Content analysis

Question 1

What is content analysis ?

Answer 1

• Indirect
• Observational
• Study of behaviour by examining media products

Question 2

When is content analysis produced ?

Answer 2

When looking at forms of communication: Text, film, Tv, speeches

Question 3

What kind of data does content analysis produce ?

Answer 3

Generally produces quantitative data from qualitative data

Question 4

How is media turned into qualitative data ?

Answer 4

• Identify important categories or themes from the material
• Work through products ti count to count the number of occurrences of each category
• E.g tallying the number of times a word selected appeared

Question 5

What is thematic analysis ?

Answer 5

• Qualitative approach that involves identifying implicit or explicit ideas from data
• Likely to be descriptive than units
• Develops broader categories
• Direct quotations and lengthy analysis

Question 6

Why is a limitation of content analysis ?

Answer 6

Subjective interpretations
- Could be researcher bias
- Everyone interprets things differently which would give you different data

Question 7

What are the strengths of content analysis ?

Answer 7

Quantitative data:
- quick and easy to analyse
- can spot themes from graphs etc

Ecological validity:
- Exists already before analysing
- Meaningful data

Ethical:
- Good for sensitive topics
- Data already produced so don’t have to revisit trauma