Chapter III

Research Methodology

Significance of the Study

With the attainment of independence in1947, the country under the

leadership of Jawaharlal Nehru went for elections for the first time

after declaring itself as a Republic. The country adopted a constitution

in 1950. The first general elections were conducted in 1951-1952, and

nine political parties contested the elections. Since then , many

political parties came into existence , and the number crossed over

1880 which are registered with the Elections Commission of India.

However, the single party, the Congress was in power for most of the

time except for a brief period of two years during 1977-79 when the

Janata party was in power. After that, the Congress party came back to

power and continued to be in power till 1989.

Political situation in the country from 1990s onwards, underwent a

change and no single party at the national level won an absolute

majority. Political pundits described the situation as the coalition

politics, where big and small parties came together to form a

government. Simultaneously, the mediascape in the country was

increasingly changing in the mid-1990s as the satellite television

channels were growing with the expansion of the cable TV. Television

or radio news which was disseminated by Doordarshan and All India

Radio respectively, the two government controlled electronic media

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channels was replaced by the private TV channels. The political

parties searched for new avenues to disseminate their views, and the

intensive political situation in the 1990s and the beginning of 2000

prompted the newspapers and television channels to give a

democratic space to all political parties in order to increase their

circulation or viewership.

Against this background, the present study was taken up to examine

the stance of four select newspapers in the country on focusing on

political parties/issues apart from other important issues in the

country. Particularly, the setting of the study was Uttar Pradesh state

which sends 80 members of parliament, the highest number of seats

represented by the state. Specifically, 12 political parties were in the

fray in Uttar Pradesh during the 16th Lok Sabha elections, and these

elections became significant as the Congress coalition was in power

for 10 years, and the these elections would decide the winner. On the

other hand, the main opposition party Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)

aggressively campaigned to dethrone the Congress coalition. Also,

newspapers played a crucial role in the coverage of elections.

Therefore, the present study makes an attempt to analyze the 2014

elections coverage in four select newspapers with a focus on political

parties.

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Objectives of the study

The purpose of the present study is to ascertain the differential

coverage given to political parties during the 16th Lok Sabha General

Elections held in 2014 along with other themes categorized as types of

news in certain selected newspapers. Four newspapers are selected

for this purpose: two each in English and Hindi. They are: The Times of

India, the Hindustan Times, Amar Ujala and Dainik Jagran. The method

of content analysis was used to compare the news content of the

sample newspapers.

The specific objectives of the study are to:

1. find out the frequency and the extent of space allocated to the
political themes as compared to other categories of news in the
sample dailies;
2. make a comparative analysis, in terms of frequency and space,
of the differences in the coverage of various categories of news
in the sample of English and Hindi newspapers;
3. ascertain the relative significance given to political themes and
other categories of news by examining the frequency and the
extent of space allocated to different categories of news in the
front page and inside pages of the sample dailies;
4. find out the differences in the frequency and space devoted to
themes related to state and national items in covering political
and other categories of news;
5. find out the direction of treatment given to political themes in
the sample newspapers;
6. find out the frequency and the extent of space allocated to
themes relating to Scheduled Castes / Scheduled Tribes and
women;

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 7. compare the frequencies of political-related editorials
appearing in the sample newspapers;
8. compare the frequencies of letters to the editor covering
political themes in the sample newspapers, and
9. to offer suggestions, to carry out further research study in
relation to political news coverage in the Indian dailies.

Hypotheses
From the above objectives, the following hypotheses are proposed for
testing:

1. H1 :The four sample newspapers – the two English dailies and

two Hindi dailies differ significantly in terms of news items
devoted to political news.
2. H2 :The four sample newspapers differ significantly in terms of
percentage of news items devoted to political parties in the
state.
3. H3: There is also a significant difference in the direction of
coverage, i.e., favourable, unfavourable and neutral, to the
political parties in the four sample dailies.
Content Analysis As A Research Method
Content analysis is a method of communication analysis, as well as a

method of observation (Kerlinger, 1973). It is a versatile research

technique in mass communications, as well as in social science

research, where data obtained from archival records and documents

can be analyzed systematically and scientifically to draw valid

conclusions. As a method of observation, content analysis enables the

researcher to take communications people have produced and ask

questions about each communication (Kerlinger, 1973). Thus the

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content of communications becomes the basis of inference. The unit of

analysis in the present study is news article.

