CONTENT ANALYSIS IN By Muhammad

RESEARCH Faheem
WHAT IS CONTENT ANALYSIS?
 Content Analysis is described as the scientific study of content of communication.
 It is the study of the content with reference to the meanings, contexts and intentions
contained in messages.
 Kerlinger (1986) defined content analysis as a method of studying and analyzing
communication in a systematic, objective, and quantitative manner for the purpose of
measuring variables
WHAT IS CONTENT ANALYSIS?
Content analysis is different from the other research, as it does not collect data
from people directly.
HISTORY OF CONTENT
ANALYSIS?
The term Content Analysis is 75 years old, and Webster’s Dictionary of English
language listed it since 1961
In 1952, Bernard Berelson published Content analysis in Communication
Research, and it became a versatile tool for social science and media
researchers.
This method achieved greater popularity among social science scholars as
well as a method of communication research (Wimmer and Dominick, 1994)
The development of content analysis took place during World War II when
the U.S. government sponsored a project under the directorship of Harold
Lasswell to evaluate enemy propaganda.
USES OF CONTENT ANALYSIS
Various scholars of social sciences, communications, psychology, political science, history, and
language studies use content analysis
It is most widely used in social science and mass communication research.
It has been used to understand social change, cultural symbols, changing trends in the theoretical
content of different disciplines, changes in the mass media content etc
Social problems such as atrocities against women, dowry harassment, social movements,
propaganda, election issues as reflected in the mass media content, and so on.
USES OF CONTENT ANALYSIS
An interesting study, Chai (1978) studied the political conflict in Red China following the death of
Mao Tse-Tung in 1976, by analyzing the content of 40 obituary notices (notice of someone's death)
received by the central committee of the Communist Party of China, as it was impossible for
American scholars to survey or to observe first hand the Chinese reaction to Mao’s death
USES OF CONTENT ANALYSIS
Content analysis can be applied to analyze any piece of content that is written or verbal. Content
analysis is involved in a variety of fields such as politics, human behavior, marketing, literature,
health, psychology, and much more.
TYPES OF CONTENT ANALYSIS
Quantitative Analysis
Qualitative Analysis
Conceptual Analysis
Relational Analysis
TYPES OF CONTENT ANALYSIS
1. Quantitative Content Analysis
Focusing upon counting and measuring the occurrence of specific phrases, words, concepts, and
subjects. For instance, if you are performing content analysis for a speech on employment issues,
terms such as jobs, unemployment, work, etc. will be focused and analyzed.
2. Qualitative Content Analysis
Focuses upon interpretation and understanding of a particular type of content. For instance, if we
perform qualitative analysis upon the aforestated Employment Issue Speech Example, you will look
for the term unemployment and other terms (inequality, economy, etc.) next to it. Then, you should
analyze the relationships of these terms to gauge the intentions and semantic relations of these terms
and concepts in the campaigns.
TYPES OF CONTENT ANALYSIS
These two types of Content Analysis can further be understood as Conceptual Analysis and
Relational Analysis. Let us understand this version of content analysis division as well-
3. Conceptual Analysis
Conceptual analysis is similar to Quantitative Analysis and performed in a specific manner. While
doing Conceptual Content analysis, a concept is chosen for examination, and the study implicates
quantifying and tallying its presence.
Conceptual Content Analysis Example
For example, say that you have the impression that your favorite author often writes about love. So
with conceptual analysis, you can quickly determine how many times words such as crush, fondness,
liking, adore, appear in the text.
TYPES OF CONTENT ANALYSIS
4. Relational Analysis
Whereas in the Relational Analysis; it begins with identifying the ideas already present in the given
text or set of documents. It is quite similar to Qualitative Analysis. It deals with the examination of
relationships amongst the concepts and terms in content.
Relational Content Analysis Example
Returning to the same ‘Love’ example, you start with the first step and examine the relation of the
content. You identify these words (such as crush, fondness, liking, adore) and then conclude what
different meanings emerge from this group of words. It is then you complete that your favorite
author writes about love very often.
GOALS/OBJECTIVES OF
CONTENT ANALYSIS
The purpose of content analysis is to ‘read between the lines.’

Content analysis is a research that can analyze human communications.

The content analysis used to examine the data, images, printed text, sounds, social
media, articles, books, journals and the web
Example
The content analysis helped Nescafé Dolce Gusto to improve their campaign
performance by 400%. The goal of content analysis was to find and create a multi-
channel marketing strategy that can attract coffee lovers.
SOURCES OF CONTENT
ANALYSIS
The sources of data for content analysis are primarily two types:
1. Offline
The offline content analysis is based on books, journals, essays, interviews, research
notes, open-ended questions, and directories.
2. Online
The online conversations, social media comments, product reviews, and customer
feedback etc
EXAMPLE OF SOURCE USED
FOR CONTENT ANALYSIS
When the data is cleaned up to identify keywords, the result will be much more precise.

