Methods and Procedures

The first step in any research project is to decide what you are going to examine; I had a few options. Since I was interested in understanding the social construction of snowmaking, the ways in which snowmaking means to the people of Flagstaff, I had originally intended to explore the E-mails and letters that the Forest Service received during their 45 day comment period on the Arizona Snowbowl expansion proposal (which ended November 15th). Currently, this data is being analyzed by social scientists contracted by the Forest Service: I could not get access to it in time for the composition of this web site.

The focus of this analysis on the content of the Daily Sun is more advantageous for the following reasons...

You can readily access the Daily Sun Website (www.azdailysun.com/), and examine the exact same text I used to construct this paper. The Forest Service’s collection of letters and E-mails are not currently accessible. When (and if) this body of data becomes available for public inspection there is no guarantee that it is going to be posted on the web (although I will work toward that end).

The comments posted to the Daily Sun website, which are a part of this paper’s focus, can provide us with the same insights as the Forest Service’s data set into the perceptions and attitudes local (and distant) people have of snowmaking. However...

If we consider that the ways in which "snowmaking" means then it makes sense to examine the semantic links that people associate with snowmaking. Since I will assume that a significant portion of Flagstaff’s population either reads the Daily Sun, sees it’s headlines at some point in their day, or overhears other people commenting on the text of the paper, then the Daily Sun is one source of meaning that gets evoked when local people encounter the word "snowmaking". Thus, it is logical to take a look at how snowmaking is portrayed in the newspaper, something that could not be accomplished by looking only at the Forest Service comments, which are to some degree products of the Daily Sun’s arguments.

Research was performed using printed copies of text. I began by accessing the Daily Sun web site, I selected the "search story archives" link, and performed a search for "snowmaking" for the year 2002. This produced a listing of "hits" which were either Newspaper articles, editorials, or comments that were posted by registered users and linked to articles/editorials. I printed all of these, along with the associated "search results" index, and sorted them in chronological order (the comments are linked onto the same page as the parent article or editorial which spawned them). I then went through and checked the print outs against the search index to ensure I had printed all of the material and not missed anything. Any duplicate articles were removed as they were encountered, unless they actually appeared on separate days in the Daily Sun (which was the case in one event). I then carefully read through all of the text two times. At every point in the process, I kept a running listing of notes, comments, and ideas; at first these had more to do with how I should code (reduce and organize) the data and toward the end they were aligned more toward patterns in the data. I decided that it would be best to examine each of the three types of data (article/editorial/comment) separately (so I could later discuss differences in them), and that I was interested in recording the following information...

The date of the item.

The title of the item.

A synopsis of key points and arguments, using as much actual text as possible

Whether not the item supported snowmaking, opposed snowmaking, or had no discernible orientation (in the case of unbiased reporting for example).

The log-in name associated with postings, which is displayed after each comment. This way I could get a feel for how many people were actually posting, to who they were referring to when commenting on other postings, and other mechanical concerns. It is my experience that log-in aliases can contain significant information. Consider the following actual aliases from the postings: [Déezbaá], [unitednative], [Noah’sWalrus]. Even out of context they can tell us something about the people they represent; in context they are quite illuminating.

A sample data reduction entry took the following form (in the case of a comment the log-in name was also recorded)...

(date of publication or posting) : "[article title]" : [pro/con/or nonaligned] : [synopsis and key points]

For example...

(07-14): "Recycled water upgrade costly" [Pro] : Snowmaking-related future demands on reclaimed water are not a problem for the city. "I don’t think we’re going to run out of reclaimed water" (Ron Doba).

The most significant methodological concern of this project involves the process of reducing the actual text. While there can be no adequate description of this process here, suffice to say that I tried to capture the essence of each textual item and shield it from my own bias by using as much of the actual text as possible. Another concern would be the labeling of text as "Pro", "Con", or "neither". In many cases the judgment was easy -the author blatantly stated the orientation. In other cases the orientation was implied, as with News articles or editorials which depict snowmaking (or reclaimed water) in positioned ways. When I could not decide upon the alignment of the text, I labeled it "neither"; only in a few cases was this type of judgment necessary given the often passionate nature of the comments and editorials and the bias of the news articles in favor of snowmaking.

Before I began data reduction I separated each group of text by month and removed any blank pages and non-relevant articles (there were two which did not even mention snowmaking). I proceeded month by month, reducing articles, then editorials, then the comments. Basic statistics on the number of "pro", "con", and "neutral" postings in each month were recorded. A total of 51 news articles, 67 editorials, and 159 posted comments were examined (277 items). The earliest article or editorial was first published on 01/09/02; the latest article was from 11/20/02. Once I had reduced all of the data I recorded excerpts from each data reduction synopsis onto note cards, using a separate card for each idea (thus, when multiple ideas appeared in one article there were multiple note cards filled out). I then read through the cards, mixed them up, and sorted them into like piles. At that point, I already had a good idea of what the domains might be given the patterns and trends in my notebook: I had been making notes the entire time and by the end of the process you begin to notice trends and commonalities. The various piles of "like thoughts/ideas" were then examined, and a new set of note cards were made, each one containing a summary statement representative of one pile. These cards were then examined, placed in new piles of "like thoughts" as before, and the final domains were taken from these groupings.

It is important to keep in mind that the domains described in this paper are not just insights into the structure of the Daily Sun, they represent the concerns and perceptions of Flagstaff in general. I have already argued that there is a link between the paper’s content and real world, local perceptions; my own experience with Water Commission meetings, local activist events (Such as the "Save The Peaks" event at Buffalo Park"), local interviews, and other exploratory-research has shown this to be true.

Go To Structure of The Text