Understanding and Quantifying: A Mixed-Method Study on the Journalistic Coverage of Canadian Disasters
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This article presents a mixed methodology approach that was developed to analyze news coverage of four Canadian disasters. Here, we present the technical aspects of a mixed methods group research project that enabled analysis of more than 3,014 journalistic articles. We explain how alternating between inductive and deductive epistemological stances led to the quantification of characteristics of journalistic treatment not originating from a prior theoretical framework, but rather rooted in the data under study. Although our approach does not escape the difficulties and challenges posed by mixed methods and group research, in this article we present a way out of the usual methodological segmentation in journalistic discourse analysis by simultaneously exploiting the strengths of two approaches often perceived to be opposing.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.071 | 0.145 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.010 | 0.011 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.023 | 0.012 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.013 | 0.004 |
| Open science | 0.004 | 0.007 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".