Content Analysis

Content analysis is a methodologically explicit way of analyzing texts, involving quantitative and qualitative procedures. Klaus Krippendorff defines content analysis as “a research technique for making replicable and valid inferences from data to their context” (1980, 21). Ole R. Holsti notes that it typically requires an adherence to explicit selection and coding procedures to ensure reliability and validity. The technique was initially developed as an application of natural science methods to the analysis of an emerging mass media after World War I, specifically in terms of the “accuracy” of messages. German radio broadcasts during World War II were analyzed for the detection of hidden content. Since the 1940s, it has been most commonly used in mass communication research and latterly cultural studies, investigating a broader range of “texts” including photographs, movies, diaries and journals, music, television, film, letters, law cases, manifestos, and advertisements. Also important, both existing print texts and anything that can be converted to printed form are available for content analysis, and this would also include interview data or field notes. It concerns the empirical identification of patterns and relationships in a sample of texts. The technique has been used across disciplines, including sociology, politics, feminist studies, and law, history, and policy studies. In studies of consumer culture, the technique has been used to analyze media representations of consumption and the emergence of discourses of consumer culture.

Although it may involve quantitative and qualitative procedures, and combinations of both, the distinctions and applicability of each are subject to some debate. The more common procedure has been quantitative, partly as content analysis has historically restricted its scope to the content of the text as opposed to its wider context or its possible interpretations. It is also conceived in some applications as an “objective” means of identifying previously selected characteristics of texts that are regarded as “manifest.” Manifest content is that that appears obvious or at least unambiguous in its meaning. Qualitative procedures are used when connections between the symbolic characteristics of texts and the cultural context of which they are part are to be drawn. The focus remains on identifying the characteristics in a valid and reliable manner, but may refer more often [Page 354]to the “latent” content of the text. Latent content is that which is thought primarily symbolic, or that has underlying meanings in wider context. Content analysis is usually conducted as follows.