ABSTRACT
This chapter adopts a more detailed definition using the centrality of communication content model from Chapter 1 and discusses how content analysis fits into the social science process. The definition explains how content analysis, when applied correctly, is systematic, replicable, applied to symbols of communication, used to assign numerical values to categories of content based on valid measurement rules, and used to describe and infer to larger sets of content. Content analysis is most appropriate when dealing with the manifest meaning (shared with a large proportion of people who use the symbols) of content, although it can be difficult to differentiate between manifest and latent (meaning of symbols shared by an individual or small group). Content analysis has the advantages of being an unobtrusive and non-reactive method that allows the study of human artifacts across time, permits the examination of large data sets of content that would be impossible to analyze qualitatively, and can be applied in almost unlimited ways to the study of the communication process.
