Customer Reviews

Analyzing Media Messages: Using Quantitative Content Analysis in Research (Lea Communication Series)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a nice introductory book for quantitative content analysis. It points out the common problem of many current content analysis studies being very descriptive (53% no hypothesis, 72% no research questions, quoting from the books) and without putting enough attentions to (both external and internal) reliability and validity.

However, readers should be cautious about the fact that descriptive studies are not bad by nature, it very much depends on whether your research is exploratory or confirmatory. From my experience, exploratory studies can not be as structured as we would like it to be but that's a long story and involves too many epistemological issues.

The main purpose of context analysis is to draw "inferences about its meaning and infer from the communication to its context, both of production and consumption."

Basically, if you are going to employ quantitative content analysis as your research method, you should follow the following steps (summarised from the book).

1. Be familiar with the current literature on your research topic.
2. Formulate hypotheses or research questions based on some theoretical underpinnings.
3. Select your sources (newspapers, etc.) and sample sizes (based on reliability issues)
4. Preparation of the analysis protocol (including background information of the study, coding procedures, and coding sheet), so that other people can follow your footsteps or critique your study.
5. Data analysis, using statistical techniques (frequency, mean, correlation, regression, etc.) to make inferences.

Being an introductory text, it serves its purposes. However, I think the authors could be more concise and reduced the pages by around 100. Then, it can become a pocket introduction to both undergraduate and post-graduate students.

This book also quoted a lot from Krippendorff (1980). If you need more depth of the subject, it might be a good source to look for.

Con:
-The book doesn't cover computer-assisted text analysis.
-Not enough hand-on examples.

This book by Daniel Riffe et al. not only gives an excellent overview of the research field of quantitative content analysis, but also useful recommendations on solving that particular analysis or measurement problem that you are facing. Using this book, I found it much easier to quantitatively measure structured interview results. The examples given in the book are often from the media world, but are generally applicable. Recommended.

This is an excellent introductory book for the people begining their on project where content analysis is needed. It is clear, simple, straightforward and illuminating! I would even suggest that this book should be the first book that any beginner in content analysis should read.