The social scientific model of media literacy differs in key ways from the cultural model. In this section, we compare analyses of two studies to examine the differences between the two models, and we look more closely at how social scientific researchers gather data to analyze the content of media messages and consumers’ responses to those messages.
Comparing Analyses of Cancer News Coverage
Cultural and social scientific media researchers often study the same topics, but they ask different types of questions about those topics. For example, two studies recently analyzed news coverage of cancer. The study informed by the cultural approach, titled “Constructing Breast Cancer in the News: Betty Ford and the Evolution of the Breast Cancer Patient,” explored a historical turning point in how the media and consumers interpret breast cancer. The study centered on how the news media covered First Lady Betty Ford’s mastectomy operation in 1974. The author of the study concluded that coverage of Ford’s mastectomy still influences contemporary news coverage of breast cancer today. Specifically, many stories on this topic emphasize “the need for breast cancer patients to maintain their femininity.”6
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Research by social scientists asked a question about cancer news coverage that was perhaps less expansive but more measurable. In an article titled “A Comprehensive Analysis of Breast Cancer News Coverage in Leading Media Outlets Focusing on Environmental Risks and Prevention,” researchers analyzed the contents of newspaper, television, and magazine accounts of the topic over a two-year span. The researchers didn’t interpret the meanings of the news stories (as cultural researchers might have). Instead, they focused on the data they gathered, describing their analysis in more objective terms. For example, the authors noted that “about one-third of the stories included prevention content, primarily focusing narrowly on the use of pharmaceutical products. Little information described risk reduction via other individual preventive behaviors (e.g., diet, exercise, and smoking), parental protective measures, or collective actions to combat contamination sites.”7
Gathering and Analyzing Data
The social scientists analyzing cancer news coverage used a technique called content analysis to gather data. Through content analysis, researchers code and count the content of various types of media. For instance, they total up the number of news stories that contain specific types of information regarding the topic in question (such as how to prevent cancer), count song lyrics containing references to a topic (e.g., sex), or total up the number of occurrences of certain behaviors (e.g., violent acts) shown in a set of movies.
But content analysis is only one way to gather data using the social science approach. Researchers also conduct experiments using randomly assigned subjects (college students are popular test subjects) to test people’s self-reported recall of or reactions to media content. To illustrate, experimenters might use devices such as eye trackers to record what part of a page or screen each viewer is watching.8 Researchers can also gather data through surveys they’ve designed or use data from the many surveys the federal government funds and makes available.