Analyzing Texts & Media
Content analysis systematically examines texts, images, or media to identify patterns, themes, and representations. Traditional content analysis involves developing a coding scheme — a set of categories applied consistently to each unit of analysis (newspaper articles, social media posts, advertisements). A study of gender representation in children's books might code each character's gender, role (active/passive), occupation, and emotional expression. Intercoder reliability — the degree to which independent coders assign the same codes to the same content — must exceed 80% for results to be credible. Content analysis bridges qualitative and quantitative approaches: it applies systematic, replicable coding to textual data and can produce both frequency counts and thematic interpretations.