This is a broad category of methods, both quantitative and qualitative, that are only tied together by their focus on “content.” Content refers to any information or meaningful symbol produced by humans, and content analysis involves an expansive array of methods ranging from the highly deductive and statistical, to the highly inductive and interpretive, to the highly hermeneutical and critical. It also involves analysis of a dizzying array of sources both textual–like books, tweets, and lyrics–and visual–like films, advertisements, and video games, and even the analysis of objects and material culture–like cars, clothes, or home decor. We will learn about textual and visual methods of qualitative content analysis, including both naturalistic inductive categories and typology formation and other popular analysis strategies like semiology, discourse and narrative analysis.
Assignment two will give you the opportunity to try one or both of these methods out by identifying some case or sample of visual and/or textual content to analyze. As indicated above, this is very broadly applicable, and literally any form of content can be analyzed so please feel free to be creative.
Answer the following questions about your research design for the content analysis assignment. You may answer at bullet points or as a single paragraph for all three, but in either case, make sure to give me a good sense of your research design and how it is grounded in the concepts we have discussed so far.
CA1) What is the topic you are interested in, what type of content are you intending to analyze, and how are the two connected? What if someone questioned the content you selected and recommended something ‘better’, how would you defend (based on your substantive research question) your choice?
CA2) Do you intend to employ a case or sampling logic? If you choose a case logic, why is the case you have selected a good one or studying the topic you have chosen to study? If you choose a sampling logic, which sampling strategy do you intend to employ and why is that strategy the most appropriate for your research question and topic?
CA3) What strategies could you use to up the “truth value” of your proposed study? Are there any strategies either in terms of sampling or data collection or in terms of analysis to improve this?
