service, and lots of clubs here we should be able to see different roles as the victim. I think that by examining these common themes we will be able to see different trends of the news coverage here and how the journalists portray the students and the school. I think that this would be a pretty easy topic which would be easy to find information on and we could all understand what is trying to be said about the victim and its role in the Grizzly newspaper.
ReplyDeleteAfter reading many chapters of the Lule book, I think it would be interesting to look for instances of the myth of Hero in the Grizzly archives. The Grizzly often features profiles of Ursinus faculty members or profiles focused on a specific player on a sports team. There is potential for these articles to perpetuate Lule's myth of Hero, especially in the sports page. Lule talks extensively about the news' reoccurring coverage of successful sports players as being heroes. Such stories are rife with stories of the player's childhood experiences with his sport and his trials and tribulations. Lule talks about the rags to riches story within the myth of Hero, but this may not be as evident within the Grizzly since sports players are not paid. It would be interesting to discover if a specific section such as features or sports included more stories with the Hero myth. Within the sampling we would find, it would also be interesting to observe whether these Heroic myth stories were written moreso by male or female authors. Perhaps we may discover a pattern in genera and myth and possibly gender and myth. It would also be interesting to see if there was a specific time period that exhibited more stories of hero. Are there more instances of the hero myth more recently or is it more prevalent in older articles? These are just some of the patterns we could be looking for within the Hero myth, but this might be a good place to start.
ReplyDeleteI think the idea of analyzing previous articles in the Grizzly will be very helpful with our content analysis because it will be easy for us, current students, to dissect these articles and truly pin point what the key factors are when reviewing these pieces of literature. The articles from the Grizzly will be a great starting point because these articles will serve almost as a peer review guide, and students will have an easier time analyzing certain myths brought up by Lule. After we look at the Grizzly, I think we should then look at professional newspaper articles as well to compare and contrast how these match up when looking at things like the myth of a victim or hero. Newspapers like the New York Times, or the Philadelphia Inquirer, which cover such a wide variety of topics, will be a great sample to compare the Grizzly too. Whether it is an article about sports, death, politics, gossip, or weather, these topics are covered by all newspapers so between the Grizzly and these professional newspapers, certain myths about hero’s and victims can be easily compared.
ReplyDeleteTo truly find out the overall research that this project will entail, I think it is imperative that we study both the student perspective and the professional aspect. Getting a student’s point of view versus a professional will help vary the information and results when looking at how each of the two differentiates a victim or hero. By examining these mutual themes seen between students and professional journalists, it will be easy to identify the different themes that these types of media portray to our society today. This topic will be an interesting one when comparing the two ideas, because a student’s point of view versus a professional can be vastly different, and will serve well in our study.
I believe this idea of analyzing not only the Grizzly, but also major professional newspapers such as the times or the Philadelphia Inquirer is interesting one and worth trying. I feel that analyzing the grizzly is also a good idea, especially because it would be great to explore articles of our peers and also explore articles that originated right from where we go to school. But at the same time if we could also explore articles that are produced for more of a bigger audience i think it would be cool to compare and contrast on a regular basis with our paper. For example (like ryan said) We could use lule's myth strategy as a pin point and see how authors of the grizzly used them and compare to how authors of the times used them. I think that aspect of compare and contrast would actually add alot to class.
DeleteWith this content analysis project, I anticipate seeing a lot of groups focusing on the myths of the hero and the victim. Sorry in advance to anyone who is looking to focus on one of these, but in my opinion, the myths of the hero and victim are kind of played out. I'd like to look at this project in a bit of a skewed way. I wouldn't really be interested in looking into something that we are seeing everyday so blatantly. What would be interesting to me is looking through the archives for proof of the myth of the "Good Mother." My personal twist would be regarding to Ursinus College as the mother. I'd like to show how often this myth shows up when there are issues in the school community or on campus and Ursinus takes action to protect its students, as any good mother would. I think that if we look at the Grizzly with this in mind, we would be able to find a myriad of different examples to pull.
ReplyDeleteWhat could be even more interesting is if, in our search for "the Good Mother," we found examples of Ursinus as the "Terrible Mother." With the Grizzly being a school paper, I'm sure that these examples wouldn't be as conspicuous. I'm very curious to see what kind of mother Ursinus really proves to be.
I think this is a great suggestion for several reasons. For one, applying the "Good Mother" myth in a less literal way would help us see how these myths can be applied to a variety of situations, even ones that do not necessarily fit the myth's mold exactly.
DeleteBeyond this, exploring the "Good Mother" myth in relation to Ursinus would be especially interesting because the college is a private institution. The First Amendment rights of student newspapers at private institutions are restricted. Grizzly reporters have to be mindful of the way they portray the administration; if President Fong doesn't like something printed in the paper, he has the power to take away its funding, which would prevent the Grizzly from being printed in its physical form (though we could of course still use the online version). This fact could impact how often we see the college and its administrators portrayed as Good Mothers who make decisions based on what's best for the school and its student body. I would be really interested to see how often Grizzly writers were more critical of the administration, particularly during times of civil unrest like the 1960s.