According to Dremers and Nicholls (1987: 10), content analysis is one

of the three major methods of precision journalism, the two other

methods being survey research and field experiment. They state that

content analysis typically uses documents or records as the subjects

whereas survey research uses people as subjects. Therefore, content

analysis is a method which provides a precise means for describing

the contents of any sort of communications – be they newspapers,

radio programmes, films, everyday conversations, verbalised free

associations and so on.

Lasswell (1948) put communication process as ‘who says what in

which channel to whom and with what effect’. As Lasswell described

the communication situation in the form of questions, the central

concept of ‘what’ or ‘the message’ forms the basis for content analysis.

Content analysis is also used by many researchers in different

contexts, particularly to ascertain trends in the communication

content of dailies, weeklies, comics and political coverage of elections

(Cornwell, 1959; Barcus, 1962; Buckman, 1993, Gairelli and

Tulman,2003; Khanduri,2009). Several studies were conducted to

elicit information on various issues covered in newspapers by

analysing their news content (Batlin, 1954; Alisky, 1958; Bust, 1960;

Coulson, et. al., 1995). One significant area is the analysis of

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newspaper content of the election coverage and editorial treatment to

mould the opinion of voters (Davis and Rarick, 1964; Gregg, 1965;

Haskins, 1965; Devi Prasad et. al., 1991). For example Devi Prasad et.

al., analyzed the editorials and letters to the editor published in four

dailies in India before the 1991 elections to find out the prominence

given to certain election-related themes.

Advantages and limitations. Any research technique has its advantages

and limitations and the method of content analysis is not an exception

to this.

Some limitations of this research technique are:

1. symbols are processed and coded according to the

attribution given by a coder;
2. the reliability and validity issues in content analysis still
remain unresolved (Krippendorff, 1980);
3. sometimes it is difficult to locate messages relevant to the
research question; and
4. the method cannot be used to test causal relationships
between variables (Chadwick, 1984).

Sample selection : Selection of newspapers

As mentioned earlier, four newspapers were selected for the present

study keeping in view their circulation, geographical location, and the

language. They are: The Times of India,Hindustan Times, Amar Ujala

and Dainik Jagran. The circulation figures of these newspapers are

provided in Table 1.

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 Table 2: Circulation figures of the four sample dailies

Daily Total Circulation in Circulation in

Uttar Pradesh Lucknow

The Times of India 2,890,628 55000

Hindustan Times 1,187,729 13000

Amar Ujala 1,952,849 105000

Dainik Jagran 3,034,140 128000

Source: Audit Bureau of Circulation Report, Jan-June, 2014

Two considerations went into the selection of the two different

language dailies: 1) English being the associate official language and

the main medium of intellectual exchange among the elite in the

country, the English dailies are read by the majority of policy-makers,

decision-makers and administrators 2) the language newspapers are

read by the masses and reach the majority of the population in the

region.

The universe and the sample

The universe for this study comprises all the editions of the four

selected dailies published during the calendar year i.e., January 1,

2014 to December 31, 2014.

Sampling procedure. While selecting the sample, keeping in view the

time and financial resources available for the researcher, it was

thought that a sample of 10% of all the editions of the four

newspapers would be sufficient. This sample, selected randomly,

would be adequate for generalising to the universe (Stempel, 1952;

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Riffe et. al., 1993). Two methods were adopted to select the editions

to constitute the study sample: 1) continuous week, and 2)

constructed week.

