Media Narratives on Policing: Safeguarding Girls from Sexual Exploitation in the UK

Introduction

This chapter discusses the research methodology employed by the researcher to answer the overarching research question put forth by the researcher. The overarching research question posed in this study is related to the portrayal of UK policing strategies for protection of girls from sexual exploitation by males from diverse cultures. The objective of this research study is to explore and analyse the media portrayal of policing strategies. The research design is created against this background of the objective of this research study. Qualitative research methodology informs the research design of this research study. For students who are seeking assistance in this specific area, media dissertation help can provide the most valuable guidance. The approach adopted by the researcher is inductive approach, which leads to theory building. Interpretivism research philosophy is adopted by the researcher to conduct a textual analysis of the media reports. The following sections discuss and justify the research approach and design adopted by the researcher for this study.

Design

The first step in formulating a research design is to identify the research philosophy that will drive the research because the research philosophy chosen by the researcher helps to determine the design and methods that the researcher uses to collect and analyse the data (Easterby-Smith, Thorpe, & Jackson, 2002). The identification of the research philosophy is the first step because the researcher will then create a research design based on this philosophy. This research will be driven by the philosophy of Interpretivism, which allows the researcher to interpret the data collected (Collins, 2010; Wilson, 2014). Interpretivism is selected because it allows the focus on the epistemological consideration of the researchers’ views (Saunders, et al., 2012). As the researcher will be exploring the texts of media reports to analyse how these texts are portraying effectiveness of policing strategies, Interpretivism will be the appropriate research philosophy. This research is motivated by the objective to gain more insight into how the media portrays the strategies of the police in the UK. There is little research on this area. Lack of existing research is also a reason due to which the researcher will not be able to draw hypotheses, which also makes it appropriate for the researcher to use a qualitative method of research. Therefore, the researcher instead of drawing up hypotheses, has formulated research questions so as to guide the collection and analysis of the data. Interpretivism is also closely linked to the qualitative research method (Bryman & Bell, 2015).

As the research utilises media reports to explore how the reports portray the policing strategies on child sexual exploitation, Interpretivism will allow the researcher to answer the research question by doing a textual analysis of the media articles. Textual analysis will be done by employing an Interpretivist approach and will fit well with the qualitative approach as it is subjective and focused on theory building, which is what is required in this research study as there is little literature on analysis of media reports in this area (Opoku, Ahmed, & Akotia, 2016). In this research study, qualitative method is also selected for its ability to help the researcher gain more insight in the media portrayal of policing strategies (Creswell, 2013). Quantitative method was not thought to be appropriate for this study because it will not be able to help the researcher answer the overarching research question, which requires a nuanced approach to the different themes that may become evident in the textual analysis of the media reports. Quantitative approach is used to examine the link between that which is known and that which can be learned by a quantitative process for exploring the associations between different variables (McLeod, 2013). As such, quantitative method is numerically driven and more conducive to testing hypothesis rather than in depth research into a given area (Maxwell, 2013). The drawback of quantitative research is that it incapable of revealing nuances, and in depth insight into a given area of research. In this study, the research question can only be answered by referring to the nuances within the media report data due to which a qualitative research design is selected.

Both inductive and deductive processes can be used in qualitative design (Collis & Hussey, 2009). The deductive approach is appropriate where there already exists some theory on the research topic, which is not the case in this research as there is little previous research on how media portrays effectiveness of policing strategies in the area of child sexual exploitation. Using an inductive approach, the researcher may initially make some broad assumptions about the research topic; with relation to this research topic, the researcher can make a broad assumption that the media reports extensively on the policing strategies and some of this reporting may see cultural bias against perpetrators of the crime. These assumptions may be made because there is lack of existing theory on this topic, which means that during the course of the data collection, analysis and interpretation, the researcher will be able to narrow these broad assumptions into more specific themes that are apparent from the textual analysis of the primary data (Creswell, 2013). As a general theory is not being identified at the beginning of this research study, it is more appropriate for the researcher to adopt an inductive approach (Perrin, 2015). It is not possible to identify a general theory at the initial stage of this research because of the lack of existing literature on this topic of research, which makes it appropriate for an inductive and grounded theory research. The researcher will use a textual analysis of selected media reports to identify the themes in these reports that are relevant to the overarching research question on how media portrays the effectiveness of policing strategies in the area of child sexual exploitation, and based on this analysis the researcher will be able to create a theory using an inductive approach with a grounded theory approach (Perrin, 2015).

