SRM - Week 14 (12/02)

Key terms:

• Content analysis

General notes:

• 3 types of content analysis

  • Layers of meaning in a single image/document

    • Surface meaning

      • Overall impression from quickly studying it

      • Simply list all objects and people

    • Advertiser’s intended meaning

      • Sales message that the advertiser intends

      • Preferred/expected meaning that a reader might get from the ad

    • Cultural/ideological meaning

      • Relies on the cultural knowledge and background of reader

      • “Make sense” of ads by relating them to culture and shared belief systems held in common by most people

  • Thematic analysis in a set of images/documents

    • Find themes that develop in a specific data source

      • Single issue of a magazine

      • Several issues of that magazines

      • Multiple different magazines

    • Examples of what to look for:

      • How images stress specific visions of society

      • How ads convey that a product will cause happiness

      • What vision of the future is described

  • Quantitative analysis

    • Good for popular press articles on a topic

      • Gives summary of what the discussion focused upon

    • Count how many times a word (and synonyms) is used in articles on that topic

      • Optional - look at the whole sentence for each time that word/idea is used

      • Optional - look for a related word that was uncommon