The sample selection was done in two stages:

i. Stage one. A continuous week sampling method was adopted to

select randomly three continuous weeks (one continuous week
comprises days from Monday to Sunday) from all the weeks in
the designated time period – January 1, 2014 to December 31,
2014. In order to select the required weeks through this
method, the sample year was divided into 3 sub-periods, that
is, i) January, February, March and April; ii) May, June, July and
August; analyzed iii) September, October, November and
December analyzed. Then three weeks that is one each from
the three sub-periods were randomly selected.
ii. Stage two. The second stage comprised a constructed week
method (Budd et. al., 1967). For this purpose seven days of the
week were randomly selected from each sub-period to
construct a week. That means, a Monday, a Tuesday, a
Wednesday, a Thursday, a Friday, a Saturday and a Sunday
were selected randomly from all Mondays, Tuesdays …etc., of
each of the sub-period. Thus, three constructed weeks were
selected from the three sub–periods of the sample year.

All in all, the following weeks were selected through continuous week
method making up for three weeks of the sample.

Sub – period –I : Jan 19th – Jan 25th, 2014

Sub – period - II : August 3rd- August 9th, 2014

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Sub – period – III : September 21st-September 27th,
2009

No. of days : 21

Total No. of editions: 84

The following days of the week were selected through constructed

week method making up for the three weeks of the sample.

Sub – period –I : January 13, , February 5, February

27, March 4, March 14, March 29,
and April 6.

Sub – period - II : May 13, June 13, June 15, June 30,
July 26, July 30, and August 28

Sub- period - III : September 7, October 13,

November 13,November 26,
December 2, December 12, and
December 27.

No. of days : 21

Total No. of editions : 84

Since no public holidays occurred during these 42 days, all the

editions of the four newspapers published on these days were

considered for analysis. Thus, basing on the continuous and

constructed week methods, there were 42 editions per daily and a

total of 168 editions for four sample dailies came up for analysis.

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Units of analyses

The units of analyses for this study consisted of all the news items,

editorials and letters-to-the editor published in the front page and

inside pages of four selected dailies.

Operational definitions of units of analyses:

Following are the definitions of units of analyses used in this study.

a. A news item is any item dealing with timely event with

current dateline. It is defined as an account of events
reported by the paper’s own correspondents or
reporters and wire service stories. Human interest
stories are included in this item (Parthasarathy, 1984:
107-108).
b. An editorial is an opinion piece which projects the
viewpoint of the newspaper on a particular policy,
programme, or event. It gives a digest of facts, evaluates
them and arrives at a logical conclusion step by step
(Mehta, 1979: 133).
c. A letter-to-the editor is an opinion piece expressed by
the reader on an issue or an event. It is an indicator of
public opinion when compared and contrasted with a
variety of other measures such as news item feature etc.
(Murthy, 2001).

However, the following items were excluded from being considered as

units of analysis for this study. They are: cartoons, illustrations,

special supplements, Sunday magazines / supplements, book and film

reviews, feature articles, news analyses, comics and stock market

indices news items of foreign origin , districts supplements.

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Thus, all the units of analyses, as per the above criteria, published in

the front page and inside pages of the dailies during the sample period

(January 1, 2014 to December 31, 2014) were considered for coding

into the subject categories developed for the purpose.

Subject categories

Keeping in view of the objectives of the study, 12 main subject

categories were identified including one category for politics-related

themes. In the present study, the researcher evolved 12 subject

categories including a specific theme, politics which includes

particular political parties. Further, the coverage of the 12 subject

categories was analysed basing on the geographical dimension. Thus

the news items were divided on the basis of geographical dimensions

into two regions such as state, and national. All the main subject

categories were, in turn, divided into sub-categories,

The following are the 12 main subject-categories with their following

sub-categories:

Category I: Politics

a) Political activities, issues, candidates and leaders

and appeal to political parties by different groups of
people.
b) Political parties such as Congress, Bharatiya Janata
Party, Samajwadi Party, Bahujan Samaj Party, Aam
Admi party,Communist Party of India, Communist
Party of India (M), Shiv Sena, Peace party, Majlis-e-
Ithehadul Muslamin.

