Assignment: The critics of Islam (part 3) For the department of English and Media studies. By Prof DR Sohail Ansari

Dead line: 4^th May

 

وَالَّذِينَ كَفَرُوا فَتَعْساً لَهُمْ وَأضَلَّ أعْمَالَهُمْ

ذَلِكَ بِأنَّهُمْ كَرِهُوا مَا أنْزَلَ اللَّهُ فَأحْبَطَ أعْمَالَهُمْ

. But those who disbelieve, for them is destruction, and [Allah] will make their deeds vain.
 That [destruction] is because they dislike that which Allah has sent down; so He has made their deeds fruitless.

Verbatim

In exactly the same words as were used originally.

Verbatim is defined as an exact repetition without changing the words

Verbatim plagiarism

You commit verbatim plagiarism when you directly copy text from a source and paste it into your own document without attribution. If the structure and the majority of the words are the same as in the original, then it is verbatim plagiarism, even if you delete or change a couple of words here and there.

Type of plagiarism	Definition	Severity
Global plagiarism	Presenting an entire text by someone else as your own work.	Severe
Paraphrasing plagiarism	Rephrasing someone else’s ideas without citation.	Serious
Verbatim plagiarism	Directly copying a passage of text without citation.	Serious
Mosaic plagiarism	Combining text and ideas from different sources without citation.	Serious
Self-plagiarism	Reusing passages and ideas from your own previously submitted work.	Moderate
Incorrect citation	Failing to give all the necessary information in your source citation.	Moderate

The author did not develop number of claims into ideas. 

The problem, therefore, is not to cite while taking care of Global plagiarism, Verbatim plagiarism Paraphrasing plagiarism but to find claims those need to be developed.

How to find claims not developed into ideas

An example is given below:

‘To these critics of Islam countries with European civilizations are the only civilized societies’.

Claim: critics believe civilized societies are only European civilizations.

Not developed: This claim if not developed into substantiated idea by evidence through reference  is no more than allegation. 

‘Started speaking of nirvana they had attained because of conversion and condemning Islam and prophet for depriving the world of peace’.

Claim: critics of Islam say to have nirvana

Claim: Critics of Islam speak against apostle and Islam.

Both claims are to be developed into substantiated idea by evidence through references.

Exercise: Find claims not developed into ideas.

(The author) did not collect any data (primary data) not used data collected by someone other than the user (The author) to develop his claims into ideas.

You are not a researcher; therefore, you rely on Secondary data to develop claims into ideas.

Citations/ references, therefore, are required as the evidence to develop claims into substantiated ideas.

You know you need the sources of secondary data for Citations/ references those could act as evidence , you have to think.

But how you can know what kind of content you need or in other words you know you have to include something but you have no idea what; you know subject matter is to be included, something is to be represented in a debate or exposition but you do not know what could be subject matter then.

Tarek Fatah is a Pakistani- secular activist, he likes many other secular activists, is the greatest proponent of secularism in the Pakistan.

There are two claims: Tarek Fatah is secular; and he is greatest proponent of secularism in Pakistan

You have to writer further with references to substantiate but what should be likely material

Additional reading:

Reading strategy

Prediction

Making predictions is a strategy in which readers use information from a text (including titles, headings, pictures, and diagrams) and their own personal experiences to anticipate what they are about to read (or what comes next). ... 

A reader involved in making predictions is focused on the text at hand, constantly thinking ahead and also refining, revising, and verifying his or her predictions.

By making predictions about the text before, during, and after reading, students use what they already know from text —as well as what they suppose might happen—to make connections to the text.

 Making Predictions

Say you read the following in a book:

Tara was working hard in her room on her homework. As she glanced out the window, she saw the sky was starting to get dark. Then, she heard rain pounding on the roof of the house. Suddenly, she heard a loud BANG outside and …

After reading this passage, you're probably wondering what will happen next. Maybe the storm will cause the lights to go out!

When you are thinking about a story and guessing what will happen next, you are making predictions. Star readers make predictions before, during, and after reading a text.

Task:

Tarek Fatah is a Pakistani- secular activist, he likes many other secular activists, is the greatest proponent of secularism in the Pakistan…………

Guess what will happen next.

Make predictions.

Having predicted you have to go for skimming and scanning.