With the above information, it will be much easier to analyze the post and take decisions about the
next steps.
APPROACHES TO CONTENT
ANALYSIS
1. Conventional Content Analysis
Also called inductive category development, this approach is used when the existing
theory or research on any given subject is limited. Here data is used as a source to
arrive at categories rather than using any of the pre-existing categories. In this
approach, the researches rely entirely on the data to arrive at new insights. Most of
the qualitative analysis methods use this approach to study and analyze.
APPROACHES TO CONTENT
ANALYSIS
2. Directed Content Analysis
In this approach, research is based on an existing theory. This approach of content
analysis is used to validate or further analyze the already existing theory. This
method can be done in two ways. One way is to start coding the data based on the
predetermined codes from the earlier approach. Another way is to review the existing
codes and assign new codes for the text that could not be categorized in the previous
method. The directed content analysis aims to focus and extend the pre-existing
theory to determine the key concepts.
APPROACHES TO CONTENT
ANALYSIS
3. Summative Content Analysis
In this approach, the words of text will be initially counted and compared, followed
by further interpretation of the content. The summative content analysis aims at
finding the underlying meanings of the text or words. In this approach, the study
starts by searching for a particular text and counting the number of times it appears
and further tries to understand the fundamental context for the use of the words
either explicit or in its indirect terms. Summative content analysis is a nonreactive
method of studying the phenomenon of interest.
STEPS TO CONDUCT CONTENT
ANALYSIS

1) To start with content analysis usage in your research, you need to start with a clear, direct research question. You need to
identify the problem as to the first and foremost step. After that is done, the second thing is to select the content you will analyze.
2) Choose a sample for analysis. In this step, you have to look for a medium such as newspaper, speech, etc. from where you will
take your content. The parameter in terms of location, date range, etc. is all part of selecting the material.
3) Next, you have to determine the type of analysis. Then reduce the text to categories and code and define the units. It means you
have to determine the level of analysis of the chosen text.
4) The group of meaning that will be coded. For example, you have to record the frequency of the set of words that frequently
appear in the text, its theme, and concepts, the presence, and positioning of the image, etc. The collection of categories that you
will use for coding, for example, objective characteristics like female, mother, lawyer, or conceptual like family-oriented,
trustworthy, corrupt, etc
5) Next, you have to develop a set of rules for coding and code the text according to it, or we can say code relationships. Coding
involves organizing the units of meaning into the previously defined categories.
Coding rules are essential, mainly when multiple researchers are included. But if you are coding all the text by yourself, it makes
it more transparent and reliable. You code the text and record all the data in categories. This is done manually, but it can be
computerized to make the process of counting and categorizing words and phrases a speedy task.
6) Lastly, you map out the representation, analyze the results, and conclude. Cone coding is complete; the collected data is
examined to find patterns and draw conclusions in response to the research question with which we have started .
ADVANTAGES AND
DISADVANTAGES
Advantages of content analysis
Unobtrusive data collection
You can analyze communication and social interaction without the direct involvement of
participants, so your presence as a researcher doesn’t influence the results.
Transparent and replicable
When done well, content analysis follows a systematic procedure that can easily be
replicated by other researchers, yielding results with high reliability
Highly flexible
You can conduct content analysis at any time, in any location, and at low cost – all you
need is access to the appropriate sources.
ADVANTAGES AND
DISADVANTAGES
Disadvantages of content analysis
Reductive
Focusing on words or phrases in isolation can sometimes be overly reductive,
disregarding context, nuance, and ambiguous meanings.
Subjective
Content analysis almost always involves some level of subjective interpretation,
which can affect the reliability and validity of the results and conclusions.
Time intensive
Manually coding large volumes of text is extremely time-consuming, and it can be
difficult to automate effectively.
METHODOLOGY
All approaches to qualitative content analysis require a similar analytical process of seven
classic steps, including formulating the research questions to be answered, selecting the sample
to be analyzed, defining the categories to be applied, outlining the coding process and the coder
training, implementing the coding process, deter mining trustworthiness, and analyzing the
results of the coding process (Kaid,1989).
RELIABILITY
•Reliability here refers to replicability or consistency in the coding or interpretation of
content or portions of content. Reliability issues associated in content analysis are with
the ambiguity of word meanings or coding rules.
•Three types of reliability are relevant to content analysis which are:
•Stability refers to the extent which content classification in invariant over time.
Stability can be ascertained when the same content is coded more than once by the
same coder.it is relatively weak form of reliability.
•Reproducibility(inter-coder reliability) refers to the extent to which content
classification produces the same results when the same text is coded by more than one
coder. High reproducibility is the minimum standard of for content analysis.
•Accuracy the strongest form of reliability refers to the extent to which the classification
of text corresponds to the a particular standard or norm.