Marshall Kitchens

Using Deitz' Methodology to Foster Critical Media Pedagogy

In order to introduce students to empirical methodologies in media studies, I begin my second semester composition class with self-reflective work concerning the students' own experiences with technology. As a class, we also discuss gendered differences with technology and share experiences to discover commonalities and differences.

For example, of five female students sampled in one of my classes, not one played video games regularly. They each stated that they were not interested in the games at all. On further prompting, though, they discovered that they shared similar experiences with trying to learn the technology. They all had tried playing video games for the first time with a male sibling or friend who offered to teach them. They generally regarded this as a negative experience, reporting that their tutor took great pride in trouncing them without really showing them how to play. They also attributed their lack of interest to the degree of difficulty to learn the game or their own reported lack of hand-eye coordination.

In addition to these difficulties, the students cited the degree to which video games are designed to appeal to males in terms of violent content and stereotypical representation of female characters as a major factor in their disinterest in video games. Tomb Raider was cited as one typical example. Despite having a heroine as its main character, they regarded it as stereotypical because of the unrealistic breast-to-waist ratio of the protagonist and the skimpy clothing that she wears. They also expressed concern over violence in the games and potential negative effect on children.

Initially, these students were resistant to the notion of engaging with video games as an object of study, but once they began to compare their experiences and arrive at common findings, they developed a keen interest and passion in it. The notion that video games may be sexist generated a great deal of discussion among the students, largely arguing that video games are equitable and harmless. This position encourages a more systematic approach to the media and presents an opportunity for students to put their analytical skills to use.

We begin by examining Tracy Dietz's (1998) empirical research study from Sex Roles, a refereed journal on gender and identity. Dietz performed her own systematic analysis of video games, looking at how females were represented. Although Dietz's research background is primarily in aging, ethnicity, and family violence, in this study she focused on the relationship between media and the development of identity among children, specifically by looking at video games. Dietz argued that the representation of women in video games has a negative effect on gender identity and expectations among youngsters. Girls, for example, may locate their worth in physical attractiveness based on how women are typically represented in games. Boys, according to Dietz, may learn to see women as weak and needing protection. The representations might also help boys to justify possessing women through violence.

Analyzing Content, Methodology, Sampling, Coding and Data Analysis

Dietz's article serves as an appropriate model for students to engage in content analysis as it follows a typical model for academic writing. Her article serves as an apt specimen for students to analyze in terms of rhetorical conventions for academic research. She starts by introducing the larger issues and stating her main argument; followed by a discussion of related theories and research; her own project and methodology – how she selects and analyzes her sample; a presentation of her results; and ends with a discussion of the significance of the results by relating the findings back to the theories and previous research. As a class, we discuss these conventions of data presentation, and students are encouraged to adopt a similar model when they prepare to present their own results. By slotting into these conventions, students develop their own patterns of interpretive strategies.

Although her research is dated (the study was conducted in 1996), Dietz's work also serves as a model of methodology for students to follow. She predetermines her sampling methods, stating that "a purposive sample of the most popular games would provide the best picture of what the children actually are playing."  She also develops a coding rubric through which to gather the data while evaluating the games. Students are able to interrogate both her sampling methods and coding rubric by asking specific questions about the methodology, as described below.

One reason Dietz's study works so well for students is that she provides an excellent model for sampling video games, what she describes as a nonrandom sample of "the most popular" games. In the Spring of 1995, she contacted six local stores in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area for their top 10 Nintendo and Sega Genesis games. She also consulted the January 1995 ranking in Electronic Gaming Monthly and used a numeric formula to select 17 Nintendo and 16 Sega games, with some overlapping titles. Dietz's sampling method provides an excellent opportunity to discuss with students various ways she might have sampled games in order to arrive at those that she wanted to represent in her study. During discussions, students have provided some insightful critiques of her sampling methods and offered counter-methods of their own. For example, as other researchers have pointed out, Dietz surveys a sample of games being played rather than games being produced. The students have also developed sampling methods to represent particular groups -- games most popular among pre-adolescent girls, among college students, among high school males. By looking closely at Dietz's sampling methods, students think carefully about the relationship between sampling and representing group interests.