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 c) Other political parties. Other political parties such as
DMK, AIADMK, TMC, JD, RLD and so on.
d) Election process: this category includes news related
to the conduct of elections, election code and
declaration of results.
e) Parliament and Assembly proceedings.
Category II: Development

a) Health
b) Education
c) Literacy
d) Transport and Communication
e) Agriculture
f) Industry
g) Housing
h) Population control
i) Energy
j) Ecology
k) Human rights
l) National integration
m) Public welfare
n) Social and safety measures
o) Hygiene and sanitation
p) Drinking water problem

For example, coverage of news relating to grounding of new projects

or measures taken by the Government or non-governmental agencies

to improve the existing conditions is treated as development news.

However, this category did not include, statements issued by

politicians, ministers or officials or promises made by them in relation

to the above themes of development. The news made by dignitaries or

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general statements about the fields mentioned above are treated as

non-relevant for this category and hence they are included in the

other subject categories in the schedule

Category III : Governance and official works

a) Government activities
b) Agreements
c) Government decisions, proposals and
ceremonies
d) Government personnel changes
e) War and border conflicts
f) Assembly and parliament proceedings: This
category includes statements made by ministers
in the houses of parliament and state assembly.
Further, the statements made by members
belonging to various political parties will be
categorised in the sub-theme mentioned in
politics category.

Category VI : Crimes, moral problems, law & order, & court

proceedings

a) Adult crime
b) Moral problems – alcoholism, prostitution etc
c) Communal, ethnic, and linguistic problems
d) Court proceedings and judgments
e) Conflicts involving groups and individuals,
protests
f) Terrorist crimes
g) Corruption charges and arrests
h) Inquiry committee reports
i) Conceived threats

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Category V: Accidents & disasters

a) Man-made accidents
b) Natural disasters
Category VI: Science & technology

a) Science & technology

b) Invention and research
c) Space
Category VII: Arts, films & popular amusements

a) Classic arts
b) Religion
c) Amusements – films, dramas, poetry recitals, TV
and radio
d) Press
e) Philanthropy
f) Astrology and predictions
Category VIII: Sports

a) All sport events

b) Sport-related news and human interest stories
Category IX: General human interest

a) Struggle for supremacy, romance, mystery,

horror and adventure, the strange, the
humorous, the pathetic, the interesting etc.
b) Marriage, divorce, rites of passage, birth, death
c) Weather
d) Animals
e) Cute children
f) Juvenile interest
g) Obituary
h) Awards and felicitations

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Category X: Scheduled caste / Scheduled tribe

a) Welfare
b) Education
c) Crimes
d) Other
Category XI: Women

a) Welfare and education

b) Crimes
c) Other
Category XII : Economic activity, travel & transport

a) General economic activity

b) Prices and taxes
c) Money and money transactions
d) General travel and tourism
e) Agriculture and food
f) Labour and wages
g) Natural resources
h) Stock market news, brokers, and company
decisions
i) National and international loans
j) Trade ties and business ventures

Political news
Political news is defined, for the purpose of the present study, as any

news item that contains statements or promises made by the political

parties or leaders of that political party or the activities taken up by

them such as procession, strike, boycott or any other mode of protests

to highlight a problem or an issue. Even functions or programmes

conducted by political leaders or parties to celebrate a victory or an

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event associated with the political party is also considered a political

news item in the present study. However, this category excludes the

news items that contain policy statements or official activities

involving political leaders in the capacity as a minister or an official

functionary. The category also includes election process, and others as

described specifically in category I. However, the statements given by

ministers in the Parliament and state Assembly have been excluded

from this category.

