In the early 70s, two biographies of the most powerful woman of the land hit the book shops in Manila. One was a commissioned coffee-table type book written by an award-winning writer while the other became a best-selling paperback written by a journalist. The “iron butterfly”, apparently miffed by the paperback’s detailed account of her humble beginnings, invited our dean to the palace to ask her to do a content analysis of those two biographies. She wanted the content analysis to reveal the motives of the writers, particularly the one who wrote, The Untold Story of … so that appropriate action might be taken against her. Our dean and two colleagues carried out the project as requested but in their report, they emphasized that content analysis, as defined, only deals with manifest content and not latent ones. After that content analysis project, the rest was history. The author of the explosive paperback eventually went on exile in London.

So what is content analysis? Berelson provided a classic definition of content analysis as a research technique for the objective, systematic, and quantitative description of the manifest content of communication. Ole Holsti (1969) defined content analysis as “any technique for making inferences by objectively and systematically identifying specified characteristics of messages.”

The key to understanding content analysis and performing it competently lies in understanding the meaning of objective, systematic, quantitative, and manifest content.

Objectivity is achieved by having the categories of analysis defined so precisely that different persons can apply them to the same content and get the same results. If content analysis were subjective instead of objective, each person would have his own content analysis. That it is objective means that the results depend upon the procedure and not the analyst.

Systematic means, first, that a set procedure is applied in the same way to all the content being analyzed. Second, it means that categories are set up so that all relevant content is analyzed. Finally, it means that the analyses are designed to secure data relevant to a research question or hypothesis.

Quantitative means simply the recording of numerical values or the frequencies with which the various defined types of content occur.

Manifest content means the apparent content, which means that content must be coded as it appears rather than as the content analyst feels it is intended.

Content analysis procedure

1. Determine the universe of the content to be analyzed (newspapers, books, magazines, letters, radio scripts, radio tapes, comics, film, video tapes, songs, etc.).

2. Obtain the sample to be analyzed.

3. Code the data. Specify the unit of analysis. There are 5 major recording units of analysis: single word or symbol, theme, character, sentence or paragraph, and item (entire article, etc.)

4. Decide on the system of enumeration or quantification. Methods of measurement include:
1) space – measures column inches or column centimeter in print materials
2) time – measures duration or length of time in audio and video materials, e.g., radio, TV, film, video tape
3) presence or absence of the content unit
4) frequency count in which every occurrence of the content units is counted

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