Coding

Difficult day after a long break (bank holiday). I managed to do some reading during the weekend, but didn't succeed much in concentrating.

Today I read Strauss & Corbin, Chapter 8 on "Open Coding", all about phenomena, concepts, categories, subcategories, properties and dimensions. We give names to phenomena, transforming them into concepts so we can make sense of them, compare them, group them and analyze them, and in the end, make theory out of them. When we put names on things we fix our attention on them and ask questions about them. This is why coding is important.

I was not entirely convinced by Strauss and Corbin's arguments and even less clear about how to do it. So I gave it a go and did it to the data (interview) I collected at The Newspaper last week. I am not quite sure about how accurate my understanding is, but as I told Simon: the advantage of researching versus doing journalism is that with research you don't find out that you had the long lead by reading all the other newspapers the morning after. In research you are all the other newspapers and even better: you can come back and re-write the lead if you find out it is wrong.