Research project: some replication

I found two articles written by Jukka Torronen in which he uses the same methodology I’m planning to do for my topic. Focusing on the topic of alcohol legislation, Torronen analyzed editorial articles from six newspapers during the period of 1993-2000 (“The Finnish press’s political position on alcohol between 1993 and 2000,” Addiction 98 (2003): 281-290). He selected approximately 200 articles and used ATLAS.ti to code the texts. He then analyzed the data using theories of discourse analysis and argumentative discourse. The paper includes a table with the terms selected for coding and quantitative data relating the topics to the articles. Torronen used the same approach for another paper, “Finnish newspapers’ positions on drug policy between 1993 and 2000,” Contemporary Drug Problems 31 (Spring 2004): 59-88.

I have also prepared an outline for my literature review and included a bibliography for its respective parts. The outline is as follows:

I. Introduction

II. Government secrecy literature

A. General literature

Feinberg, LE, “FOIA, federal information policy, and information availability in a post-9/11 world,” Government Information Quarterly 21, no. 4 (2004): 439-460

Gibbs, David N., “Secrecy and International Relations,” Journal of Peace Research 32, no. 2 (1995): 213-228

Gleditsch, Nils Petter and Einar Hogetveit, “Freedom of Information in National Security Affairs: A Comparative Study of Norway and the United States,” Journal of Peace Research 21, no. 1 (1984): 17-45

Keen, Mike Forrest, “The Freedom of Information Act and Sociological Research,” American Sociologist 23, Issue 2 (Summer 92): 43-51

Relyea, Harold C., “Government Secrecy: policy Depths and Dimensions,” Government Information Quarterly 20, no. 4 (Oct. 2003): 395-418

Roberts, Alasdair S., Blacked out: government secrecy in the information age (Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006)

Roberts, Alasdair, “National Security and Open Government,” Georgetown Public Policy Review 9, no. 2 (Spring 2004): 69-85

Rozell, Mark J., Executive Privilege: The Dilemma of Secrecy and Democratic Accountability (Baltimore, MD: The John Hopkins University Press, 1994)

Sleeman, B, “Recent Literature on Government Information,” Journal of Government Information 30, no. 4 (2004): 490-493

Smock, Raymond W., “Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy? Accessing Government Records in the Wake of 9/11/2001,” The Public Historian 25, no. 2 (Spring 2003): 123-127

Theoharis, Athan G. (ed.) A Culture of Secrecy: The Government Versus the People’s Right to Know (Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 1998)

B. Literature from archivists and records managers

Blanton, Thomas, “The World’s Right to Know,” Foreign Policy no. 131 (Jul/Aug 2002): 50-58

Connors, Thomas James, "The Bush Administration and "Information Lockdown"," in Margaret Procter, Michael Cook and Caroline Williams (eds.) Political Pressure and the Archival Record (Chicago: Society of American Archivists, 2006)

Cox, Richard J., "The National Archives Reclassification Scandal," Records & Information Management Report: Issues in Information Technology 22, no. 9 (November 2006)

III. Research literature

A. Discourse analysis, content analysis and argumentative analysis

Kopperschmidt, J., “An Analysis of Argumentation,” in Teun A. Van Dijk (ed.) Handbook of Discourse Analysis, Vol. II: Dimensions of Discourse (London: Academic Press, 1985): 159-168

Van Eemeren, F.H. and P. Houtlosser, “Strategic Maneuvering in Argumentative Discourse,” Discourse Studies 1, no. 4 (1999): 479-497

B. The press as a source for qualitative research

Meer, Nasar, ““Get Off Your Knees”: Print Media Public Intellectuals and Muslims in Britain,” Journalism Studies 7, no. 1 (2006): 35-59

Richardson, John E., “’Now is the Time to Put an End to All This’: Argumentative Discourse Theory and ‘Letters to the Editor’,” Discourse & Society 12 (2001): 143-168

Rojecki, Andrew, “Media Discourse on Globalization and Terror,” Political Communication 22 (2005): 63-81

Torronen, Jukka, “The Passionate Text: The Pending Narrative as a Macrostructure of Persuasion,” Social Semiotics 10, no. 1 (2000): 81-98

Torronen, Jukka, “The Finnish press’s political position on alcohol between 1993 and 2000,” Addiction 98 (2003): 281-290

Torronen, Jukka, “Finnish newspapers’ positions on drug policy between 1993 and 2000,” Contemporary Drug Problems 31 (Spring 2004): 59-88

IV. Conclusions