A grounded theory strategy is adopted for this purpose as it can lead to theory building through systematic gathering of data and the examination of data related to the research question (Bryman & Bell, 2015). Grounded theory strategy is selected where the researcher is conducting research on a topic which not been explored much in previous research studies and therefore, there is lack of theory on that topic, as is the case with the topic chosen for this research study (Saunders, Lewis, & Thornhill, 2012). The researcher using a grounded theory approach uses what existing information is available and through research and observation on the phenomenon under research, he is able to develop a theory on the topic (Saunders, Lewis, & Thornhill, 2012). Grounded theory is compatible with qualitative research studies because it is also flexible like qualitative research and is aimed at in depth collection of data that can lead to the development of theory on the topic of research (Charmaz, 2014).

The study shall use various materials and documents such as media articles, newspapers and reports related to child sexual exploitation. As the principal focus of the researcher is to explore the media reporting on child sexual exploitation and the effectiveness of the policing strategies, an important task of the researcher is to identify some media reports, which will be done using inclusion criteria. The inclusion criteria are: media reports on child sexual exploitation by males from different cultures; between January 2018 and March 2020; and discussing effectiveness of policing strategies. Those media reports that fit this inclusion criteria will be selected for textual analysis. These media reports will form the primary data for this research. A systematic literature review will also be used for the purpose of identifying the secondary data for this study. A systematic literature review will help the researcher to locate relevant and current high quality peer reviewed journal articles, books, and reports using appropriate electronic data bases like Google Scholar (Green, et al., 2011). The advantage of using this method is that the researcher is able to locate all relevant sources that include empirical studies as well as ‘grey’ literature like research thesis (Bettany-Saltikov, 2012). A systematic literature review is also useful for eliminating bias in identification and selection of literature because the researcher uses inclusion and exclusion criteria to locate the sources.

Treatment of data

The data collected by the researcher within this research design is qualitative and subjective in nature and the researcher is applying a textual analysis method to explore the data with the objective to understand how the media portrays the effectiveness of the UK policing strategies to protect girls from being sexually exploited by males from different cultures. There are a number of themes that are being explored in this research, such as, media reporting on the effectiveness of the policing strategies and the reporting related to the cultural background of the perpetrators of the crime and how this affects the media reports. Therefore, the textual analysis of the media reports will require an exploration of these themes which will make researcher explore the nuances within the textual data of the media reports. The analysis of this data will be done by the researcher by locating patterns within the media reports, labelling the patterns as codes and considering the recurrence of codes for the purpose of the formulation of the concepts (Glaser, Bailyn, Fernandez, Holton, & Levina, 2013). This method is a thematic analysis method, which is suited to qualitative research (Bearman & Dawson, 2013; Thomas & Harden, 2008). Thematic analysis is a process that sees the researcher exploring the data with the purpose of identifying the principal themes within the data by focussing on those themes that are recurrent in nature (Bearman & Dawson, 2013). This method can be useful for its ability to help the researcher to organising the data into key themes, which can help deal with copious amounts of qualitative data.

Ethics and limitations

As this is a qualitative research, a challenge of the methodology adopted is related to the quantity of the data which will require the researcher to conduct analysis on the vast amount of data (Bamberger, 2000). Qualitative data is usually copious in nature and it requires the researcher to adopt specific techniques to explore and analyse the data. Moreover, qualitative data is subjective in nature, and in this research it is being analysed under an Interpretivist methodology, which means that there is a possibility for researcher bias in the analysis of the data. The researcher has responded to these concerns by choosing a thematic analysis method, which will see the researcher approaching the vast amount of data in an organised manner as themes are being used. Subjectivity of the data and the use of Interpretivism is another concern in this research study because this can see the researcher losing objectivity. Therefore, it is important that the researcher, even when employing an Interpretivist approach remains objective in analysing the data as a failure to do so may affect the findings of the study as noted by Bearman and Dawson (2013):

“Making judgements about qualitative research requires a deep engagement with ‘rich, thick, description’ and the context of the study. Qualitative synthesis is by its nature a subjective process. The themes presented in qualitative work may be summarisable, but their meaning is sometimes inseparable from the data and not usually generalisable beyond it” (p. 253).

An objective approach would also ensure that the findings are reliable and generalisable. The researcher bias can be eliminated through this even while the researcher adopts an interpretivist approach to the analysis of the data. Using a thematic method will also help to reduce researcher bias because the themes will be reported on the basis of their recurrence in the media reports and not arbitrarily by the researcher.

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