Techniques help you to be a flesh-and-blood search engine.

Skimming of content is done to know about content and scanning you do when you know what you're looking for. Skimming helps you know and scanning helps you study that you know through skimming.

Additional reading:

Skimming 

Skimming is a process of reading to get an overall view or get an impression of the content. This is when you pick out the main ideas or messages. 

Skimming can help you know that facts buried within long text passages that have relatively little else to do with you topic or claim or have much relevance or direct bearing on the issues or claims being considered

The skimming technique helps you get an overview of a text and get main points. Be Skimmers and move quickly through texts, ignoring and skipping paragraphs, sentences, and words to gather necessary information or the gist of a text.

The goal of skimming is a bird's-eye view of the material.  After skimming you decide the material will be useful, go ahead and scan.

Scanning

Scanning, on the other hand, requires you to look for a particular word or phrase.

The goal of scanning is to locate and swoop down on particular facts.

Step one: Apply prediction technique to guess for the likely material.

Step two: Apply skimming technique to skim the names/titles of books and select books.

Step three: Skim selected books for required content and select content.

Additional reading

Methodology is the study of how research is done, how we find out about things, and how knowledge is gained. ... Method is simply a research tool, a component of research – say for example, a qualitative method such as interviews. Methodology is the justification for using a particular research method.

A research method is a strategy used to implement that plan.

Additional reading:

Quantitative data are measures of values or counts and are expressed as numbers. Quantitative data are data about numeric variables (e.g. how many; how much; or how often). Qualitative data are measures of 'types' and may be represented by a name, symbol, or a number code

What is quantitative data?

The book case is 3 feet tall

Weight 100 pound

Has 15 books

What is qualitative data?

Is made of wood

Is deep brown

Smells like oak

Qualitative Data: Definition

Qualitative data is defined as the data that approximates and characterizes.

Qualitative data can be observed and recorded. This data type is non-numerical in nature. This type of data is collected through methods of observations, one-to-one interview, conducting focus groups and similar methods. Qualitative data in statistics is also known as categorical data. Data that can be arranged categorically based on the attributes and properties of a thing or a phenomenon.

Qualitative Data Examples

Qualitative data is also called categorical data since this data can be grouped according to categories.

For example, think of a student reading a paragraph from a book during one of the class sessions. A teacher who is listening to the reading gives a feedback on how the child read that paragraph. If the teacher gives a feedback based on fluency, intonation, throw of words, clarity in pronunciation without giving a grade to the child, this is considered as an example of qualitative data.

It’s pretty easy to understand the difference between qualitative and quantitative data, qualitative data does not include numbers in its definition of traits whereas quantitative data is all about numbers.

·         The cake is orange, blue and black in color (qualitative).

·         Females have brown, black, blonde, and red hair (qualitative).

Quantitative data is any quantifiable information that can be used for mathematical calculation or statistical analysis. This form of data helps in making real-life decisions based on mathematical derivations. Quantitative data is used to answer questions like how many? how often? how much? This data can be validated and verified.

In order to better understand the concept of qualitative data and quantitative data, it’s best to observe examples of particular datasets and how they can be defined. Following are examples of  quantitative data:

·         There are 4 cakes and three muffins kept in the basket (quantitative).

·         1 glass of fizzy drink has 97.5 calories (quantitative).

Additional reading

Content analysis is a research tool used to determine the presence of certain words, themes, or concepts within some given qualitative data (i.e. text). Using content analysis, researchers can quantify and analyze the presence, meanings and relationships of such certain words, themes, or concepts. Researchers can then make inferences about the messages within the texts, the writer(s), the audience, and even the culture and time of surrounding the text.

What is content analysis used for?

Date published July 18, 2019 by Amy Luo. Date updated: October 31, 2019

Researchers use content analysis to find out about the purposes, messages, and effects of communication content. They can also make inferences about the producers and audience of the texts they analyze.

Content analysis can be used to quantify the occurrence of certain words, phrases, subjects or concepts in a set of historical or contemporary texts.

Quantitative content analysis example

To research the importance of employment issues in political campaigns, you could analyze campaign speeches for the frequency of terms such as unemployment, jobs, and work and use statistical analysis to find differences over time or between candidates.

In addition, content analysis can be used to make qualitative inferences by analyzing the meaning and semantic relationship of words and concepts.

