COMM 1174 Lecture Notes - Lecture 22: Content Analysis, Cultivation Theory, Horizontal Integration
22 May 2018
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Limited Effects Model: For some people, some of the time, some media content might be harmful.
Cultiatio theo: he ou ath iolet otet, ou do’t eoe oe iolet, ut athe ou
become more afraid.
Content analysis, survey and experiment
I. Content analysis
a. Content analysis is different than textual analysis
i. Textual analysis is where you interpret cultural meanings of that cultural object
ii. Look at entire episode, look sound track, lighting, framing, every aspect
iii. Content analysis is where you measure the things that happen in a vast amount
of television
iv. Biggest difference: content analysis deals with big and massive amounts of
media content. Reason: looking to demonstrate and get a representative sample
of all of the media content out there. That way you can show that media is more
violent than real world
v. Content analysis: frequency is important
vi. Most common type: content analysis
vii. Biggest criticism: reduces culture to quantifiable phenomena. Sometimes the
most significant things is not the number of times, but rather the character who
committed violence, or WHEN the violence occurred. Gets rid of surrounding
context
viii. First you have to show that there is a lot of violence in media, and then you also
have to show that it has an effect.
b. Cops tv show example
i. A small percentage of all of the Cops shows and found that the vast majority of
the crimes that you see in Cops are violent crimes
ii. However, in real life, the percentage of violent crimes is much less
c. Measuring effects: methods
i. Survey methods:
1. Survey
a. Standardized questionnaire
b. Correlation
c. Generalization
i. Random?
d. Self-report
2. Example: have people fill out a survey asking how violent you think the
world is and asking them how much tv they watch
3. Cannot prove causation
4. Problems: sometimes people lie on survey
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