Appendix A

Disability Rights Media Monitoring Strategy: A unique methodological approach

The DRMMS, a piece of empirical research, must meet specific academic criteria concerning validity and reliability, while remaining useful for the larger disability rights community. The DRMMS involves the analysis of mediated text and, as a result, proceeds using one of three broad approaches usually undertaken by social researchers in analyzing text: a) the use of a computer-generated textual analysis program designed to identify patterns and test a set of hypotheses; b) a content analysis using coders that also identify patterns based on a set of rules, and c) a qualitative reading of the text from a critical perspective. All three approaches have benefits and drawbacks that require internal and external validity, reliability and their relative accuracy in describing a generalized phenomenon from a specific sample. Recognizing the strengths and weaknesses of all three approaches, the DRMMS incorporates all three approaches. During the sample development stage, the DRMMS used a computerized textual analysis software program called CATPAC, developed by researchers at the University of Buffalo (Woelfel 1993). Once a valid sample corresponding to disability terms was established, the second stage involved human coding of the sample that corresponds to the rights identified in the CRPD as well as other key variables. Finally, the third stage involved a critical discourse analysis of media items identified from the human coding process, and then went deeper into explaining how news media, when they did cover questions of disability rights, either reproduced or resisted the power structures of social, economic and political inequality. To address the unique challenge of implementing a media monitoring function that involves people with disabilities and provides a constructive tool for disability rights communities, the DRMMS ensures that people with disabilities play a central role in all stages of the research.

The actual research design of the study involved a ten-step process, outlined below.

• Step 1. The disability community responsible for the study selected a research committee and a research coordinator.
• Step 2. The research committee determined the basic composition of the media sample in terms of the sample period and the desired target media outlets. The media outlets should be representative of the news media of the territory in which the disability community has its interest. The source of the news media sample is important and it is assumed that the disability community has the resources to obtain a valid sample either through individual monitoring or through access to a commercially-available database such as Factiva or Lexis-Nexis.
• Step 3. A preliminary sample was conducted using a combination of terms denoting the subject of disabilities. Typically, the terms are derivatives of the term disability, while using appropriate filters to eliminate false positives (e.g., athletes on the disabled list).
• Step 4. The researchers applied the CATPAC program against the corpus generated from the preliminary sample. ⁸ The CATPAC program identified relevant terms based on frequency, cluster analysis and multi-dimensional scaling, and groups and ranks associative terms. The associative terms are segmented into high, medium and low association based on the CATPAC rankings.
• Step 5. From the CATPAC output, the associative terms were added to the search string that was used to generate the primary media sample used for coding and analysis. These associative terms are added to the core search string (derivatives of the term disability) to construct Boolean search criteria that was applied by the primary researcher against the full list of media outlets to be sampled over the designated period, thereby generating the full media sample for human coding.
• Step 6. The coding schematic was developed, divided into three general areas: 1) an initial area identifying mostly bibliographic variables (date, outlet, reporter, type, use of photo, etc.); 2) an area concerning the portrayal of people with disabilities (type of disability, source of information, topic, common models/frames employed in describing people with disabilities such as the medical model or the supercrip model), and 3) a section in which the coders identify the relationship of the story to a rights analysis.
• Step 7. After the full sample is coded, the research team provided the data and Stage 2 results to the research committee for review and interpretation.
• Step 8. The research committee and researchers determined a filter to apply to the main sample in order to generate a subsample that would be most effective for the purposes of critical discourse analysis.
• Step 9. The research team conducted a critical discourse analysis on the identified subsample.
• Step 10. The researchers presented Stage 3 findings of the critical discourse analysis to the research committee.

Note #8

Doerfel, M.L., & Barnett, G.A. (1996). The use of CATPAC for text analysis. Field Methods, 8, 4-7.

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In order to determine the utility of the DRMMS, an experiment was devised using the Canadian media. The objectives of the experiment were three-fold:

1. To determine patterns in how the Canadian media cover people with disabilities from the relatively unique perspective of human rights;
2. to stress-test the utility and practicality of the DRMMS research design, and where strengths and weaknesses may exist, and finally
3. to identify the type and utility of the findings generated by the DRMMS approach for groups that may want to use the DRMMS in the future to advance disability rights with the media within their jurisdictions.

Implementing the Canadian Study

Marcia Rioux was the Project Director, Miha Dinca-Paneschescu was the Research Coordinator and Andrew Laing, President of Cormex Research, a Toronto-based media content measurement and analysis firm, was selected as the Principal Researcher. A research committee of 4 members was established solely to advise the research in the pilot project in Canada:

1. Stephen Trumper, an instructor at Ryerson University and a wheelchair user;
2. Raymond Cohen, President of the Canadian Abilities Foundation;
3. Dr. Beth Haller, a professor at Towson University in Maryland and a leading academic studying disability issues;
4. Sheyfali Sanjani; a broadcaster producer with CBC Radio and an active member of the Toronto disabilities community;

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