Content Analysis
What is it?
The systematic, objective and quantitative manner of studying communication messages to measure variables.
Basically, what are people/media saying about you?
Why use it?
To examine communication messages and attributes
To assess corporate or personal images
To make inferences about message producers, audiences or effects
Applied uses for content analysis
Media portrayals (advocacy groups)
Monitor use of news releases (business or nonprofit organizations)
Gauge competitor’s strategies and changes in ad practices (advertising agencies)
Monitor bias, identify lapses in coverage, improve overall representativeness (media watch organizations)
Why it works?
Helpful for studying large bodies of communications messages
No need to interact with humans
Enables people to systematically study historical moments and over-time differences
How to do one
Decide what you looking for and where you’ll find it
How detailed you want to be
How you will define each trait of concept
How you will record the existence and the frequency of a trait or concept
Declare the rules for recording and coding your traits and concepts
Train assistants and/or judges
Conduct your research
Analyze your findings
Apply the findings to your original finding
Coding categories
Create codes that are applicable to all coding units. Make it easy to understand
Make the categories exhaustive (no matter what type of coding unit is encountered, there should be a
