![]() ![]() Let’s say the results reveal that words and phrases related to trustworthiness appeared in the same sentence as an older politician more frequently than they did in the same sentence as a younger politician. ![]() You might use statistical analysis to find correlations or trends, discuss your interpretations of what the results mean, and make inferences about the creators, context and audience of the texts. Once coding is complete, the collected data is examined to find patterns and draw conclusions in response to your research question. You record the characteristics of each politician mentioned, along with all words and phrases related to trustworthiness that are used to describe them. This can be done manually or aided with computer programs, such as QSR NVivo, Atlas.ti and Diction, which can help speed up the process of counting and categorizing words and phrases.įollowing your coding rules, you examine each newspaper article in your sample. You go through each text and record all relevant data in the appropriate categories. honest and reliable) will be coded in this category. With “trustworthy”, you decide which specific words or phrases related to trustworthiness (e.g. In considering the category “younger politician,” you decide which titles will be coded with this category ( senator, governor, counselor, mayor). Especially with more conceptual categories, it’s important to clearly define the rules for what will and won’t be included to ensure that all texts are coded consistently.Ĭoding rules are especially important if multiple researchers are involved, but even if you’re coding all of the text by yourself, recording the rules makes your method more transparent and reliable. Develop a set of rules for codingĬoding involves organizing the units of meaning into the previously defined categories. To get more detailed data, you also code for other categories such as their political party and the marital status of each politician mentioned. Based on your research question, you have to categorize based on age and the concept of trustworthiness. Your units of analysis are the politicians who appear in each article and the words and phrases that are used to describe them. trustworthy, corrupt, conservative, family oriented). aged 30-40, lawyer, parent) or more conceptual (e.g. Categories can be objective characteristics (e.g. ![]() The set of categories that you will use for coding.For example, are you going to record the frequency of individual words and phrases, the characteristics of people who produced or appear in the texts, the presence and positioning of images, or the treatment of themes and concepts? The unit(s) of meaning that will be coded.Next, you need to determine the level at which you will analyze your chosen texts. Define the units and categories of analysis ![]() Because this is a very large volume of content, you choose three major national newspapers and sample only Monday and Friday editions. To research media representations of younger and older politicians, you decide to analyze news articles and opinion pieces in print newspapers between 2017–2019. You can conduct content analysis at any time, in any location, and at low cost – all you need is access to the appropriate sources. When done well, content analysis follows a systematic procedure that can easily be replicated by other researchers, yielding results with high reliability. You can analyze communication and social interaction without the direct involvement of participants, so your presence as a researcher doesn’t influence the results. Analyzing the consequences of communication content, such as the flow of information or audience responses.Revealing differences in communication in different contexts.Identifying propaganda and bias in communication.Understanding the intentions of an individual, group or institution.Finding correlations and patterns in how concepts are communicated.To gain a more qualitative understanding of employment issues in political campaigns, you could locate the word unemployment in speeches, identify what other words or phrases appear next to it (such as economy, inequality or laziness), and analyze the meanings of these relationships to better understand the intentions and targets of different campaigns.īecause content analysis can be applied to a broad range of texts, it is used in a variety of fields, including marketing, media studies, anthropology, cognitive science, psychology, and many social science disciplines. ![]()
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