use content analysis
Content analysis has also been used to ascertain trends in the communication content of
dailies, weeklies, cartoons, and coverage of development news, political news and
crime news. Murty (2001) analyzed the news items, letters to the editor, and editorials
of four selected dailies in India published during the calendar year of 1995, to make a
comparative study of the coverage of development news. Political science researches
have used the method to analyze the propaganda devices used by the warring groups
(George, 1959; Lasswell et. al., 1965).
Other important applications of the method were systematic analyses of advertisements
in newspapers and magazines to draw useful inference on national culture, as well as
media preferences of advertisers (Auter and Moore, 1993; Wang, 1996). Similarly,
television, radio, and movies offer rich sources of material for content analysis. Many
scholars have explored changes in women’s roles, sexual behaviour and health, and
violence by analysing the content of in television and movie messages (Head, 1952;
Lowry, 1989; Olson, 1994).
The above examples throw light on the range and diversity of studies, which made use
of the method of content analysis. They also show the variety of messages used to draw
inferences about the source, content of the message etc. Though a versatile method, it
has its strengths and limitations. An understanding of these will help us use the method
effectively.
What content analysis can do?
1. It goes beyond the impressionistic observations about the phenomena and can help
you make a quantitative expression about the phenomenon i.e. express it in
numbers, in percentages, which will be more specific, and objective.
2. It is an unobtrusive research technique useful to study sensitive research topics.
3. It is context-sensitive and therefore can process symbolic meanings of data.
Though predominantly seen as a quantitative method, it can effectively capture
qualitative content as well (Stempel, 1989:121). The context-sensitivity of the method will be useful in articulating the qualitative dimensions such as for
example, the direction of coverage of news items as favorable or unfavorable.
4. It is a safe method in the sense that if the researcher found that a portion of the
necessary information was missing or incorrectly coded, it is possible to return to
the text and supplement the missing data. This is not always possible in
experimental or survey research (Woodrum, 1984).
5. It can deal with large volumes of data. Processing may be laborious but of late
computers made the job fairly easy.
6. It is a shoestring methodology, which is typically labour-intensive and requires
minimum capital investment.