400003 SE Content Analysis (2012W)

Content analysis is one of the major data-gathering methods in communication studies. Its purpose is to systematically describe symbolic material of all sorts - in our case text, sound, still and moving pictures in media content or in the messages of other channels of information. Communication researchers conduct content analyses to learn aboutsourcesthat are not available, not able or willing to tell us about their intentions. Also a goal of content analysis: information aboutsociety and cultureas contexts of the production of whatever messages. Sometimes we use content analysis to find out about theaudience: Who could be attracted by such a message? Or we even want to say something about the potentialeffectsof a message. In other words, content analysis is a versatile tool for making inferences on all elements of the communication process. But this is not without problems: Both the analysis itself has to be conducted reliably, and the validity of the conclusions that we want to draw from a text to its production, reception and effects has to be justified carefully. This is why in this course we will not only learn the technical steps of a content analysis and practice themfrom a sensible research question via category building and sampling to coder training and finally to ways of analyzing the data gathered. We will also reflect about the underlying problems of epistemology. Variants of content analyses, such as computer-aided ones, will also be covered. Finally, the study of classic content analyses will help us both understand this method better and inspire applications in our own research.