I agree with Mary that the myths of the victim and hero are played out. It's obvious that many articles are going to glorify students, athletes, and faculty members into being heroic. At the same time, many others will portray these as the victim because the Grizzly is ultimately written by and for the UC community.
DeleteBecause of this fact, I agree that it would be more interesting to focus on a less common myth such as the Good Mother. By looking for the presence of the myth of the Good Mother, it may create interesting insight into the true relationship between UC as an institution and all of its students. In what ways is the administration "motherly"? How does it protect it's students? What does it want for it's students?
Could be interesting.
Wow, after reading this I agree that this would be very interesting to look at. Especially in recent years, looking at Ursinus being portrayed as "Good Mother" versus "Terrible Mother," would bring up interesting points. Recent changes to the college that I'm sure were covered in the Grizzly would provide great examples for both. For example, the issues of the graduation date change as well as the rumor of Ursinus College becoming a dry campus would be potential examples that would be interesting to look at in this context.
DeleteI completely agree that the myths of victim and hero are played out, as we see them everyday in the daily newspaper. Looking at the less common myths would make this a more interesting research project.
The content analysis that we will be performing as a class will aim to identify patterns of coverage in the Ursinus College Newspaper, The Grizzly. We will be looking for the presence of myth in the articles of the newspaper. In attempting to identify the presence of myth, we will be looking to identify and count examples of the victim, the scapegoat, the hero, the good mother, the trickster, the other world, and the flood.
ReplyDeleteIn the literature review, it would be most important to address the topic of news coverage throughout history and the presence of the myth. If possible, previous studies done which concern the presence of the myth in any type of news source should be included. It is most important to include this information in the literature review for the class content analysis because that is the topic the entire study will be addressing.
The literature review done in Messner and Garrison’s study follows a similar structure. Their literature review first begins with giving background information on bloggers and the blogs they write. They include information from other sources which published information and the opinion of others about blogs. In our study, instead of including information from other sources about the place of blogs in the news media, we will include outside information about the presence of myth in news media.
Messner and Garrison’s literature review includes information from “more scholars.” I think that in our literature review, it would be helpful to include sources from an exact location, and if possible other content analyses or studies with empirical data.
What is the Grizzly Newspaper in relation to the college? One will likely find that as a campus newspaper, its scope will focus on a tight proximity and cast events in an optimistic light. By no fault of its own, the general outlook of Grizzly articles lends itself to the heroes of the field, academic achievement, or an improvement to life on campus.
ReplyDeleteThis mindfulness extends to the student reports of global events. From the small sample I have experienced during my time as a student, the writing is largely modeled after an American journalistic style. Fair, balanced, and drained of opinion, as Berkowitz suggests. International reports are often as unbiased and factual as possible.
From the recent controversy of an opinion piece written last year, one could assume that the column is not always aligned with the communities’ patience in mind. This is where a potential trove of myths could be discovered, beyond Lule’s hero and Good Mother formats. This is likely because it is within the opinion section, a paradigm that closer reflects the French way of delivering news. Here we may find depictions of the trickster after a campus prank, or victim in an outcry of a student body.
Naturally, these are just predictions that could only be satisfied by glancing at the archives.
By comparing these two things, world news and opinion pieces, we can essentially pit American and French means of reporting right within the Grizzly. While these sections will likely have different myths, it would be interesting to see the same myth depicted differently based on its location in the paper.
These sections do little to dominate the word space. A proper textual analysis would call for at least half-a-decade of news - or more, and an assumed one article per issue. This is an idea best left in the oven a while longer, but I enjoy the concept of opposed news values.
For the group content analysis project I think we should through articles written in the past 3-4 years and find which is the most common myth. However, if we were to pin point one particular myth, I would say the myth of the hero, because we recently lost our past president so anything written about that will probably contain the myth of a hero. I think it would be interesting to see what a majority of the hero myths focused on, athletes, faculty, or maybe both were nearly focused on equally. I think it would be interesting to see if there is a different approach to writing about a hero who is seen as a student apart from a faculty member who was seen as a student. This is a take on the berkowitz and Eko analysis, because they compared the difference between how the The New York Times and the French news papers approach on the Mohammed comics.
