Training Manual

Dear Colleagues, 

Research Teams Members, 

At the outset, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to you for your contributions to this project and your commitment to its requirements and conditions. The uniqueness of this project stems from your participation as distinguished scholars, bringing diverse cultural and educational perspectives representing 33 states from Middle East, Africa, Asia, Latin America and the West. Your involvement will enable the production of various comparative international publications, whether between two units of study (where a unit represents a single state), multiple units, or all participating states. The comparative publications may focus on a single variable related to discourse analysis whether it is a “reactive” or “proactive”, framing, or quantitative and qualitative approaches. 

The project is designed to facilitate analysis at multiple levels: a) A macro-level analysis comparing nation-states.  b) A meso-level analysis examining news media organizations that own and publish the newspapers under study and, c) A micro-level analysis focusing on specific variables within the project. The overall aim is to contribute to a timely and globally understanding of the intersection of international communication and international relations; the integration that has not been examined appropriately yet. The project also deals with one of the issues that has been under examination for the last 30 years, yet with focus on the Western orbit, that is media-state parallelism. In the current endeavor, you will be able to verify, challenge or establish new models for intersection of both political communication and political system in states and regions in which these current models are no more than theoretical unverified and abstract concepts and theories. 

At the end of the research, you will be better equipped to challenge some of the dominant constructs and theories that have persisted in textbooks and publications without thorough empirical testing. Your participation and commitment to methodological rigor will serve as a key factor in addressing stagnation in theory building across the multidisciplinary fields of international communication, politics, international relations, political economy, political communication and cross-border journalism. This is particularly significant given the diverse range of participating states, each with its own complexities and relationships, ranging from extreme confrontation to strong alliances, as well as varying degrees of dependency and independency, in relation to the U.S. presidential election. This project works on the assumption that international relations shape the political discourse and framing in the newspapers under examination. Additionally, the alignment or non-alignment of these newspapers with the ideological and political orientation of their respective states influences how political discourse and framing vary across different political and media systems.

How to use the Metadata and the Codebook 

We have developed two Google Forms. The first form is designed to collect metadata that each research team must complete and submit once. This includes the state name, as well as the names, ownership, and types of the newspapers under study. It also includes the names, roles, and email addresses of the research team members. Additionally, the metadata must include the type of the U.S. home state relationship and media-state parallelism type. These classifications should align with the conclusions presented in the two accompanying reports, which must also be submitted along with the metadata.

The second Google Form (codebook) is designed to analyze content and discourse related to the 2024 U.S. presidential election in the two selected newspapers, covering the period from September 1 to November 10, 2024. It is structured into four sections as follows:

1. 1. The First Section includes specific fields to link each item under analysis to the corresponding metadata. These fields include the name of the state, the names of the content and discourse analysts, and the names of the newspapers. 
   2. The Second Section focuses on quantitative, qualitative, and framing analysis and includes several required categories, each with specific instructions the content and discourse must follow.  Some categories offer multiple options where an analyst can choose more than one, while others offer multiple options where you can choose only one. At the end of this section, you must answer a filter question (N. 17).   Is the journalistic content produced exclusively by external sources, reflecting “Reactive Discourse”, produced exclusively from internal sources reflecting the target newspaper and/or the target state discourse “Proactive Discourse” , a combination of both or NA  where the content is neither reactive or proactive. Your response to Q. 17 should be based on a careful reading and understanding of the specific content under consideration, which must be an opinion piece displayed in any journalistic format/content as outlined in category N. 16.

As the content and discourse analyst, you are primarily responsible for carefully reading the journalistic content and accurately answering Question 17. 

1. 1. The Third Section focuses on Reactive Discourse Analysis and should be completed only if “Exclusively External” is selected in Question 17. This requires the analyst to proceed with (Questions 18-24.1) to analyze Reactive Discourse.
   2. The Fourth Section focuses on Proactive Discourse Analysis and should be completed only if you selected “Exclusively Internal” in Question 17. This requires you to skip Questions 18–24.1 and proceed directly to Questions (25 and 25.1) to analyze Proactive Discourse.

If the analyst selects “A combination of both,” he must analyze both Reactive and Proactive Discourse.

If the analyst selects “N/A” (Not Applicable), he has to skip all remaining questions and submit the form.

The distinction between reactive and proactive discourse is of significant importance in this project. The reactive is produced by American, Western or International news sources. The proactive presents the original discourse of the newspaper, the state in which it is published, the politicians and the official decision makers who express their view regarding the 2024 U.S, presidential election. Both the “reactive” and “proactive” discourse is concerned with the opinion materials, yet the difference hinges on whether it is just reflected/published by the participating state newspaper/s or originally produced and published by it. 

The codebook contains eight (8) categories requiring evidences for your previously chosen option.  They are N. 11.1, 13.1, 18.1, 21.1, 22.1, 23.1, 24.1, and 25.1.  In critical discourse analysis whether it is reactive or proactive, dealing with evidence is the core element as it reflects underlying ideological structures, power relations, and discursive strategies. The way evidence is presented shows whether the sources are legitimate, authorized or questionable. The evidences related to all categories in this codebook will serve in identifying the ideological positions, the double standards, the exclusion and inclusion of specific ideas, statistics, sources etc. By analysis of evidence, we will discover if the frames legitimize or delegitimize the U.S. election and whether it is seen as a good model to follow or a bad model to reject. You will provide justification for the selected discourse; “reactive” or “proactive,” and assess whether the frames are in favor of or against the U.S. election. Importantly, we will also understand how differences in newspaper alignment with participating state shape the discursive strategies used by aligned and non-aligned newspapers. These evidences or discursive strategies, while shaped by the dynamics of the power relationship that governs the U.S.’s relationship with participating states, also influence the actual power relationships, as discussed by Chouliaraki and Fairclough (1999) in their book Discourse in Late Modernity: Rethinking Critical Discourse Analysis.

Each journalistic item must be analyzed individually and submitted immediately upon completion of its analysis. Every day, a daily newspaper publishes an issue with a varying number of journalistic items. The unit of analysis is the individual journalistic content, which must be analyzed and submitted independently. Most importantly, we need to use the correct keywords to ensure we capture and analyze all election-related content within the specified period. In relation to both reactive and proactive discourse, it is important to remember that they are not mutually exist, in the sense that the same journalistic content may display both of them at a time and then has to be analyzed in two designated sections.

Thank you for your understanding and cooperation

Dr. Basyouni Ibrahim Hamada

Professor of Communication and Public Opinion,

The Founder and Lead Principal Investigator (FLPI) 

Department of Mass Communication, College of Arts and Sciences, Qatar University, Doha, Qatar

[email protected] –  [email protected]