Blythe, Stuart "Coding Digital Texts and Multimedia"

From RhetorClick

In his article, Blythe discusses why he believes coding to be an important device when analyzing digital texts. He breaks his argument up into two main sections - “Methods” and “Methodology.” In the first section, Blythe breaks down the coding procedure step by step beginning with how to choose your artifact and finishing with how to analyze your results. He explains that, “Essentially, analysis involves finding patterns and interesting anomalies in the coded data. To some extent, analysis may be an intuitive process based upon a researcher’s ability to find interesting trends in the data” (220). In the methodology section of his article, Blythe addresses arguments against coding and provides rebuttals. The main argument he addresses is that the individual gets lost in data coding, where the focus is on the “big picture” (226). Blythe humbly states in his conclusion, “The key to data coding, then, is knowing what it will reveal and conceal, and to combine it with other methods in order to create a more complete picture” (226).