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This paper raises questions about the reliability of findings arising from an online publishing environment. Focusing on a case study of the Victorian media’s reporting of violence against women, it argues that many studies that are presented as accurate and empirical representations of online media coverage may be questionable. This is because of the increasingly inconsistent and ad hoc nature of the online databases used to collect the content. This raises deep problems surrounding the findings and claims that can be made by media research and the future of empirical media analysis. There are warnings of the inadequacy of standard methods used to collect content and suggestions are made such as, triangulation of different databases and the combination of computational and human methods. However, there is no definitive solution to this problem nor are there set protocols on how to proceed in this area of study. This paper aims to provide the research community with a transparent account of the challenges and decisions made when grappling with the issue of collecting online news content. It is suggested that a more proactive collaboration between newsroom archivists, database services and researchers is needed going forward.
Annie Blatchford (Mon,) studied this question.