Comparing newspapers

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My Hypothesis for This Coursework on Comparing Newspapers:

Collecting The Data and Making it Balanced.

The data we have been asked to collect is known as Primary Data. This is because we ourselves have to abstract various pieces of information from newspapers provided by our teacher. These newspapers are; ‘The Times,’ ‘The Daily Mail’ and ‘The Daily Mirror.’ We then have the opportunity to carry out our investigations to try and prove our own hypothesis.

To make certain that collecting the data is unbiased I’ve decided to select three completely different sections from each article. However, each section has identical number of lines and this is my contribution to making the investigation fair and balanced. (If I selected any numbers of lines from each article then I wouldn’t be able to observe the variations between the word lengths from each individual paper.)

From these different sections in each article, I’m going to calculate the length of each word and work out an approximate average, (Mean,) for each section. The results will hopefully show, which newspaper I have taken the sample from, (I.e. The longer the word length, the more sophisticated the paper.) However, if this plan fails then I can observe and investigate the proportionality of the page contained by pictures. I’m mainly going to concentrate upon the sport pictures from each newspaper and this will hopefully confirm the type of newspaper, (i.e. Tabloid or Broadsheet) I’ve taken the picture from. (This should illustrate the space surrounded by pictures within a certain article.) The results should show that the MORE space contained by pictures, the LESS mature the paper will be.

Hopefully, this will help prove my hypothesis and if one strategy fails then I can always rely on the other.

Showing the Data.

To make the data as coherent as possible I’m going to represent it in tables. The table will be divided into four columns with suitable, understandable titles. Below is an example of how my tables will hopefully be set out.

What The Results Should Show?

To me, ‘The Times’ is a well known, sophisticated broadsheet paper. From observations, this ought to show the longest word lengths and less of the page obtained by pictures. ‘The Daily Mirror’ however, should show the complete opposite. This should show shorter word lengths but more of the page covered with pictures. ‘The Daily Mail’ is classified as a Middle-Classed paper. Therefore, it will show a mixture of complicated but at the same time simple words. The word length may vary as a result. As for pictures, this paper should show less of the page covered with pictures than ‘The Mirror’ but more than ‘The Times.’

Starting the Investigation.

To start, I’m going to study the Daily Mirror’s Green Issue (environmental) article. Here, I’m going to select three different sections within the article and count the number of letters per word and record it in a table. I’m going to do this with each paper’s (i.e. ‘The Daily Mail’ and ‘The Times) Green Issue articles and hopefully the results should prove my hypothesis.

Below is a table representing the first section I’ve taken from ‘The Daily ‘Mirror.

        

To make certain the results above were correct, I went through and counted each individual letter by hand and was amazed when I found that there was exactly 251 letters with in this section.

My next measure is to find the approximate ‘Mean’ number for the Length of Words. To do this, I simply need to divide the total number of letters (251) by the total from the frequency (48) and this gives me the ‘Mean,’ (average length of word) of 5.2.

The Mean = Σfx = 5.2

     Σf

Below is a table representing the second section I’ve chosen from ‘The Daily ‘Mirror.

To make certain the results above were correct, I went through again and counted each individual letter by hand and was amazed when I found that there was exactly 274 letters with in this section.

My next measure is to find the estimated ‘Mean’ number for the Length of Words. To do this, I simply need to divide the total number of letters (274) by the total from the frequency (58) and this gives me the ‘Mean,’ (average length of word,) of 4.7.

The Mean = Σfx = 4.7

     Σf

Below is a table representing the third section I’ve chosen from ‘The Daily ‘Mirror.

To make certain the results above were correct, I went through again and counted each individual letter by hand and was astonished when I found that there was exactly 350 letters with in this section.

My next measure is to find the approximate ‘Mean’ number for the Length of Words. To do this, I simply need to divide the total number of letters (350) by the total from the frequency (68) and this gives me the ‘Mean,’ (average length of word,) of 5.1.

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The Mean = Σfx = 5.1

     Σf

What Does ‘The Daily Mirror’ Show?

After studying the three different sections within this Green Issue article, it shows that there’s a high dispersion of results. The average word length ranges between 4.7 and 5.2. As you can see there’s not a major difference between these two numbers. In fact, if you round the numbers up, they’re all equivalent to 5. Therefore, the average word length for ‘The Daily Mirror’ is 5.   

Below are three tables representing each section within the Green Issue article, featuring in ‘The Daily ...

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