Content analysis

Content analysis Marika Lüders /marika.luders@media.uio.no

Structure of lecture • Texts and communication with a parallell to my lecture a week ago: interviews as texts. • Qualitative content analysis • Quantitative content analysis Department of Media and Communication

Texts and communication Interviews as texts • ”For the qualitative-minded researcher, the open-ended interview appearantly offers the opportunity for an authentic gaze into the soul of another, or even for a politically correct dialogue in which the researcher and researched offer mutual understanding and support. The rhetoric of interviewing ”in depth” repeatedly hints at such a collection of assumptions” (Silverman: 343). • Or perhaps Silverman reads too much into the intentions of researchers conducting qualitative interviews? Department of Media and Communication

Texts and communication Interviews as texts • Raw material in the form of transcribed qualitative interviews evidently implies analysing textual content. • As such, we have already introduced textual content analysis: • The aim of conducting interviews: to discover the details and nuances of lived realities. Themes, similarities, discrepancies. Yet always requires an awareness of interpretation as part of the research process. Hence, never direct access to the realities of the informants. • Even when using CAQDAS for analysing interviews. Researchers read, re-read and code interviews and hence interpret. Department of Media and Communication

Texts and communication Shared realities? • John Durham Peters (1999) Speaking into the air • Communication is something we do to take part and participate in the creation of a collective world, they are not means that will ever help us cross the fundamental chasm separating us. • ”The problem of communication is not language’s slipperiness, it is the unfixable difference between the self and the other. The challenge of communication is not to be true to our own interiority but to have mercy on others for never seeing ourselves as we do” (Peters: 266-267). Department of Media and Communication

Texts and communication Shared realities? • Perspectives on communication easily romanticize communication as facilitating sharing, communality and understanding between individuals; closing the gap between subjects and transcending differences. • Interpretation implies the very likely chance of misinterpretation. • Does not mean we have to surrender to solipsism, only that we need to be aware that communication, whether in the form of face-to-face interactions or written texts, are always subject to interpretation. Department of Media and Communication

Texts and communication Interpretation of texts through history: the power of texts S M R BUT: we always interpret texts in contexts TEXT APPROACHING PASSIV RECEIVER Department of Media and Communication

Texts and communication Three minutes discussion • http://www.martinlutherking.org/ • Discuss the meanings of this text. • Stuart Hall • Intended meaning • Negotiated meaning • Oppositional meaning Department of Media and Communication

Qualitative content analysis Analysing texts • Transcribed interviews are texts • Silverman: text as a heuristic device to identify data consisting of words and images that have become recorded without the intervention of a researcher (348). • Content analysis, usually used to describe quantitative analysis: establishing a set of categories and count the number of instances that fall into these categories (described in detail later in the lecture). Department of Media and Communication

Qualitative content analysis What is it? • Aim (from Silverman: 348): • Understanding the participants’ categories - see how these are used in activities such as telling stories. • The process through which texts depict ”reality”. • Semiotics • Ethnographically oriented narrative analysis • Discourse analysis • In any case, limit the amount of data, as qualitative analysis (whether of interviews or texts) implies conducting a detailed anlaysis. Department of Media and Communication

Qualitative content analysis Semiotics SEMIOTICS (Saussure: semiology) Saussure on the signification process: SIGN SIGNIFIER SIGNIFIED A sign can be defined as something that stands for something else and is the physical vehicle of meaning in a language. Arbitrary relationship: no intrinsic connection. Cultural convention. We are active makers of meaning. SIGNIFICATION REFERENT external reality Department of Media and Communication

Qualitative content analysis Semiotics 2. Roland Barthes’s Myth Today. 1957 Denotative meaning: Black soldier giving a military salute Connotative meaning: “France has a great empire; all her sons, without distinction of colour, serve faithfully under the French flag and there is no better answer to the critics of colonialism than this black’s zeal in serving his supposed oppressors.” Department of Media and Communication

Qualitative content analysis Meanings of texts? (McCullagh) • No stable meanings • The contexts of texts as linguistically constructedd • As products of the discourses in which they were produced • The power of the reader • Summaries are always subjective • Any reading will be biased • Problems of hermeneutical circles Department of Media and Communication

