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SummaryAnalyzing media messages using quantitative content analysis in
research
Chapter 1: Introduction
Mass communication research
Explanation for problems or questions for such researchers are sought and derived
through direct and objective observation and measurement. So, mass communication
researchers employ what is traditionally referred to as the scientifc method.
Much of mass communication social science adheres implicitly to a reductionist (rather
than holism) view – the argument that understanding comes through reducing a
phenomenon to smaller, more basic, individual parts.
Powerful effects perspective?
First half of the 20th century, there existed a wide-spread assumption that stimuli such as
mass persuasive messages could elicit powerful responses. This contributed to the
metaphor of a hypodermic needle (with its helpless and passive audience), in which
desired effects would occur in a mass-audience. Artifciality of laboratory lacked real-
world generalizability. In short, communication content was important to study because
it was believed to have an effect.
Limited effects perspective?
However, the assumption that powerful effects were direct and uniform was eventually
challenged as simplistic and replaced by more careful specifcation of factors that
contribute to or mitigate effects. A more limited effects perspective might be worth
exploring due to the mixed results on real-world effectiveness of persuasive message
“bullets”. Social affiliations such as family and community involvement were important
predictors of people’s attitudes and behaviors, and networks of personal infuence were
identifed as key factors infuencing their decisions. Thus, not necessarily of mere
exposure to, perhaps, the manipulated, artifcial credibility of a source trying to persuade
as part of an experimental treatment.
Contingency effects approach?
The effects—powerful or limited—of mass media are contingent on a variety of factors
and conditions. The communication messages that might previously have been analyzed
because of assumed persuasive effects were now related to differences in psychological
or social gratifcations consumers gained from media use.
They refected a view of the audience experience far different from the “morally
asymmetrical” view – people’s different attitudes. Systematic content analysis has shown
how different communicators “frame the same events, because scholars argue that
frames shape interpretations.
Content analysis remains an important tool for researchers exploring more directly how
individual-level cognitive processes and effects relate to message characteristics (e.g.
content features or structure).
Content analysis and the context of production
Content is itself the consequence of a variety of other antecedent conditions or
processes that may led to or shaped its construction, e.g. one can view news content as
the consequence of a number of antecedents (for example “news judgement”. Similarly,
individual news stories are the consequence of a variety of infuences including a news
organization’s market. News content is the product or consequence of routines, practices
and values, is constructed by news workers and refects both the professional culture of
the journalism and the larger society. Communication messages often contain particular
images, ideas or themes that refect important, and clearly antecedents, cultural values.
And since such evidence can be seen as unobtrusive and nonreactive, conclusions can be
drawn about what was happening at the time of their production.
,The “centrality” of content
So, communication content may be viewed as an end product, the assumed
consequence or evidence of antecedent individual, organizational, social, and contexts.
The validity of that assumption depends on how closely the content evidence can be
linked empirically or theoretically to that context.
Figure 1.1 is a content-centered model
summarizing the previous discussion and
illustrating why content analysis can be
integral to theory building about both
communication effects and processes.
Research in this feld is dynamic and although
the scientifc goal of prediction, explanation
and control of media phenomena may still be
far away, quantitative content analysis of
media content is key.
Description as a goal
Even apparently simple descriptive studies of
content may be valuable, they are “reality
checks” whereby portrayal of groups,
phenomena, traits or characteristics are
assessed against a standard taken from real
life. Such comparisons to normative data can,
in some instances, serve as an index of media
distortion.
Moreover, when new media or content forms
evolve, they lend themselves to descriptive
studies and similar “real-world” comparisons
e.g. video games and physical dimensions of
animated characters.
Descriptive content analyses sometimes serve as a frst phase in a program of research
(followed by e.g. an experiment).
Research applications: making the connection
Even though content analysis can be used by itself to answer a research question, it can
be used in conjunction with other research strategies e.g. a study to explore the “mirror
or molder” role of media coverage of stock prices and trading. These studies involving
communication content and survey measures of its (presumed) effect represent
important steps in moving beyond merely describing content and assuming effects or
surveying attitudes and presuming a causal role for content.
Research applications: content analysis in other felds
Most sources have dated the earliest use of content analysis by psychologists. Content
analysis has been used to examine evolution of academic disciplines. Content analysis is
nonreactive (i.e., the person being studied is not aware he or she is being studied),
allows “access” to inaccessible participants (such as presidents), and lends itself to
longitudinal—over time—studies.
Scholars have examined communication content because it is often assumed to be the
cause of particular effects, and it refects the antecedent content or process of its
production. Content analysis has been used in mass communication and in other felds to
describe content and to test theory-derived hypotheses. The variety of applications may
be limited only by the analyst’s imagination, theory and resources.
, Chapter 2: Defninn content analysis as a social science tool
The new defnition that can be distinguished by the view of the centrality of
communication content. In the complete defnition, both purpose and procedure of
content analysis are addressed and discussed in constituent terms.
Adapting a defnition
Quantitative content analysis is reductionist, with sampling and operational or
measurement procedures that reduce communication phenomena to manageable data
(e.g. numbers) from which inferences may be drawn about the phenomena themselves.
Most content analysis has been used simply to determine the relative emphasis or
frequency of various communication phenomena, and not to infer to important
theoretical concepts.
Should be treated as “a method of observation”, according to Kerlinger (like observing
people’s behaviour).
Most forgo discussion of the specifc goals, purpose, or type of inferences to be drawn
from the technique other than to suggest that valid inferences are desirable.
Content analysis defned
Our defnition is informed by a view of the centrality of content to the theoretically
signifcant processes and effects of communication, and the utility, power and precision
of quantitative measurement.
“Quantitative content analysis is the systematic and replicable examination of symbols of
communication, which have been assigned numeric values according to valid
measurement rules, and the analysis of relationships involving those values using
statistical methods, to describe the communication, draw inferences about its meaning,
or infer from the communication to its context, both of production and consumption”.
Systematic
Explanations of phenomena, relationships, assumptions and presumptions are not
accepted uncritically but are subjected to a system of observation and empirical
verifcation. The scientifc method is one such system, with its step-by-step protocol of
problem identifcation, hypothesizing of an explanation, and testing of that explanation.
Thus, from a theory-building point of view, systematic research requires identifcation of
key terms or concepts involved in a phenomenon, specifcation of possible relationships
among concepts, and generation of testable hypotheses. The research design (e.g. how
precise the measurement is) is also systematic.
Replicable
Two defning traits of science are objectively and reproducibilityrreplicability.
Research defnitions and operations that were used must be reported exactly
what was done. That exactness means that other researchers can evaluate the
procedure and the fndings and, if desired, repeat the operations. Process of
defning concepts into measurable variables operationalization
In summary, other researchers applying the same system, the same research
design, and the same operational defnitions to the same content should replicate
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