Content analysis is a research method used to identify patterns in recorded communication. To conduct content analysis, you systematically collect data from a set of texts, which can be written, oral, or visual:
- Books, newspapers and magazines
- Speeches and interviews
- Web content and social media posts
- Photographs and films
Content analysis can be both quantitative (focused on counting and measuring) and qualitative (focused on interpreting and understanding). In both types, you categorize or “code” words, themes, and concepts within the texts and then analyze the results.
What is content analysis used for?
Researchers use content analysis to find out about the purposes, messages, and effects of communication content. They can also make inferences about the producers and audience of the texts they analyze.
Content analysis can be used to quantify the occurrence of certain words, phrases, subjects or concepts in a set of historical or contemporary texts.
Quantitative content analysis example
To research the importance of employment issues in political campaigns, you could analyze campaign speeches for the frequency of terms such as unemployment, jobs, and work and use statistical analysis to find differences over time or between candidates.
In addition, content analysis can be used to make qualitative inferences by analyzing the meaning and semantic relationship of words and concepts.
Qualitative content analysis example
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.
Because 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. It has various possible goals:
- Finding correlations and patterns in how concepts are communicated
- Understanding the intentions of an individual, group or institution
- Identifying propaganda and bias in communication
- Revealing differences in communication in different contexts
- Analyzing the consequences of communication content, such as the flow of information or audience responses
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.