Qualitative content analysis 1. The uniformity of meanings • Always several different discourses being used, and discourses change over time. • ... a discourse is not a disembodied collection of statements, but groupings of utterances or sentences, statements which are enacted within a social context, which are determined by that social context and which contribute to the way that social context continues its existence (Sarah Mills (1997) Discourse: 10). • The contexts of texts will limit the range of possible meanings. Means researchers/historians have to look around the specific text in question. • Trying out possible meanings in a text according to context to look for the best fit. Department of Media and Communication

Qualitative content analysis 2. The contexts of texts • Basic meaning of the text/the text’s conventional meaning - uncertainties resolved with reference to the context of the text. Consistent with what is known of the author’s beliefs and attitudes, situation and behaviour. • Locating texts within specific social sites -> disclosing the political, economic and social pressures that condition a culture’s discourse. The reality of social contexts of texts. Department of Media and Communication

Qualitative content analysis 3. Auhors with intentions?the power of discourses • Texts as biased according to the author’s intentions? • Michel Foucault: the systematicity of ideas, opinions, concepts, ways of thinking and behaving are formed within a particular context. The effects of those ways of thinking and behaving. • Truth: the types of discourse it harbours and causes to function as true, the techniques and procedures valorised for obtaining truth. Does not appear in transcendental ways. • Power: not a possession or a violation of someone’s rights (thus very unlike conceptions of power within political science). Rather power is dispersed through social relations. A productive model of power. • Knowledge: the result of power struggles.Whose version of events is sanctioned as ”true knowledge” Department of Media and Communication

Qualitative content analysis 3. Authors with intentions • Yes, ideas are partly developed from discourses prevalent at the time, yet authors also have their own intentions, and discourses are always also detested and challenged. • Figuring out the intended significance of a text: finding the best explanation of all the relevant evidence. Checking informed imagination against plausible alternatives. • Always uncertainty. Department of Media and Communication

Qualitative content analysis 4. The power of the reader • Do texts have meaning of their own? Rather, meaning as interpreted by readers? Reception studies, powerful receivers • Derrida: meaning does not reside in a text but in the writing and reading of it. • Barthes: there are as many texts as there are receivers. • Yet, we are expected to interpret texts according to intended meanings. Meanings can usually be fixed? Department of Media and Communication

Qualitative content analysis 5. Subjective summary interpretations? • Aiming to provide accurate, comprehensive and informative summaries of texts. • Accurate: supported by the details of the texts, not inconsistent with any of them. • Comprehensive: relate to all major points in the text. • Informative: picks out the distinctive characteristics. • See McCullagh’s example of interpretations of the political writing of John Locke (page 133). Department of Media and Communication

Qualitative content analysis 6. Historians’ bias • Preconceptions and interersts influence the way we read texts. • Searching for evidence inconsistent with a preferred hypothesis. Compared to the continuous attempt to falsify hypotheses, and the impossibility of verifying claims completely (Karl Popper). • Researcher correcting each other. Department of Media and Communication

Qualitative content analysis 7. Hermeneutic circles • McCullagh’a answers: • The meaning of the components of a texts are usually quite uanmbigious. The meaning can be decided from the ”intra-textual” context. • Sometimes the ”extra-textual” context resolves ambiguity: the context in which the text was produced. • Independent information about the author and the circumstances to clarify the author’s intentions. Department of Media and Communication

Quantitative content analysis Quantitative content analysis • Robert Philip Weber (1990): Basic Content Analysis • Classifying textual material - more manageable bits of data • Several aims, such as: • To reflect cultural patterns of groups and socities • To reveal the focus of individual, group, institutional, or societal attention • Describe trends in communication content. • Counting, sorting and presenting content. Department of Media and Communication

Quantitative content analysis What is it? • A method for registering and analysing texts, with the aim of reaching a systematic, objective and quantitative description of the content. • The many words of texts are classified into fewer content categories, presumed to carry similar meanings. • Bernard Berelson (1952): Merely analysing manifest content (possitivism)Hence, very different from semiotical textual analyses Department of Media and Communication

