Empirical Methods

Issues and Concepts

1. In your own words, describe what empiricism aims to achieve

Empiricism aims to catalogue (through findings) details about the world and bring forth principles, through taking away all human theory connected to these details and using human experience (e.g. memory) to confirm its reliability (p. 135)

2. In what way does empiricism differ from semiotics

Empiricism is different from semiotics because:

- It's a deductive, as in it creates facts through eliminating others (not considering)

- It's based that everything can be studied fairly (without bias)

- Human experiences are the methods used to examine these facts objectively

- Uses explanatory assumptions about realities to prove/disprove (p. 136)

3. List at least three characteristics of content analysis

- Objective

- Measurable

- Verifiable

"The more it has to do with, the more accurate it is": When there is a bigger range of data to analyse, the better chance the theory is correct (p. 136)

4. Summarise the Glasgow Media Group's findings on how strikes are portrayed in the media.

This group found that the media chose to put more emphasis on airing strikes about motor vehicles and transport in comparison to engineering.

The reflection was about whether or not there maybe was more strikes on the latter, so they first looked at the percentages of how much coverage each industry got.

This was