Geographical categories

The three units of analysis such as news item, editorial, and letter-to-

the editor were also analysed in terms of geographical region –, state,

and national. Thus, the geographical regions were defined as follows:

i) The units of analysis under state category contained events or

happenings concerning the state of Uttar Pradesh. If a news item,
though date-lined as New Delhi or Mumbai, reported a subject
concerning the State, it was considered under State category.

ii) National category comprises those units of analysis containing

events of relevance for national subjects excluding the state as defined
above. For instance, trade agreements or foreign ministers’ visit to the
home country in connection with diplomatic relations were
considered national. News that happened around the country
excluding Uttar Pradesh was also treated as national. Similarly, if a
foreign datelined story reported events concerning India, it was
treated as national news.

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Data coding sheet

A code sheet was prepared incorporating the subject categories and

geographical categories mentioned above. The code sheet was pilot-

tested by the researcher on five editions of each of the sample

newspapers (i.e., on a total of 20 editions) along with a second trained

coder who was a research scholar in Journalism. Further, necessary

changes were made to the subject categories based on the pre-test and

the code sheet was finalized (Appendix – III).

Procedures of measurements

The units of analysis, coded into various subject categories, were

measured both in terms of their frequencies and space. While all the

units of analysis were counted in terms of frequencies, as regards the

measurement of space, only the news items were considered for the

purpose and recorded in the code-sheet in terms of space. The

frequencies of the news items which appeared on the front page and

inside pages were recorded separately. However, as regards the

editorials and the letters-to-the editor, the frequencies were recorded

in separate columns of the code-sheet taking into consideration their

geographical location such as state and nation.

Space measurement. As regards space, all news items were measured

in cubic centimeters with a standard wooden scale. The space of all

news items was separately recorded for the front page and inside

pages of each newspaper. When a news item continued from the

front page to inside pages, it was treated as front page news item and
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accordingly the recording was made. When a photograph

accompanied a news item, it was also treated as part of the news item.

Correction factor. In order to standardise the total space measured for

purposes of comparison among the dailies and for statistical

applications, a correction factor ‘k’ was developed as suggested by

Khan and Kumar (1993), and Murthy (2001). The procedure adopted

was as follows.

First of all, the news items were measured with standard unit of one

centimetre regardless of the type size and width of the (single)

column. When the total space devoted for all the subject categories

for 42 issues of each newspaper was available, it was multiplied by the

correction factor calculated for each newspaper for uniformity in

comparison (Table 2). The standard unit used in this study was one

column centimetre of body type containing four agate lines with the

column of 25 ems (12 ems = 1 inch). Details of calculation of

correction factor are given in the Appendix – III).

Table 3
The correction factors (k) for the measurement of space for news
items of four newspapers

Times of India 0.128

Hindustan Times 0.128

Amar Ujala 0.1196

Dainik Jagran 0.1134

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Inter-coder reliabilities

Inter-coder reliabilities were calculated for all the units of analysis

under each subject category in order to obtain the level of consistency

in coding. Thus, all the three units of analysis such as news items,

editorials and letters-to-the editor were combined together for the

purpose of inter-coder reliabilities. A trained coder who was a

doctoral student in journalism and who was proficient both in English

and Hindi language was employed for the purpose of coding. As part

of pilot study five editions of each newspaper were taken for coding.

After the first coder (i.e., researcher) coded the five editions of each

newspaper, the second coder did the coding of the same editions.

When the totals of each subject category of each newspaper were

available with the two coders, the formula1 was applied to calculate

reliability. It was found out that the coder reliabilities in each subject

category ranged from 90% to 100% (See Table 3).

1.To calculate reliability, the following formula suggested by Holsti (1968) was adopted

2 (C1, C2)
R = --------------------
C1 + C2

Where C1,2 is the number of category assignments both coders agree on, and C 1 + C2 is
the total of category assignments arrived at by both coders (See North et. al. 1963).