Quantitative content analysis Quantitative content analysis • Berelson’s claim is rather disputed. • The requirements that the coding process must be focused on the actual text remains. • Interpretations are often part of the actual analytical process. To develop meaningful conclusion. What does the text mean? • The methodological ideal is moreover to combine different methodological approaches. Department of Media and Communication

Quantitative content analysis Requirement: Objective analysis • The research process must be performed according to explicitely formulated procedures. • Coding must therefore be reliable, in the sense of being consistent. Different people should code the same text in the same way. Department of Media and Communication

Quantitative content analysis Requirement: Systematic analysis • The empirical material - form, content, variables, categories - must emerge from general principles. • How it should not be done (example from Ole Holsti): • Weyl and Possony’s study of racial intelligence (1963) - carefully selected texts that could be used to support their hypothesis that Jews are smarter than other people. Department of Media and Communication

Quantitative content analysis How it’s done • Reducing texts (as texts or TV-shows or whatever) into smaller parts, the recording units, and then to categorise these units into variables and values/categories. • Units and variables must be clearly defined (to secure a reliable and valid categorisation). • Sampling populations, means universe must first be identified (such as all of Norway’s regional newspapers). • Simple random sampling • Stratified sampling (ensures each subpopulation is represented) Department of Media and Communication

Quantitative content analysis Recording units • Word • Sentence and paragraphs: If the researcher is interested in words and phrases that appears together. Coders can be instructed to code whether sentences convey a positive, neutral or negative reference to US foreign policy. • The whole text: quite common in media research (Sigurd Allern: Newsvalues in Norwegian newspapers). Usually requires a shorter text. Department of Media and Communication

Quantitative content analysis A hypothetical example • A historical study of how the 2003 war in Iraq was reported in three Norwegian newspapers, Aftenposten, VG and Klassekampen. • UNIT: article • Variables: size, priority, news angle • Values: big/small, first-page/other page, positive/negative Department of Media and Communication

Quantitative content analysis A hypothetical example Variable Priority 1. First page story 2. Story referred to on the first page 3. Article starts in news-section in the newspaper 4. Article starts in opinions-section in the newspaper 5. Article starts in cultural-section in the newspaper 6. Article starts in economical-section in the newspaper 7. Other Values Department of Media and Communication

Quantitative content analysis A hypothetical example Size text xxx cm Size illustrations xxx cm Size main text xxx cm Department of Media and Communication

Quantitative content analysis A hypothetical example Concepts used on war 1. Libaration 2. Occupation 3. War Source for article Newsagency Freelance The newspaper’s own correspondent/journalist Department of Media and Communication

Quantitative content analysis Coding • Values on variables must be mutually exclusive as well as cover all possibilities. • Simple and one-dimensional variables. • Again: remember securing reliability by clearly defining units, variables and values. Department of Media and Communication

Quantitative content analysis Analysis - words as recording unit • Looking for the highest frequency words • -> Ordered word-frequency list. • Example from Democratic and Republican Party Platforms: • Carter 1980: • Development, rights, health, women, work, education • Reagen 1980: • Soviet, military, tax, defense Department of Media and Communication

Quantitative content analysis Analysis: Swedish Radio on 9/11 • Marina Ghersetti ”A Question of Partisanship: Swedish Radio on September 11” • The aim of the study: ”to map out the information given in the coverage and to study whether or not there were stories or pieces that were either inaccurate or biased” (204). • Empirical material: Swedish Radio’s programs on the attacts from 11 to 13th of September a total of 35 hours and 48 minutes of programming divided into 1143 units of individual news stories Department of Media and Communication

Quantitative content analysis Analysis: Swedish Radio on 9/11 • Two main format groups: Reports on events and analysis/commentary Department of Media and Communication

Quantitative content analysis Analysis: Swedish Radio on 9/11 • Position taking in reporting: figuring out whether claims of biased reporting in Swedish radio could be justified. • Impartiality: balance and presentation • Balance: does the coverage provide room form all main actors and their arguments? • Measured: how many different actors appeared in each story? • Presentation: the extent to which coverage is netural - does not take a stand either for or against one or the other side. • Measured: The presence of biased journalistic statements, positive or negative statements. Department of Media and Communication

