8RM Flashcards
(17 cards)
Example of a personal document
Philippe Aries, used old drawings to story activities of children compared to adults in the past
Strengths of personal documents example
Gives an insight to periods of history
Limitations of personal documents example
Subject to interpretation
May present an exaggerated view of life
Example of historical documents
Laslett Parish Records, used church records of births and deaths of average family sizes in earlier centuries
Strengths of historical documents example
Useful as they pre date the first national census of 1801
Limitations of historical documents example
May be incomplete
Example of public documents
Internet, Home office website, gov publications
Strengths of public docs example
Lots of info
Easy to access
Limitations of public docs example
Maybe inaccurate
Strengths of historical and personal docs
Usually cheap and fairly accessible
Sometimes the only info available
High validity, can discover people’s meanings and interpretations
Limitations of historical and personal docs
Could be biased
Often only one persons point of view
Hard to be representative
Qualitative data, they may lack reliability as they could be interpreted differently
What is public content analysis
Involves counting up the incidence of certain images to reveal how the media portrays an issue
Example of content analysis
Ferguson, counted up how many times certain themes appeared in a sample of a woman’s magazine e.g the happy family
Limitations of content analysis
Can be difficult to apply appropriate categories to count
Categories may reflect the values of researcher
What is semiology, public
The study of the social production of meaning text, qualitative study of the media
Example of semiology
Cohen, mods v rockers
media amplified the devience between the seaside fights
Limitations of semiology
Time consuming
Difficult to generalise, small scale research
Highly personal, unrelibale
