Content Analysis in Communication Research

11 Content Analysis(rev) Department of Information Management CYCU CK Farn mailto: ckfarn@gmail.com 2023.12 CK Farn, CYCU 1

Content Analysis Originated from the analysis of the communication (communication) media. A method between quantitative and qualitative research Communication content is divided into small units, which are classified, counted, analyzed and compared The qualitative data is converted into quantitative data (frequency) Reveal macro trends, changes, etc Not easy to sort out the correlation of relatively fine variables CK Farn, CYCU 2

Example of Content Analysis Multiple comparisons based on the analysis of communication content Trends: What is the trend of changes in the information software talent needed by society over the past 30 years? Newspaper recruitment advertising is an important employment method Analysis of classified advertisements in newspapers over time How to overcome changes in the process (the growth and decline of newspapers) over time CK Farn, CYCU 3

Example of Content Analysis 2 Situational change: Is the political position of news media different before and after the party rotation? Newspaper editorials represent the position of the media Analyze content of newspaper editorials Conduct temporal (pre- and after) classification and quantitative analysis Is television broadcasting unfair how to proceed? CK Farn, CYCU 4

Communications Who says what, to whom, how and with what effect? Who: sender Whom: audience How: media What effect: decoding and subsequent actions CK Farn, CYCU 5

Process of Communications Filter noise noise Message Sender Channel Audience coding decoding Feed- back noise noise Sender The person or organization who wants to send the message, the source of the message in the communication process Audience The target audience (recipient) of the message CK Farn, CYCU 6

Encodeing and decoding Encoding Transform the message to be communicated Normally in the form of text, language, symbols, etc. Decoding Transform the transmitted content into meaning Transmission media A transmission channel chosen by the sender CK Farn, CYCU 7

Three key issues in content analysis Sampling Unit of analysis Classification scheme CK Farn, CYCU 8

Sampling The population is the communication channel Has to be matched with the problem on hand All programs of a TV channel All news programs of a TV channel 7 o clock primetime news The head lines of the 7 o clock primetime news The population has overwhelming amount of data CK Farn, CYCU 9

Reducing data Random sampling Extremely high cost Systematic sampling Pick randomly, or by reasoning, then sample in a cyclical way Every 7 days, every month, Pick the timing before or after certain event Everyday, starting two weeks before an election Pick the timing where things happen most frequently Employment ads: beginning of year, in the summer break, CK Farn, CYCU 10

Unit of analysis Granularity ( ) Example, analyzing books A volume A chapter in a book A section in a book A paragraph A sentence A word Example, analyzing movie A movie An episode A dialog Every minute CK Farn, CYCU 11

Unit of analysis 2 How to decide? Refer to your research question What answers do you expect? How are the number relates to your question? What is the service quality of a hotel Analyze the comments by previous travelers How many times certain things were mentioned, positive or negative CK Farn, CYCU 12

Classification scheme The basis for tallying frequency Coverage of the classification Are the subclasses mutually exclusive? Positive or negative feedback Characteristics in employment Foundation for the scheme Socially acceptable Theory based CK Farn, CYCU 13

Application of content analysis Comparing the content of messages Trend: changes over time be one or many channels The position of a media under different situations The position of a media facing different people The relations of different types of content in a media Differences between/among media Differences between a media in comparison to a standard CK Farn, CYCU 14

Validity in Content Analysis Whether the categorization (coding) is done properly The rater has to know the subject matter No bias Multiple raters can ensure validity of the rating process Training of coders for validity Rate the samples Discuss the difference Start over, until inter-coder reliability is stable CK Farn, CYCU 15

Inter-coder reliability (ICR) A measurement of how much researchers agree when coding the same data set Multiple researchers should come to the same coding results ICR reflects the consistency and validity of the initial codebook, and the coding process Cohen s kappa, Krippendorff's alpha, Holsti Method, etc. Refer to http://matthewlombard.com/reliability/index_print.html CK Farn, CYCU 16

Approaches I. Complete but expensive process 1. pick several qualified researches as coders 2. train for validity and consistency 3. after achieving good ICR, launch the full scale coding, every coder code the entire dataset II. Simplified process 1. pick several qualified researches as coders 2. train for validity and consistency 3. after achieving good ICR, launch the full scale coding, only one coder code a subset of the dataset CK Farn, CYCU 17

Suggestions Content analysis is an effective way to accomplish a research, especially with the help of computers CK Farn, CYCU 18

Assignment #8 Look for a academic paper, which makes use of content analysis as the primary research method Review the paper Think of a topic that you can do, after reading this article Propose a project, including the research question, the research design to carry out your research, using content analysis Prepare a short ppt document, no more that SIX pages File name: HW8_SID_Name.ppt Upload your ppt file to https://mega.linkin.tw/index.php/s/tZFWm3mMPDqG6dQ CK Farn, CYCU 19