title: A software-assisted qualitative content analysis of news articles: Examples and reflections

authors: Kaefer, Florian

subjects: qualitative content analysis

abstract: This article offers a step-by-step description of how qualitative data analysis software can be used for a qualitative content analysis of newspaper articles. Using NVivo as an example, it illustrates how software tools can facilitate analytical flexibility and how they can enhance transparency and trustworthiness of the qualitative research process. Following a brief discussion of the key characteristics, advantages and limitations of qualitative data analysis software, the article describes a qualitative content analysis of 230 newspaper articles, conducted to determine international media perceptions of New Zealand's environmental performance in connection with climate change and carbon emissions. The article proposes a multi-level coding approach during the analysis of news texts that combines quantitative and qualitative elements, allowing the researcher to move back and forth in coding and between analytical levels. The article concludes that while qualitative data analysis software, such as NVivo, will not do the analysis for the researcher, it can make the analytical process more flexible, transparent and ultimately more trustworthy.

text: A software-assisted qualitative content analysis of news articles: Examples and reflections This article offers a step-by-step description of how qualitative data analysis software can be used for a qualitative content analysis of newspaper articles. Using NVivo as an example, it illustrates how software tools can facilitate analytical flexibility and how they can enhance transparency and trustworthiness of the qualitative research process. Following a brief discussion of the key characteristics, advantages and limitations of qualitative data analysis software, the article describes a qualitative content analysis of 230 newspaper articles, conducted to determine international media perceptions of New Zealand's environmental performance in connection with climate change and carbon emissions. The article proposes a multi-level coding approach during the analysis of news texts that combines quantitative and qualitative elements, allowing the researcher to move back and forth in coding and between analytical levels. The article concludes that while qualitative data analysis software, such as NVivo, will not do the analysis for the researcher, it can make the analytical process more flexible, transparent and ultimately more trustworthy.

year: 2015

title: Talking with Their Mouths Half Full: food insecurity in the Hamilton community

authors: McNeill, Kellie Irene Blair

subjects: food security

abstract: While the sociology of food has attended to what symbolisms of presence can tell us about society, the same attention has not been attributed to symbolisms of absence. Within the context of affluent post-industrial societies, food insecurity means that people are “at times, uncertain of having, or unable to acquire, enough food for all household members because they had insufficient money and other resources for food” (Nord et al. 2009, p. 2). This project is a comprehensive study of responses to, and experiences of, food insecurity in Hamilton City. The issue of food insecurity has been difficult to politicise in New Zealand. One of the reasons for this is that the demand for food aid is usually reported by individual organisations, rather than across the entire food support sector. The first phase of this research was a multi-provider survey that documented the demand for formal food support in Hamilton over a one year period in 2006/2007. The findings show that during this time the community absorbed $1,157,623 worth of state funded Special Needs Grants for Food, while philanthropically funded third sector organisations provided 4,232 food parcels and 25,557 community meals. The survey findings demonstrate that the socio-political environment in which formal food support takes place is characterised by the unwillingness of the state to fully realise its role in affirming the right of citizens to be free from hunger. At the same time, there is evidence of a corresponding willingness to delegate provision of food aid to charity based third sector organisations that receive no state funding. The second phase of the study was a qualitative exploration of the experiences of ten community members who were confirmed as food insecure using the ‘Standard 6-item Indicator to Classifying Households by Food Security Status’ (Bickel et al., 2000). The data showed that, as far as they were able, respondents exercised a range of endogenous strategies (the means that individuals and households applied in the private domain to manage food insecurity and hunger), but ultimately, the utility of these diminished. In this event, respondents pursued either informal exogenous strategies (through social networks), or, particularly where there were limitations on social capital, formal exogenous strategies in the form of service use. This study points to food insecurity as an experience that is shrouded with secrecy, shame and fear of stigma. Further, the experience carries with it a range of social implications in the form of exclusion, marginalisation and disempowerment, all of which have seldom been recognised elsewhere in the literature. In acknowledging the complex and non-linear nature of food insecurity at macro, meso and micro levels, Rittel and Webber’s (1973) criteria for ‘wicked problems’ is utilised as a theoretical framework for synthesising the findings. The thesis advocates for a collaborative approach to re-solving the persistence of food insecurity in which the range of stakeholders involved is broadened to include those who ‘talk with their mouths half full’.