Qualitative content analysis example

To gain a more qualitative understanding of employment issues in political campaigns, you could locate the word unemployment in speeches, identify what other words or phrases appear next to it (such as economy, inequality or laziness), and analyze the meanings of these relationships to better understand the intentions and targets of different campaigns.

Because content analysis can be applied to a broad range of texts, it is used in a variety of fields, including marketing, media studies, anthropology, cognitive science, psychology, and many social science disciplines. It has various possible goals:

• Finding correlations and patterns in how concepts are communicated
• Understanding the intentions of an individual, group or institution
• Identifying propaganda and bias in communication
• Revealing differences in communication in different contexts
• Analyzing the consequences of communication content, such as the flow of information or audience responses

Define the units and categories of analysis

Next, you need to determine the level at which you will analyze your chosen texts. This means defining:

• The unit(s) of meaning that will be coded. For example, are you going to record the frequency of individual words and phrases, the characteristics of people who produced or appear in the texts, the presence and positioning of images, or the treatment of themes and concepts?
• The set of categories that you will use for coding. Categories can be objective characteristics (e.g. female, aged 40-50, lawyer, mother) or more conceptual (e.g. trustworthy, corrupt, conservative, family oriented).

Your units of analysis are the politicians who appear in each article and the words and phrases that are used to describe them. Based on your research question, you have to categorize based on gender and the concept of trustworthiness. To get more detailed data, you also code for other categories such as the age, political party, and marital status of each politician mentioned.

3. Develop a set of rules for coding

Coding involves organizing the units of meaning into the previously defined categories. Especially with more conceptual categories, it’s important to clearly define the rules for what will and won’t be included to ensure that all texts are coded consistently.

Coding rules are especially important if multiple researchers are involved, but even if you’re coding all of the text by yourself, recording the rules makes your method more transparent and reliable.

In considering the category “female politician,” you decide which titles will be coded with this category (senator, governor, counselor, mayor). With “trustworthy”, you decide which specific words or phrases related to trustworthiness (e.g. honest and reliable) will be coded in this category.

4. Code the text according to the rules

You go through each text and record all relevant data in the appropriate categories. This can be done manually or aided with computer programs, such as QSR NVivo, Atlas.ti and Diction, which can help speed up the process of counting and categorizing words and phrases.

Following your coding rules, you examine each newspaper article in your sample. You record the characteristics of each politician mentioned, along with all words and phrases related to trustworthiness that are used to describe them.

5. Analyze the results and draw conclusions

Once coding is complete, the collected data is examined to find patterns and draw conclusions in response to your research question. You might use statistical analysis to find correlations or trends, discuss your interpretations of what the results mean, and make inferences about the creators, context and audience of the texts.

The results reveal that words and phrases related to trustworthiness appeared in the same sentence as a male politician more frequently than they did in the same sentence as a female politician. From these results, you conclude that national newspapers present male politicians as more trustworthy than female politicians, and infer that this might have an effect on readers’ perceptions of women in politics.

Question:

Is this article helpful? Justify your answer.

Note: Everything is not tailored to your specific needs. You have to customize it for example

Jilly asks:

Hi! If I'm conducting a content analysis research on film (specifical documentaries), how can I practice content analysis in my research?

Cause, film is different than "text"...I assume.

Shona McCombes (Scribbr-team) Reply

 

‘To conduct content analysis with film sources, you can follow the same steps outlined in this article; the main difference will probably be your units of analysis. For example, instead of just looking at words and phrases, you might also code for different types of images, camera techniques, or even sounds. You still need to develop a set of rules for what will be included in each code’.

 

Task:

Customize an article written by Amy Luo to you need

Write methodology and mention content analysis as the research method to gather data that help develop claims into larger ideas.

 

 

Additional reading:

The difference between method and technique

Method is a process by which a task is completed; a way of doing something while technique is (uncountable) the practical aspects of a given art, occupation etc; formal requirements.

Content analysis is a research method for studying documents and communication artifacts, which might be texts of various formats, pictures, audio or video. Social scientists use content analysis to examine patterns in communication in a replicable and systematic manner

Task:

Apply content analysis as the method and use skimming and scanning as the technique to find and then examine material that can make an article titled ‘critics of Islam’ a research article.