Content Analysis - Description

Description

In 1931, Alfred R. Lindesmith developed a methodology to refute existing hypotheses, which became known as a content analysis technique, and it gained popularity in the 1960s by Glaser and is referred to as “The Constant Comparative Method of Qualitative Analysis” in an article published in 1964-65. Glaser and Strauss (1967) referred to their adaptation of it as “Grounded Theory." The method of content analysis enables the researcher to include large amounts of textual information and systematically identify its properties, e.g. the frequencies of most used keywords (KWIC meaning "Key Word in Context") by locating the more important structures of its communication content. Yet such amounts of textual information must be categorised analysis, providing at the end a meaningful reading of content under scrutiny. David Robertson (1976:73-75) for example created a coding frame for a comparison of modes of party competition between British and American parties. It was developed further in 1979 by the Manifesto Research Group aiming at a comparative content-analytic approach on the policy positions of political parties.

Since the 1980s, content analysis has become an increasingly important tool in the measurement of success in public relations (notably media relations) programs and the assessment of media profiles. In these circumstances, content analysis is an element of media evaluation or media analysis. In analyses of this type, data from content analysis is usually combined with media data (circulation, readership, number of viewers and listeners, frequency of publication). It has also been used by futurists to identify trends. In 1982, John Naisbitt published his popular Megatrends, based on content analysis in the US media.

The creation of coding frames is intrinsically related to a creative approach to variables that exert an influence over textual content. In political analysis, these variables could be political scandals, the impact of public opinion polls, sudden events in external politics, inflation etc. Mimetic Convergence, created by F. Lampreia Carvalho for the comparative analysis of electoral proclamations on free-to-air television is an example of creative articulation of variables in content analysis. The methodology describes the construction of party identities during long-term party competitions on TV, from a dynamic perspective, governed by the logic of the contingent. This method aims to capture the contingent logic observed in electoral campaigns by focusing on the repetition and innovation of themes sustained in party broadcasts. According to such post-structuralist perspective from which electoral competition is analysed, the party identities, 'the real' cannot speak without mediations because there is not a natural centre fixing the meaning of a party structure, it rather depends on ad-hoc articulations. There is no empirical reality outside articulations of meaning. Reality is an outcome of power struggles that unify ideas of social structure as a result of contingent interventions. In Brazil, these contingent interventions have proven to be mimetic and convergent rather than divergent and polarised, being integral to the repetition of dichotomised worldviews.

Mimetic Convergence thus aims to show the process of fixation of meaning through discursive articulations that repeat, alter and subvert political issues that come into play. For this reason, parties are not taken as the pure expression of conflicts for the representation of interests (of different classes, religions, ethnic groups (see: Lipset & Rokkan 1967, Lijphart 1984) but attempts to recompose and re-articulate ideas of an absent totality around signifiers gaining positivity.

Every content analysis should depart from a hypothesis. The hypothesis of Mimetic Convergence supports the Downsian interpretation that in general, rational voters converge in the direction of uniform positions in most thematic dimensions. The hypothesis guiding the analysis of Mimetic Convergence between political parties' broadcasts is: 'public opinion polls on vote intention, published throughout campaigns on TV will contribute to successive revisions of candidates' discourses. Candidates re-orient their arguments and thematic selections in part by the signals sent by voters. One must also consider the interference of other kinds of input on electoral propaganda such as internal and external political crises and the arbitrary interference of private interests on the dispute. Moments of internal crisis in disputes between candidates might result from the exhaustion of a certain strategy. The moments of exhaustion might consequently precipitate an inversion in the thematic flux.

As an evaluation approach, content analysis is considered by some to be quasi-evaluation because content analysis judgments need not be based on value statements if the research objective is aimed at presenting subjective experiences. Thus, they can be based on knowledge of everyday lived experiences. Such content analyses are not evaluations. On the other hand, when content analysis judgments are based on values, such studies are evaluations (Frisbie, 1986).

As demonstrated above, only a good scientific hypothesis can lead to the development of a methodology that will allow the empirical description, be it dynamic or static.

Content analysis. This is a closely related if not overlapping kind, often included under the general rubric of “qualitative analysis,” and used primarily in the social sciences. It is “a systematic, replicable technique for compressing many words of text into fewer content categories based on explicit rules of coding” (Stemler 2001). It often involves building and applying a “concept dictionary” or fixed vocabulary of terms on the basis of which words are extracted from the textual data for concording or statistical computation.