Content Analysis examines patterns in messages that humans create.
For example, bumper stickers are a kind of message which often express a political opinion.
Patterns might be: Cars in Alabama are likelier than others to have conservative bumper stickers (e.g., Make America Great Again). Or… Electric cars are more likely than others to be covered in liberal bumper stickers (e.g., Save the Planet). Or… Family cars are less likely than others to have aggressive political bumper stickers (e.g., You know your guy stinks).
1) Choose one type of message. What would you like to examine in your Content Analysis?
The bumper sticker thing is just one possible example. Any collection of messages is worth studying!
Here are some often-used examples of message types:
YouTube ads
Graffiti on freeways
Cereal box fronts
Dating profiles
Flyers posted on campus
Social media posts
Game covers
Songs
Cartoons
Book covers
Movie trailers
etc…
Later on, you will be collecting 20 samples of your message type, so please choose a type that is short. For example, it would be better to examine 20 bookcovers (rather than 20 entire books). Likewise, it would be better to examine 20 movie trailers (rather than 20 entire movies).
2) Choose a hypothesis. What kind of pattern do you guess you might find within your messages?
For example: I expect that the cars in my college parking lot, compared to those in my local Walmart parking lot, will have more bumper stickers with a “call-to-action.” That’s my hypothesis.
Notice that I am guessing about a cause-and-effect between two variables. The cause is my independent variable (in this case, college parking lot vs. Walmart parking lot). And the effect is my dependent variable(in this case, bumper stickers that make a “call-to-action” vs. bumper stickers that don’t).
3) Create a Checklist to measure your dependent variable.
It should have three items and then the fourth item should be “other.” Like below
Example: Checklist for bumper sticker with “call-to-action”:
___ bumper sticker points out a problem
___ bumper sticker mentions a goal
___ bumper sticker gives a direct command
___ other content that might be a call-to-action
The above is an empty copy of my Checklist. (Remember: Your checklist must measure your dependent variable, in this case, call-to-action. I don’t need a checklist for my independent variable. In this case, it’s easy to simply indicate which parking lot I’m in as I’m looking at bumper stickers.)
Later on, I will be applying my checklist to the bumper stickers that I find. For example, suppose that I find a bumper sticker in my college parking lot that says, “Vote, vote, vote!” And suppose that I find a bumper sticker in my Walmart lot that says, “The world should be a better place. Right?” I would apply my checklist to these stickers, and the completed checklists would look like below
College Bumper Sticker #1 — “Vote, vote, vote!”
___ bumper sticker points out a problem
___ bumper sticker mentions a goal
_X_ bumper sticker gives a direct command (vote)
___ other content that might be a call-to-action
Walmart Bumper Sticker #1 — “The world should be a better place. Right?”
___ bumper sticker points out a problem
_X_ bumper sticker mentions a goal (the world should be better)
___ bumper sticker gives a direct command
_X_ other content that might be a call-to-action (“right?” asks the viewer to agree)
Notice that I’ve clearly labeled each checklist so the person who reads my content analysis can tell what I was looking at. Good start. But remember, I need a total of 20 completed checklists, so I’ll probably want to examine 10 bumper stickers in my college parking lot, and 10 at my local Walmart.
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For example, appeared first on essaynook.com.