7 – Content Analysis

Why Should I Care?

Humans produce a lot of content. Are you a content creator? This is even a full-time job for many people. There are obvious messages, but also hidden meanings, to media that we are exposed to every day. There is a scientific way to analyze these media content, to discover their true messages.

Definitions

Indirect Methods:
The study of human activity without the implication of humans in the observation process. 

Content:
Ideas, themes, images, text, music, and any other form of human expression which can be read, enjoyed, heard, or otherwise experienced by other humans.

Content Analysis:
The systematic coding of ideas, themes, images, in media so as to be able to analyze the content and derive its true meaning.

Primary Source:
A document which has recorded a first-person account of an event or phenomenon. Proverbially: from the horse’s mouth.

Secondary Source:
Histories and analysis of events based on primary sources. Documents which give context and meaning to primary sources.

Manifest Content: 
Ideas and other content which can easily be interpreted, whose meaning is obvious to most people.

Latent Content:  
Ideas and other content which can be interpreted with more work. True meaning might to be read 'between the lines'

Usefulness

When people write, speak, paint, or draw, they communicate in many ways. What we read into their work depends on what we are looking for. There are degrees of understanding. Content analysis is highly useful for establishing the meaning of human expression. Sometimes the author wishes to be subtle, or to use codes. Sometimes the author comes from a specific background which needs to be interpreted. Sometimes the author's intentions may be masked and hard to uncover.

Sometimes the medium and the delivery are just as important as the message. This was the famous insight of Canadian scholar Marshall McLuhan, who coined the phrase 'The Medium is the Message' in his 1967 book.

Objects of Measurement

 What is data?

Words, visual images, sounds, in audio, visual or video formats

Where is the data? 

On written documents such as books, newspapers and magazines, correspondence, email, meeting minutes, field notes.

On other documents of audio and video recordings such as documentaries, movies,  song, music videos, posters, advertisements, etc. 

Type of Object	Yes	No	Maybe	Example
Personal Characteristic	X
Socio-Demographic Characteristic	X
Opinion	X
Motivations			X
Ideology	X
Biases / Prejudice	X
Preferences		X
Personal History / Background	XX
Family Dynamics	X
Cultural History	X
Perception / Self-Perception			X
Aptitude /Ability			X
Behaviour		X
Level of Knowledge		X

Sampling

The population refers to the total number of texts, or media, included into the “group” under study. The sample refers to those documents that will be studied. Hopefully, the sample is 100 percent of the population. The sampling will be purposive, given that important documents are known to stand out.

Types of Content Analysis

Quantitative

• • Word Count
  • Word/Idea Weight
  • Time Count (speech)

About Quantitative measurements. They allow to be very objective in your assessment of the content. One cannot argue they did not use certain words. It becomes a very straight forward technique to establish the content's intentions, and strategy. This said, simple word counts are limited in their analysis because they lack the context of the speech.

Qualitative

• • Context
  • Ideologies and Associations
    
  • Rhetoric / Style
  • Chosen Medium

A more qualitative approach allows the analyst to consider elements which are numerical in nature. First of all, one must consider the context. A speech delivered in a downtown square, standing on a soap box in front of a few hundred bystanders won't be considered to have the same context as a speech delivered in a formal setting, such as parliament, in front of a greater audience. Sometimes speaking to a small crowd of important people is more telling than speaking to masses. Context matters.

Qualitative approaches allow you also to evaluate the use or belonging to ideologies, political lines, associations with groups, or other issues. One can also analyze tricks of rhetoric, such as the use of repetition, lists, anti-thesis, relatability, charisma, call to feelings, use of logic, or logical fallacies. It's difficult to assess if someone is honest, by counting certain words. Just because someone says 'Trust me' very often, does not mean they are trustworthy. A qualitative assessment can also consider earnestness vs. irony, humour vs. sarcasm, and monotony vs charisma.

A particular phenomenon which would not be easy to measure quantitatively is the use of 'dog whistle' politics. This is when a politician uses coded language that hits a chord with a particular issue that may not be politically correct to say explicitly. The metaphor comes from actual whistles that humans can't hear, but dogs respond well to.

Dog Whistle Politics Explained

Instruments

Media, Documents.

Includes analyzing artwork, posters, music, lyrics, poetry, prose, political speeches and memoirs, meeting minutes, journalism and magazine publishing.

Scientific Power

Descriptive: You can associate ideas, arguments, and thoughts to people and places, but you cannot explain why things were said, or done. You can’t go back in time and do an experiment.

Steps

1. Identify topic and population
2. Identify sample and “loose” hypothesis
   • Identify the type and quantity of documents available
   • Identify the type of information you are looking for
   • Operational definitions
   • Set the sample size and type
3. Identify the type of content analysis method to be used
4. Develop the coding system.
5. Do the counting: read, code and collate data.
6. Analyze and Report.

Advantages

1. Can be applied to all forms of communication
2. Applied to explicit (manifest) and implicit (latent) content
3. Can use qualitative or quantitative, or both

Disadvantages

1. Sampling can be difficult
2. Meaning is hard to code
3. Quantitative may lose context

Reporting

Tables & Graphs

Descriptive Text

Synthesis Tables

Revue d'histoire de l'Amérique française, Institut d’histoire de l’Amérique française
Canadian Journal of History, University of Toronto Press
European Review of History: Revue européenne d'histoire, European Association of Young Historians
Journal of American History, Organization of American Historians

Preferred Disciplines

History, Political Science, Geography, Anthropology, Sociology

Other Non-scientific Disciplines

Applications in Journalism, Political Attaché, Arts, Anti-terrorism, Cinema

Less Useful For

Economists, Psychologists

Political Speech Writing

Here are a few examples of famous political speeches delivered in the USA.

FDR garners support WWII after Pearl Harbour Attack

First, Franklin D. Roosevelt gave the famous 'Day in Infamy' speech to garner support for the US involvement in World War II. The speech uses repetition (Last Night...) and demonizes the Japanese to stir patriotic sentiment. The speech was delivered over the radio, at a time when the only other means of communication was newspapers. The speech even goes on to tell Americans that their minds are already made up about the war.

You can listen to the audio-only here, as if you heard it on the radio in your living room on December 8, 1941, or watch the video below. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Roosevelt_Pearl_Harbor.ogg

Audio files available on the wiki page here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Day_of_Infamy_speech.

Obama Makes His First Big Speech on Hope and Unity

The 2004 Democratic Party Convention speech by Barack Obama is arguably the most important speech he gave, effectively making him widely known to the American public for the first time. Obama is very adept at using the Anti-Thesis technique, and repetition to anchor the image of 'hope' in this speech. In this video by Thnkr, Obama speechwriters and political advisors explain the techniques used by the man who became the first Black President of the USA.

Malcolm X Stands His Ground

Here is a famous speech given by Malcolm X, in 1964, where he used the phrase 'by any means necessary'. The use of the phrase was a reference to philosophers Franz Fanon, and Jean-Paul Sartre, but was mostly interpreted at the time to be condoning the use of violence. Malcolm X was assassinated in 1965 in New York City.

We declare our right on this earth to be a man, to be a human being, to be respected as a human being, to be given the rights of a human being in this society, on this earth, in this day, which we intend to bring into existence by any means necessary."

— Malcolm X

An interview here with Malcolm X on CBC, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. He explains quite explicitly not encouraging violence as a means for social advancement.

Learning to Write Great Speeches

If you would like to learn to write great speeches, you should think about the big picture, authenticity, understanding the moment, humour, using the permission structure, write a lot, and read widely.

References

McLuhan, M. & Fiore, Q. (1967). The Medium Is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects. Bantam Books.