In Defense of Textual Analysis

This essay examines the contribution of textual analysis to media and journalism research. Based on my experience with text-based journalism studies, I highlight the unique methodological position of media content between producers’ intentions and audience interpretations. My central argument is that media texts present a distinctive discursive moment between encoding and decoding that asks for special scholarly engagement. The narrative character of media content, its potential as a site of ideological negotiation and its impact as mediated reality necessitates interpretation in its own right. By engaging current criticisms of the methodology (especially by Greg Philo) I hope to reposition textual analysis (as text-only analysis) as an important option for journalism scholars.