Tone is not black and white
Tone is not black and white. It’s not even grey. Sure there are those who believe toning stories as positive, negative, and neutral actually provides an accurate snapshot of what’s going on with your coverage. But the reality is it’s not — and shouldn’t be — that simple.
There are so many factors that can and should be taken into account when determining the tone of a story or a group of stories, that you are really doing a disservice to your entire analysis program if you’re simplifying it that much.
If you asked someone’s opinion of a movie or restaurant, would you want to hear “it was good” or “it was bad”, or would you prefer to know what they thought of it on a scale of 1 to 10?
The latter is obviously more desirable, and provides you with more insight into just how good or how bad it was.
If someone told you a restaurant was OK, he or she had no real complaints and the place was relatively inexpensive, you might see value in it. Conversely, if someone told you the restaurant was OK, but on the expensive side, you may very well stay home or choose another restaurant. And if someone could provide you with exactly what they liked and didn’t like, that’s even better.
The same can be said when it comes to media analysis. The more detailed the information, and the more factors that are taken into account when determining tone, the more informed your decisions can be.
One Response to “Tone is not black and white”
1 Alan Chumley 1 October 2007 @ 11:11 am
Yup, tone can be tricky. Couple of things.
1. I think too many rely too much on tone as a measure of an article’s quality. It’s important, but it’s best looked on as one among many potentially more meaningful variables and metrics. Say no to tone alone.
2. You’re right. Tone is subjective and therein lies the problem. The solution lies in a) the client and vendor/researcher/supplier agreeing ahead of time, in clear terms, what constitutes positive and negative (and all shades of grey in between) and b) in building consistency among those toning into the methodology. Here, intercoder reliabiilty testing is important. Put simply, all coders need to be periodically tested against each other and against the pre-set standard put in place by client and supplier. How reliable are the coders? How consisten are they? The importance of this cannot be understated.
3. What some often fail to do is multi-tone. So, toning not only the overall article at the aggregate level, but toning, for example, brand references, product references, exec quotes etc.
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