ReplyDeleteAfter reading 6 chapters of Lule I believe each of the myths we read chapters about to this point (victim, scapegoat, hero, good mother) can be identified in a college publication such as Ursinus’ The Grizzly. As in our reading for The Hero myth in Lule, we could look to the sports section of The Grizzly to find any number of individual or team success stories. Lule talked specifically about how the hero myth generally came about, specifically noting the origin story and the quest. Many athlete “spotlight” articles in The Grizzly as such questions as “when did you begin playing the sport?” (origin story) and “what are your goals for the season?” (quest) and a follow-up article would likely be expected if the quest is both worthy of our attention and, more importantly, accomplished by the end of the season. This process would be less intensive than a professional publication who released daily issues of the news, or updates stories online, but overall the hero myth is present in a college publication.
ReplyDeleteThe myth of the victim can be seen in Ursinus’ candlelight vigil for deceased students or alumni, in which prayers and talks are held by teachers and friends or classmates of the deceased to honor their memory. The Grizzly would write an article following this event and oftentimes these articles contain sentimental quotes and/or lists of their achievements such as an above average GPA. Coverage of the deeds of a retiring faculty member could serve as an example of the good mother myth, while controversial events such as the “hot or crazy” website, or the Halloween blackface or overrated athletes article, could serve as examples of the scapegoat.
I believe this research would be best suited to a qualitative analysis per Berkowitz and Eko’s reading to study not only the occurrence and prevalence of myth in a college publication, but how the myths are covered and portrayed in depth.
I think you've laid out a really nice map of where these myths could show up on campus. Coverage of a deceased student was something I had in mind but I wasn't sure how to frame it delicately. Beyond that I really appreciate your inclusion of the athlete interview as an "origin story." It would be interesting to cover the high's and lows of Ursinus through time with your ideas for the victim/scapegoat, and hero. These archetypes are likely to be depicted in similar fashion year after year. Good ideas!
DeleteIn regards to the content analysis project and in reference to the Lule readings, I believe the most interesting topic of research would be an attempt to figure out which of the seven myths is most prevalent in the Ursinus Grizzly during the past five years. This research of course would also show statistics about all of the myths, such as which one is least used and which ones are used most frequently/infrequently per genre of article. A project of this proportion would most likely be far too difficult for our class to perform in the allotted amount of time this semester. A more appropriate form of this same project would be to perhaps just study an individual genre in the past five years, and from there figure out which myths are most prevalent. I think a genre such as sports would have to be eliminated because only so many myth portrayals are possible. Defining the myths in content analysis form would be tough, as stated in the above blogs, so the literature review would need to provide appropriate historical references of the myths in prior research, and would need to clearly articulate how others have coded or defined such myth genres.
ReplyDeleteIn today’s news media of the myth of the victim and the hero are portrayed more often than the other five myths. However, I think that because these two myths often present less of a challenge to identify within news stories, I think a good idea for our content analysis project would be to compare the presence of “The Good Mother” myth in Ursinus College’s student newspaper, The Grizzly, as well as its presence in another local, small liberal arts college’s student newspaper. We could potentially see how each paper presents the myth of “The Good Mother” using past issues within the last five years. Although one could argue that the Grizzly rarely discusses the myth of The Good Mother, in recent issues I have found ways in which The Grizzly has indeed presented the myth of The Good Mother. One way the Grizzly provides its readers with the myth of The Good Mother is through its articles that discuss retiring faculty members. These articles generally describe these retiring staff and professors as having been very helpful and caring towards students as well as the entire Ursinus College community. We should be mindful of the fact that The Good Mother does not have to be a woman; in fact, an example of this would be past Ursinus College President, President John Strassburger. The Grizzly’s coverage of President Strassburger’s memorial highlights the qualities of the Good Mother accurately through the use of quotes as well as journalistic commentary. The chapter mentions the inverse of this myth known as the terrible mother, however it is rare that one would find examples of this in a college newspaper. I think that it would be beneficial to follow the qualitative content analysis model of the Berkowitz and Eko study in order to examine the presence of the Good Mother in both these newspapers. If we were to use multiple news outlets, perhaps UCTV and another college’s news television station, as well as their corresponding news publications we therefore could use quantitative analysis.
ReplyDeleteI proposal we use the archives of Ursinus' student newspaper, The Grizzly, to explore the presence of myth in a college publication. Focusing on the hero myth and see how many of these heroes started off as victims and if through the ages if that number has increased or decreased. I think it would be interesting to find out what Ursinus reporters deemed as “hero status”. We could look through a span of five to ten years depending on how popular the victim and the hero stories were, and would get to use two of the methods the victim and the hero. I also think it would be neat to see how these roles have changed over time, so you could pick story that is similar to other stories ranging around five years apart so that it’s like a completely news staff. This is like the Berkowitz and Eko reading from Wednesday in a sense because for them the story and the controversy did not change but the year and it made them look back in to the source of why that happened and what are the different styles of writing were. And I think that would be interesting to see how The Grizzly changed because of the new team and their new ideas. I think it should be an easy enough topic to do. I also I was wondering if anybody had any idea how far back the archives go? I think Dr. Hettinga mentioned it in class but I forgot the date.
ReplyDelete