Ethnographic Content Analysis

Ethnographic content analysis (ECA) refers to an integrated method, procedure, and technique for locating, identifying, retrieving, and analyzing documents for their relevance, significance, and meaning. The emphasis is on discovery and description of contexts, underlying meanings, patterns, and processes rather than on mere quantity or numerical relationships between two or more variables.

A document is defined as any symbolic representation and meaning that can be recorded and/or retrieved for analysis. Document analysis will expand as recording technologies improve and become more accessible, including print and electronic media, audiotapes, visuals (e.g., photos, home videos), clothing/fashion, internet materials, information bases (e.g., Lexis/Nexis), and fieldnotes.

ECA involves emergent and theoretical sampling of documents from information bases (including those developed by researchers, e.g., fieldnotes), development of a protocol for systematic analysis, and constant comparisons to clarify themes, frames, and discourse. For example, if one is interested in studying television violence, it is not an act of violence per se that is socially significant but rather how that act is linked to a course of action or scenario as part of an entertainment emphasis (e.g., bad guys get shot by good guys to achieve justice) or how the use of violence is somehow linked to bravery, cunning, skill, and (of course) sex. The latter are themes or general messages that are reiterated in specific scenarios. The aim, then, is to query how behavior and events are placed in context and what themes, frames, and discourses are being presented. Steps include the following:

• Pursue a specific problem to be investigated.
• Become familiar with the process and context of the information source (e.g., ethnographic studies of newspapers and/or television stations). Explore possible sources (perhaps documents) of information.
• Become familiar with several (6–10) examples of relevant documents, noting particularly the format. [Page 288]Select a unit of analysis such as each article (this may change).
• List several items or categories (variables) to guide data collection and draft a protocol (data collection sheet).
• Test the protocol by collecting data from several documents.
• Revise the protocol and select several additional cases to further refine the protocol.

A dynamic use of ECA is that of “tracking discourse” or following certain issues, words, themes, and frames over a period of time, across different issues, and across different news media. Initial manifest coding incorporates emergent coding and theoretical sampling to monitor changes in coverage and emphasis over time and across topics. For example, in a study of fear, a protocol could obtain data about date, location, author, format, topic, sources, theme, emphasis, and grammatical use of fear (as a noun, a verb, an adverb, etc.). The contexts for using the word fear are clarified through theoretical sampling and constant comparison with delineate patterns and thematic emphases. Materials are enumerated, charted, and analyzed qualitatively, using a word processor and a qualitative data analysis program (e.g., NVivo), as well as quantitatively.