POLI 210 Lecture Notes - Lecture 16: Content Analysis
21 Feb 2018
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To take political relevant communications and turn them into data. Any technique for making inferences by systematically and objectively identifying specified characteristics of communications. Objectively requires that the analysis be based on explicit rules to ensure transmissibility and replicability. What sort of communications could you analyze? infinite amount list goes on twitter. The focus is on the substantive content of the communication. To perform a substantive content analysis is essentially a coding operation. Researcher classifies the content according to a pre-defined conceptual framework. For ex: coding newspaper editorials according to their ideological leaning. For example, looking for every time a specific word shows up on the internets. Disadvantages: meaning depends on context, loss of nuance and subtlety of meaning. For ex: if you were analyzing whether election coverage in canada is racialized you could include the words race, ethnicity, skin colour in your dictionary. Into making inferences and judgements. beyond what is objectively there.