Another reason Dietz's study is well suited to undergraduate research is the way that she models coding. Prior to viewing the video games, Dietz developed a coding sheet that allows her to note whether or not female characters are in the video and whether or not violence is a part of the theme or strategy of the game. She uses the following criteria:

• No female characters at all;
• Female characters portrayed as sex objects or prizes (based upon physical appearance such as wearing revealing clothing or body shape, or characterizations including women leaving with the male winner)
• Females as the victim (based upon women who had been kidnapped or assaulted as part of the plot)
• Females as the hero (based upon whether or not there were female characters who were or could be the action character and winner of the game)
• Females in feminine roles (based upon appearance, such as wearing pink, long dresses and the like, and characterization, such as playing supportive roles to men).

Because of the coding rubric, Dietz has seemingly objective criteria with which to evaluate the games. Because the code is pre-developed, her analysis must conform to this preset criteria. However, students point out that the criteria itself is subjective. Dietz's coding rubric is not perfect, which is a valuable lesson for students when engaging with critical media literacy. Some of the categories overlap, and some are vaguely defined. Students talk about these categories, critique the overlaps or gaps in categories, and develop alternative coding. They consider categories that Dietz might have left out, or develop counter-codes for representations of men, the elderly, or racial categories.

With this coding rubric, Dietz found negative representations among the 33 most popular Sega and Nintendo games in 1995. Fifteen (45%) of the 33 games had no female characters at all: 5 games, such as Tetris, had no human characters, and 10 games, such as NFL 95, had male characters but no female characters. Of the remaining 18 games, 7 (21% of the total) portrayed women as damsels in distress, including 3 victimized princesses and others where the female is a friend of the hero or “a woman being victimized by a gang of undesirable ‘brutes.’” Six games relegated women to spectator status or to other roles suggesting that they are“prizes” for male victors. Often, women in these games were portrayed as “visions of beauty with large breasts and thin hips.”

Only 5 games (15% of the total) had female action characters. Dietz noted that those characters who are portrayed as heroines are often dressed in stereotypical colors (such as the pink Power Ranger) or provocatively (such as in Mortal Kombat II where the female fighters are dressed in thigh boots, gloves, and “revealing” leotards while also wearing harem masks).

Occasionally, games had multiple representations of women, such as Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, where characters include both female heroines and villains, or Paper Boy 2, which includes both a female paper carrier and a bikini-clad sunbather worth bonus points if she is hit by a newspaper. Dietz noted that seven (21%) of the games includes “some form of aggression or violence directed specifically at women.”

Dietz also points out that most of the characters in the games are Anglo -- an item to call attention to when we ask students to shift from looking at gender to looking at ethnicity.

When students are asked to compare Dietz's coding rubric with her findings, they see the relationship between reliability, validity, and results. Categories with more objective criteria (such as "no human characters") are more reliable than categories with more subjective criteria (such as "stereotypical colors or dress") because the more subjective the category, the more likely different coders might score results differently using the same rubric.

Dietz concludes that the portrayal of women in video games is overwhelmingly negative, when presented at all. In addition, female characters, even as heroic characters, "are often depicted as subordinate to male characters or are presented in terms of their sexuality." She writes,

It may be argued that even though these female characters are depicted as primary characters, they represent negative role models of women at the same time, teaching that the contributions of women are somehow subordinate to, or less important than, those of men. (np)

Dietz’s final discussion about causation proves most challenging for students, since she relies on relatively complex socio-psychological theories such as "symbolic interactionism," focusing on the role of play and media in gender role socialization, in conjunction with messages about gendered identity received from family and schools. Dietz concludes that these negative portrayals in video games are detrimental to both girls and boys, arguing that both "may internalize these expectations and accept the idea that women are to be viewed as weak, as victims, and as sex objects." Dietz also points out that "both girls and boys may come to believe that the contributions of women in everyday life are less important than those of men." She concludes that the causal nature of the games may have the most implication for those who play the games most often: "Indeed, the effects of the internalization of this ideology may be most prominent upon the socialization of boys because they may be more likely to play the games more frequently."

Students are able to interrogate Dietz's methods, findings, and conclusions, and in turn, think more carefully about their own designs in research methods. Because many of the students are resistant to the idea that video games are sexist, or that their representations have an impact on the gender socialization of children, they more readily engage with her methodology, looking for flaws and counter-methods. A number of students have been prompted to develop and execute their own projects in an attempt to invalidate or update Dietz's findings. By doing so, they more carefully consider the data and develop critical skills at gathering and interpreting data. The next section describes the work of three students who built on Dietz's research and developed their own sense of critical media literacy.

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