Media discourse research with adolescents: a case of isomorphism or non-isomorphism?

Discourse research in the area of adolescent sexuality has usually either conducted media analyses to identify a potentially (negative) influence on adolescent sexuality development (e.g. Durham, 1998) or discourse research with adolescents citing media discourses and images as a potential (negative) influence (e.g. Jackson & Cram, 2010). However, both approaches raise the question how discourses used by adolescents parallel the discourses in the media, i.e. whether cultural level (media) discourses and individual-level discourses are isomorphic (Van de Vijver et al., 2008) and therefore whether one can be used to infer influence or behaviour on the other. This can have an impact on how such discourse research and other psychological research is done. In addition, identifying the process of assimilating cultural level discourses into individual-level discourses should help in revealing how media helps or hinders adolescents’ positive sexuality development. The discussed study explores whether media discourses around adolescent sexuality and discourses adolescents draw on are isomorphic or non-isomorphic. It combines media analysis with Q methodology to explore cultural and individual level discourses, and findings from both sets will be integrated to identify how media discourses are represented in individual accounts. This research is currently at the design stage, however, as the type of research proposed here has not been done, I would appreciate the chance to present this design to receive feedback from other researchers about the feasibility, value and any epistemological and ontological considerations that I might have failed to consider.