Much has been written about the public image of the suburbs, however very few
researchers have explored how they appear in the media. The purpose of this research is
to determine how local newspapers have represented the suburbs of Toronto and
Hamilton since 1990. The objective is to see whether there has been a historical shift in
the balance between positive and negative images, and also in the themes associated with
each. This has been done by examining articles from The Toronto Star and The Hamilton
Spectator. Articles from 1990-2015 were extracted using the online database, LexisNexis
Academic. These articles were then coded using a manual thematic coding scheme
accounting for several factors including the type of article, section of the newspaper,
front page material, centrality, valence, major themes, and neighbourhoods and regions
being discussed. NVivo software for qualitative data analysis was used to understand and
organize the abundance of unstructured data collected. As expected, the tone of coverage
in both cities was generally negative, but varied between cities and changed over time as
the mix of thematic concerns also changed. / Thesis / Master of Arts (MA)
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:mcmaster.ca/oai:macsphere.mcmaster.ca:11375/22164 |
| Date | January 2017 |
| Creators | Hendershott, Kaitlin |
| Contributors | Harris, Richard, Geography |
| Source Sets | McMaster University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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