Quantitative content analysis Analysis: Swedish Radio on 9/11 • Treatment of main actors • Value judgements about the US and US actors. Percentage Department of Media and Communication

Quantitative content analysis Analysis: Swedish Radio on 9/11 • Treatment of main actors • Most common Judgement about the US, Percent total judgement: • The US has support and help from around the world 25 • The US will find and punish the terrorists 18 • The US is arrogant, gets to taste its own medicine 11 • The US is united, supporting the President 8 • US security forces have failed 8 • The US has the right to defend itself and retaliate 7 Department of Media and Communication

Quantitative content analysis Analysis: Swedish Radio on 9/11 • Treatment of main actors • Value judgement about Terrorism/Terrorists, Number and Percent Department of Media and Communication

Quantitative content analysis Analysis: Swedish Radio on 9/11 • Treatment of main actors • Most common judgments about Terrorism/Terrorists, Percent total judgment • The Terrorists/terrorism is ruthless, evil, cowardly 31 • Terrorism must be defeated 27 • Terrorism is a threath to open, democratic society 19 • The terrorists shall be punished 12 Department of Media and Communication

Quantitative content analysis Analysis: Swedish Radio on 9/11 • Treatment of main actors • Hence, the number of value judgments about bin Laden was significantly lower than the number of judgments about US • A total of 95% of judgments about terrorism were negative, compared to 33% of judgments about US. • US was favoured. • The results do thus not support accusations of SR having been biased and inaccurate in disadvantage to the US. Department of Media and Communication

Quantitative content analysis Asian values through content analysis • Massey, B. L. And Chang, L.A (2002) ’Locating Asian Values in Asian Journalism: A Content Analysis of Web Newspapers’. Journal of Communication, 5 (4): 987-1003 • ’This study tested arguments in the largely anecdotal debate over the existence of Asian values in Asian journalism. News stories uploaded to 10 Asian online newspapers were content analyzed for the prevalence of ”harmony” and ”supportiveness,” which the literature suggests as key Asian values. The findings show that the journalistic emphasis on Asian values is concentrated in the Southeast Asia subregion and tracks restrictions on press freedom.’ Department of Media and Communication

Quantitative content analysis Asian values through content analysis • Massey and Chang develop five research questions to guide their analysis: • RQ1: To what extent do Asian journalists practice the Asian value of harmony by keeping conflict out of their news reports? • RQ2: To what extent does their news reporting reflect the Asian value of supportiveness? • RQ3: Can Asian journalism be distinguished from Western news work on the basis of Asian values? • RQ4: Does the degree of harmony and supportiveness in Asian journalism vary between the press of East, Southeast, and South Asia? • RQ5: Does the occurrence of Asian values in Asian reporting track the degree to which a press system’s freedoms are restricted? Department of Media and Communication

Quantitative content analysis Asian values through content analysis • Sampling-frame narrowed to Web news sites published by general circulation, English-language daily newspapers: • 10 newspaper web sites, representing two East Asian countries, six Southeast Asian countries, and two South Asian countries. • Unit of analysis: the current day’s ”hard” news story: articles about international, regional, and domestic news events, and business and sports news. Department of Media and Communication

Quantitative content analysis Asian values through content analysis • Each story coded for • The home-country of the newspaper in which it appeared • That country’s Freedom House press freedom rank • Whether it was supplied by an Asian or Western source • Operationalisation of ”harmony”: reliably inferred in news by an absence of conflict as a central storytelling device • Operationalisation of ”supportiveness”: (of the state’s nation-building efforts): story was judged to be supportive if it emphasised political, economic, or social stability or strength, or social cohesion or co-operation. Department of Media and Communication

Quantitative content analysis Asian values through content analysis • 1845 news stories harvested from 10 online newspapers. • Asian values of ”harmony” and ”supportiveness” Department of Media and Communication

Quantitative content analysis Asian values through content analysis • 1845 news stories harvested from 10 online newspapers. • Asian values by subregion Department of Media and Communication

Content analysis