ABSTRACT
Content analysis is a method for classifying, evaluating, and studying recorded communications systematically and objectively. Information culled from media sources, such as newspapers, song lyrics, television shows, billboard advertisements, memes, online message forums, social media profiles, and websites, can be examined using content analysis. Distinctions are made involving qualitative versus quantitative content analysis and inductive versus deductive content analysis. The steps for conducting a content analysis are provided: identifying the textual, auditory, visual, or multimedia source or medium; creating the codebook of coding variables and operational definitions; conducting a pilot study to test the codebook; developing the coding variables (e.g., word, theme, spatial, and temporal); obtaining a random or non-random sample of units; applying established coding systems, software; and statistical analyses of results. Representative examples drawn from the published content analysis literature are described and focus on topics concerning “who,” “what,” “to whom,” “how,” and “with what effect.”
Content analysis refers to a research method for classifying, evaluating, and studying recorded communications in a systematic and objective manner. Information, messages, and content are embedded in recorded communications that offer valuable research insights about culture, social norms and values, and human activity. Our human ancestors communicated through recorded mediums such as cave drawings, carvings on pottery and ceramics, and other ancient artifacts. These antiquities have been studied by modern researchers using content analysis approaches. Today, people communicate and exchange informational content through modern recorded mediums such as newspapers, photographs, videos, and the Internet. All these sources have been subjected to content analysis research. Information from media sources – images, photographs, newspapers, audio clips, song lyrics, television shows, billboard advertisements, memes, tweets, online message forums, social media profiles, and websites – can be examined using content analysis (Lac, 2016; Stemler, 2001; Neuendorf, 2011). Additionally, raw unstructured information collected through research methods such as observational information, interviews, and focus groups can be used in content analysis to make sense of the recorded data.
