Concept
content analysis
A method that sorts the manifest content of media messages into categories and counts them, using a codebook and coders; it asks messages, not people.
Content analysis asks messages, not people. Berelson’s classic definition treats it as the objective, systematic and quantitative description of the manifest content of communication. The steps: narrow the question, choose the sample, define the unit of counting, write a codebook, train coders, measure intercoder reliability, count and interpret.
Percent agreement is easy but also counts agreement by chance; Hayes and Krippendorff proposed Krippendorff’s alpha. Lombard and colleagues examined 200 content analyses and showed that reliability was often not assessed or not reported. Gerbner’s message system analysis is a famous application of the method. In Turkish sources the method is sometimes presented as a technique within qualitative research; the name is the same, the work done can differ.
Example
Counting the share of crime stories in a week of evening news bulletins with two independent coders and computing their agreement.