Content Analysis

Terms

For a technical communicator, content analysis is "inventorying existing content and documents" using language, rhetoric, and writing (Batova and Andersen, 2017, p. 180)

Criticism

Marx warned about content analysis based on just the words alone. He stated, “whilst in ordinary life every shopkeeper is very well able to distinguish between what someone professes to be and what he really is, our historians have not yet won this trivial insight. They take every epoch at its worked and believe that everything it says and imagines about itself is true” (in Cohen, 1995, p. 28).

Example - Document Analysis

"A structured content analysis draws relevant information from published material and a key feature is that ‘only specific information sought by the researcher is coded’ (Jauch et al. 1980, p. 517). Hence, this section develops the framework through which the five guidelines will be analysed. However, whereas structured content analysis is used to quantify written data sources (Jauch et al. 1980; Larsson 1993), our intention is to critically compare the guidelines on specific aspects of whistleblowing policies/procedures. Thus, we use structured content analysis only to the point where we can establish policy categories in the guidelines. Rather than drawing categories from multiple readings of our data, we develop our framework from the existing literature on the management side of whistleblowing. We employ documentary analysis to identify the extent to which the guidelines converge or contradict each other in particular policy areas. Finally, we try to explain contradictions and gaps by looking at specific document characteristics such as: who wrote it, for whom, and why. From the literature, we have discerned 16 policy issues and these constitute our framework. These were either repeatedly identified in the normative literature as being important elements of a fair or efficient whistleblowing procedure/policy, or they featured as a variable in research on whistleblowing in more than one study. Of the 16 issues we identified, seven related to who can blow the whistle on what and how this should be done, four relate to possible conditions delimiting legitimate use of the procedure, and five relate to the institutional context needed to operate a whistleblowing procedure. (Vandekerckhove & Lewis, 2011, p. 254).

Form -oriented or meaning-oriented?

According to Ngai and Singh (2014), "The form-oriented content analysis focuses on the “routine counting of words or concrete references” (Smith & Taffler, 2000, p. 627) used to measure the various dimensions of disclosure behavior whereas meaning oriented content analysis is associated with the underlying themes that entail the actual meaning of the documents (Johnson, Buehring, Cassell, & Symon, 2006). Either type of orientation in content analysis involves coding content with context units such as a sentence, a paragraph, or the entire text of the message or address (Merkl-Davies et al., 2011)" (p. 357).

General Themes Made of Particulars

"According to Bowman (1978, 1984) annual reports contain much written material that permits the researcher to perform content analysis. This process relies not on causal reading but on a rather explicit counting and coding of particular lines of prose, word usage, and disclosure. This method is appropriate for discerning general themes within a large body of data or when the subject's own language is crucial to the investigation (Holsti, 1969). In the present study, president's letters for 50 companies in the 1989 Fortune 500 were independently coded on a sentence-by-sentence basis. Sentences were selected as the "unit" of analysis since they represent complete thoughts as well as provide the common structure desired. This "unit" was then independently classified by the researchers according to its dominant theme. In addition, each sentence of the sample narratives was categorized on the basis of past or future reference to these themes. Higher intercoder reliability, the extent to which content classification produces the same results when the same text is coded by more than one coder, was a minimum standard for this investigation. Using Holsti's (1969) formula, the reliability of the procedure ranged from 92 percent to 100 percent" " (Kohut & Segars, 1992, p. 12).

References

Batova, T., & Andersen, R. (2017). A Systematic Literature Review of Changes in Roles/Skills in Component Content Management Environments and Implications for Education. Technical Communication Quarterly, 26(2), 173-200.

Cohen, S. (1985). The master patterns. In Visions of social control. (13-39). Cambridge: Polity Press.

Kohut, G., & Segars, A. (1992). The President's Letter to Stockholders: An Examination of Corporate Communication Strategy. Journal of Business Communication, 29(1), 7-21.

Ngai, C., & Singh, R. (2014). Communication with stakeholders through corporate web sites: An exploratory study on the CEO messages of major corporations in greater China. Journal of Business and Technical Communication, 28(3), 352-394.