Peer review reflections

Following the discussion in class last week, I tried to create a checklist of things to do in preparation for my first ever peer review. Since we are supposed to primarily focus on reviewing the research method for the purposes of this assignment, I decided to select the article on Cuban News as I am interested in Content Analysis. The first “to-do” I had on my checklist was to learn about the pros and cons of the research method applied in the article, and to research some good articles where Content Analysis was applied successfully.  I discovered very quickly, that I would have to agree with Jesse’s blogpost discussed in class last week – there is so much more to Content Analysis than simple categorizations and frequencies, and neither Luker nor Knight really address the various ways it can be applied in different scenarios.

I found the Sari Thomas article to be quite helpful in evaluating Content Analysis as a research method in general. Although this article did not directly address analyzing newspaper articles, I was able to generalize the idea of artifactual study to a broader approach in applying content analysis to any type of text including newspaper articles.  I was especially interested in the comment that content analysis (along with other methods mentioned in the article) can only provide information that maybe “interpreted as reflecting a behavioural process” and that there is no real “direct access” to a person’s “meaning-making” process.  I believe this idea is something that will stick with me forever in my (potential) future career in research – to remember that any type of analysis I may choose, the best I can do is to interpret a reflection rather than TRULY reflecting the TRUTH.

Note: I wrote this blogpost a couple of days ago before I actually started working on my peer review. Having now completed the first draft of my peer review assignment, I had to update my blogpost to include the fact that I found it very useful to stay positive while reviewing the article. And I also found it very useful to remind myself over and over again that I really do want this article to get published, and I’m actually helping the authors to make it better – rather than intending to find problems with the article!