How to analyse a

website

Points to consider

• The analysis of online material is a contested area of research.

- Authenticity of online information

- Ethical issues to do with the absence of consent from the owners of the content being researched.

What is the primary purpose of the websites?

• Advertisement

- To influence the prospective clientele’s opinion about the value of the schools’ educational provisions.

Value of websites

• Websites are real spaces where people visit - Serve as a virtual context to an

understanding of the ideology and values that organisations promote.

- Provide a literal and metaphorical screen through which values can be examined.

Research Question

• To what extent do international schools’ websites present and represent neo-colonial values?

Methodology

• Pragmatism ‘recognises the existence and importance of the natural or physical world as well as the emergent social and psychological world that includes language, culture, human institutions, and subjective thoughts’ (Johnson and Onwugbuzie, 2004; 18).

Methods

• Integrated methodology consisting of

- Content analysis of the information on the websites

- Semiotic analysis of texts and images

Methods

• Content analysis - A research technique for making replicable

and valid inferences from texts (or other meaningful matter) to the contexts of their use (Krippendorf, 2012; 24).

- collecting numeric data achieved by counting the frequency of texts

Semiotic analysis

- Semiotics is broadly defined as the study of signs in different forms of media (Harrison, 2003) .

- The analysis explored links between the signs on the websites to present a whole narrative of what the websites were trying to say.

Procedures

• Sampling – Stratified purposive sampling

International schools- Follow a foreign system of education- The claim of an international status - comprehensive information of their activities

and purposes.

Sampling

Nigerian Schools- follow the Nigerian system of education. - detailed websites

• After thorough examination of the websites27 ISW and 9 NSW were selected

Examination of websites

- Social and economic context of the school - Explicit purposes of schooling - Students’ learning - Student life • The contents of the websites were described

and organised using these categories

Preparation

• A coding schedule consisting 56 items under the categories were generated and imputed into an SPSS file.

• A unique variable name was assigned to each

item on the SPSS file and values were assigned to the responses.

• Using SPSS enabled more efficient sorting and retrieval of data by each category.

• Narrative and pictorial data under the listed categories were also collected and saved.

• The web pages were saved to ‘freeze’ the information.

• New categories were used to describe the information emerging from the data

- analysed for trends, patterns, relationships, similarities, differences …

• The categories were further grouped under much broader themes.

Semiotic Analysis

Sign =

(Saussure, 1983)• The value of a sign depends on its interaction

with other signs

Signifier signified

Presentation of findings

• Under themes - The results from the SPSS analysis were

presented in tables explained and interpreted.

- The semiotic analysis of relating texts and images.

• Contrasting data• Stand alone but significant

Strengths

• The contents of the websites are a deliberate representation of what the schools stand for.

• The analysis served as springboard or a starter to discussing the issues raised by the thesis.

Challenges

• Changing information on the websites

• Nagging reminder that online material may not be authentic or real – may idealised versions of what an organisation stands for.

• Obtaining consent

References

• Harrison, C. (2003) Visual social semiotics: Understanding how still images make meaning Technical Communication; 50, 1; pg 46

• Johnson, R.B &Onwuegbuzie, A.J. (2004) Mixed Methods Research: A Research Paradigm Whose Time Has Come, Educational Researcher, Vol. 33, No. 7: pp. 14-26

• Saussure, F. (1983) Course in General Linguistics Chicago: Open Court