Star Wars Episode IV: A Qualitative Research

1. Introduction
With the release of JJ Abrams’ Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens in late 2016 recording a staggering domestic gross of over $936 million (Box Office Mojo 2016), the Star Wars series continues to be one of the biggest pop culture icons of the 21st century. However, for a film targeted towards all ages and demographics, with women making up 52% of all movie goers in North America (Motion Picture Association of America **), there is a startling lack of female representation within the series. Furthermore, with the growing prevalence of media in our daily lives combined with media’s role in the development of beliefs and ideas in its viewers, the messages delivered by mass media texts are partly responsible for the for the formation of identity of its

Overview
The initiative will take a mixed methods approach. This is because, by integrating both quantitative and qualitative data, this form of inquiry will allow for a more comprehensive understanding of the research problem than either approach would alone (Creswell 2014, 4). By focusing on either a qualitative or a quantitative research method, the initiative would be generating only one particular form of inquiry* at the expense of another (Clough and Nutbrown 2002, 33). The initiative will include three separate research methods which will be conducted successively.
The first method will be a content analysis of all seven live action Star Wars films. A content analysis has been chosen as this method is useful in examining how “marginalised, powerless or stigmatised groups”, such as women, are “depicted in media images and if these changes have occurred across time” (Weerakkody 2009, 145). As the Star Wars live action film series began in 1977 with Star Wars Episode I: A New Hope (Lucas 1977) and is set to continue past 2016, this research initiative will only examine the films that have been released by the date the research commences. At this stage, the number is presumed to be