text: Talking with Their Mouths Half Full: food insecurity in the Hamilton community While the sociology of food has attended to what symbolisms of presence can tell us about society, the same attention has not been attributed to symbolisms of absence. Within the context of affluent post-industrial societies, food insecurity means that people are “at times, uncertain of having, or unable to acquire, enough food for all household members because they had insufficient money and other resources for food” (Nord et al. 2009, p. 2). This project is a comprehensive study of responses to, and experiences of, food insecurity in Hamilton City. The issue of food insecurity has been difficult to politicise in New Zealand. One of the reasons for this is that the demand for food aid is usually reported by individual organisations, rather than across the entire food support sector. The first phase of this research was a multi-provider survey that documented the demand for formal food support in Hamilton over a one year period in 2006/2007. The findings show that during this time the community absorbed $1,157,623 worth of state funded Special Needs Grants for Food, while philanthropically funded third sector organisations provided 4,232 food parcels and 25,557 community meals. The survey findings demonstrate that the socio-political environment in which formal food support takes place is characterised by the unwillingness of the state to fully realise its role in affirming the right of citizens to be free from hunger. At the same time, there is evidence of a corresponding willingness to delegate provision of food aid to charity based third sector organisations that receive no state funding. The second phase of the study was a qualitative exploration of the experiences of ten community members who were confirmed as food insecure using the ‘Standard 6-item Indicator to Classifying Households by Food Security Status’ (Bickel et al., 2000). The data showed that, as far as they were able, respondents exercised a range of endogenous strategies (the means that individuals and households applied in the private domain to manage food insecurity and hunger), but ultimately, the utility of these diminished. In this event, respondents pursued either informal exogenous strategies (through social networks), or, particularly where there were limitations on social capital, formal exogenous strategies in the form of service use. This study points to food insecurity as an experience that is shrouded with secrecy, shame and fear of stigma. Further, the experience carries with it a range of social implications in the form of exclusion, marginalisation and disempowerment, all of which have seldom been recognised elsewhere in the literature. In acknowledging the complex and non-linear nature of food insecurity at macro, meso and micro levels, Rittel and Webber’s (1973) criteria for ‘wicked problems’ is utilised as a theoretical framework for synthesising the findings. The thesis advocates for a collaborative approach to re-solving the persistence of food insecurity in which the range of stakeholders involved is broadened to include those who ‘talk with their mouths half full’.

year: 2011

title: From mainstream to manaaki: Indigenising our approach to immigration

authors: Kukutai, Tahu

abstract: In recent years, discontent with migration and migrants in the wealthy global north has manifested in disturbing ways: cue Brexit, xenophobia, border paranoia, far-right nationalism and its bedfellow white supremacy. On the surface, Aotearoa New Zealand appears to have escaped the uglier aspects of this nativism. Despite the grumblings of the New Zealand First Party, no serious popular or political anti-immigration movement has appeared, and racially motivated attacks against migrants are relatively rare. This is despite the fact that Aotearoa has a much higher relative foreign-born population share than the United States or United Kingdom,1 and ‘superdiverse’ Auckland – which comprises at least 40 per cent migrants – now has the ignominious claim to being the fourthleast affordable city in the world, far outstripping London and New York.

text: From mainstream to manaaki: Indigenising our approach to immigration In recent years, discontent with migration and migrants in the wealthy global north has manifested in disturbing ways: cue Brexit, xenophobia, border paranoia, far-right nationalism and its bedfellow white supremacy. On the surface, Aotearoa New Zealand appears to have escaped the uglier aspects of this nativism. Despite the grumblings of the New Zealand First Party, no serious popular or political anti-immigration movement has appeared, and racially motivated attacks against migrants are relatively rare. This is despite the fact that Aotearoa has a much higher relative foreign-born population share than the United States or United Kingdom,1 and ‘superdiverse’ Auckland – which comprises at least 40 per cent migrants – now has the ignominious claim to being the fourthleast affordable city in the world, far outstripping London and New York.

year: 2017