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Table 4 Inter-coder reliabilities for the subject categories by
newspaper

Subject category Times of Hindustan Amar Dainik

India Times Ujala Jagran
Politics 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00
Development 0.99 0.98 0.97 0.98
Governance and 1.00 1.00 0.99 0.98
official works
Law and order, 1.00 0.99 1.00 0.97
moral problems,
and conflicts
Accidents and 0.99 0.99 0.99 1.00
disasters
Science and 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00
technology
Arts, films and 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00
amusement
Sports 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00
General human 0.99 1.00 1.00 0.99
interest
SC/ST 0.93 0.90 0.98 0.97
Women 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00
Economic activity, .97 0.98 0.99 0.99
travel and
transport

Directional analysis
The purpose of using the directional analysis is to find out how the

newspapers have accorded treatment to political themes in their

coverage of the subject categories. Here, only the news items coded

under political category were analyzed to find out the treatment given

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to political themes by the four newspapers on a 3-point scale:

favourable, unfavourable and neutral. However, editorials and letters-

to-the editor were excluded from the study of directional analysis.

The method of coefficient of imbalance was used to establish the

favourable, the unfavourable and the neutral treatment given to

political news items. The coefficient of imbalance was developed by

Janis and Fadener (1965) as a method of measuring the degree of

imbalance i.e., the extent to which favourable, unfavourable or neutral

treatment is accorded to a topic or message or theme in a given news

item. The method was adopted by Devi Prasad (1992), Murthy

(2001), Madhu Babu (2010) , Vijai Kumar (2010) and I S SRI Naresh

(2011)to find out the degree of imbalance in the coverage of election-

related issues.

For instance, a favourable story was determined by news reflecting

cohesion, cooperation, stability and strength, positive developments
and growth with in a political party or a theme in politics category.

Example:

Amethi warms up to a contest

Amethi: Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi on

Wednesday made an unscheduled stop to meet the Aam
Admi Party workers who shouted slogans against him,
near a local AAP office. He however indicated he did not
approve of Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal’s
Dharna politics.” We believe in work and don’t have the
habit of speaking much.” he said.

(The Hindustan Times, January 23, 2014)

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An unfavourable story was determined by news reflecting conflicts,

delayed decisions , disorganization, indifferent attitude of the party or

any other group or individuals within the party, instability and

weakness, negative occurrences within the political parties

concerning some issues in the political party or a theme in the politics

category.

Example

Rajnath unlikely to join Modi Govt

Lucknow: Bhartiya Janta party (BJP) Chief Rajnath Singh

is unlikely to join the Narendra Modi government if the
BJP led alliance comes to power after the April May Lok
sabha elections. Singh disclosed this during a chat at his
4 Kalidas Marg residence in Lucknow on Friday.
(The Hindustan Times March 29, 2014)

Lastly, neutrality was determined by news reflecting neither positive

nor negative conditions nor a lack of controversial material.

Example

New Uttarakhand Cong panel in September

The recent success in the assembly bypolls and

Panchayat elections is just half the battle won as the
Congress unit in Uttarakhand is planning to announce
its new state team in September. Earlier the plan was to
announce the new 31 member committee after the
Panchayat polls.

(Times of India, August 9, 2014)

After coding all the political stories either favourable, unfavourable or

neutral, the coefficient of imbalance was calculated using the following

formulae suggested by Janis and Fadener (1965).

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 f2 - fu
Cf = --------------- f > u
Rt

fu - u2
Cu= --------------- f < u
rt
Where f = favourable units of content.
u = unfavourable units of content
t = number of units of total content
r = total units of relevant content.

Data analysis

After coding all the units of analysis into the code sheet, tables and

cross tables were prepared to test the relationships among variables.

Tables were prepared for each phase separately- campaign phase,

election phase and governance phase. Appropriate statistical methods

such as correlation and analysis of variance including the mean and

standard deviation were employed to find out the association and

significance of relationships among variables. Graphs and flow charts

were also developed wherever necessary.

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