Editing Content analysis (section)

==Reliability and Validity ==
Robert Weber notes: "To make valid inferences from the text, it is important that the classification procedure be reliable in the sense of being consistent: Different people should code the same text in the same way".<ref>{{cite book|last=Weber|first=Robert Philip|title=Basic Content Analysis|url=https://archive.org/details/basiccontentanal00webe|url-access=limited|year=1990|publisher=Sage|location=Newbury Park, CA|isbn=9780803938632|page=[https://archive.org/details/basiccontentanal00webe/page/n14 12]|edition=2nd}}</ref> The validity, inter-coder reliability and intra-coder reliability are subject to intense methodological research efforts over long years.<ref name="Krippendorff2004" />
Neuendorf suggests that when human coders are used in content analysis at least two independent coders should be used. [[Reliability (statistics)|Reliability]] of human coding is often measured using a statistical measure of ''inter-coder reliability'' or "the amount of agreement or correspondence among two or more coders".<ref name="Neuendorf2016">{{cite book|author=Kimberly A. Neuendorf|title=The Content Analysis Guidebook|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=nMA5DQAAQBAJ|date=30 May 2016|publisher=SAGE|isbn=978-1-4129-7947-4}}</ref> Lacy and Riffe identify the measurement of inter-coder reliability as a strength of quantitative content analysis, arguing that, if content analysts do not measure inter-coder reliability, their data are no more reliable than the subjective impressions of a single reader.<ref>{{Cite journal|last1=Lacy|first1=Stephen R|last2=Riffe|first2=Daniel|date=1993|title=Sins of Omission and Commission in Mass Communication Quantitative Research|journal=Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly|volume=70|issue=1|pages=126–132|doi=10.1177/107769909307000114|s2cid=144076335}}</ref>

According to today's reporting standards, quantitative content analyses should be published with complete codebooks and for all variables or measures in the codebook the appropriate inter-coder or [[inter-rater reliability]] coefficients should be reported based on empirical pre-tests.<ref name="Neuendorf2016" /><ref name=":1" /><ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Oleinik |first1=Anton |last2=Popova |first2=Irina |last3=Kirdina |first3=Svetlana |last4=Shatalova |first4=Tatyana |date=2014 |title=On the choice of measures of reliability and validity in the content-analysis of texts |url=https://doi.org/10.1007/s11135-013-9919-0 |journal=Quality & Quantity |language=en |volume=48 |issue=5 |pages=2703–2718 |doi=10.1007/s11135-013-9919-0 |s2cid=144174429 |issn=1573-7845|url-access=subscription }}</ref> Furthermore, the [[Validity (statistics)|validity]] of all variables or measures in the codebook must be ensured. This can be achieved through the use of established measures that have proven their validity in earlier studies. Also, the [[Validity (statistics)#Content validity|content validity]] of the measures can be checked by experts from the field who scrutinize and then approve or correct coding instructions, definitions and examples in the codebook.

=== Kinds of text ===

There are five types of texts in content analysis:
# [[written text]], such as books and papers 
# oral text, such as speech and theatrical performance
# iconic text, such as drawings, paintings, and icons
# audio-visual text, such as TV programs, movies, and videos
# [[hypertext]]s, which are texts found on the Internet

=== History ===
Content analysis is research using the categorization and classification of speech, written text, interviews, images, or other forms of communication.  In its beginnings, using the first newspapers at the end of the 19th century, analysis was done manually by measuring the number of columns given a subject. The approach can also be traced back to a university student studying patterns in Shakespeare's literature in 1893.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Sumpter|first=Randall S.|date=July 2001|title=News about News|journal=Journalism History|volume=27|issue=2|pages=64–72|doi=10.1080/00947679.2001.12062572|s2cid=140499059|issn=0094-7679}}</ref>

Over the years, content analysis has been applied to a variety of scopes. [[Hermeneutics]] and [[philology]] have long used content analysis to interpret sacred and profane texts and, in many cases, to attribute texts' [[authorship]] and [[authentication|authenticity]].<ref name="Tipaldo 2014 42"/><ref name="Krippendorff2004">{{cite book|last=Krippendorff|first=Klaus|title=Content Analysis: An Introduction to Its Methodology|year=2004|publisher=Sage|location=Thousand Oaks, CA|isbn=9780761915454|pages=413|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=q657o3M3C8cC|edition=2nd}}</ref>

In recent times, particularly with the advent of [[mass communication]], content analysis has known an increasing use to deeply analyze and understand media content and media logic. 
The political scientist [[Harold Lasswell]] formulated the core questions of content analysis in its early-mid 20th-century mainstream version: "Who says what, to whom, why, to what extent and with what effect?".<ref>{{cite book |last1=Lasswell |first1=Harold |editor1-last=Bryson |editor1-first=L. |title=The Communication of Ideas |date=1948 |publisher=Harper and Row |location=New York |page=216 |url=http://sipa.jlu.edu.cn/__local/E/39/71/4CE63D3C04A10B5795F0108EBE6_A7BC17AA_34AAE.pdf |chapter=The Structure and Function of Communication in Society}}</ref> The strong emphasis for a quantitative approach started up by Lasswell was finally carried out by another "father" of content analysis, [[Bernard Berelson]], who proposed a definition of content analysis which, from this point of view, is emblematic: "a research technique for the objective, systematic and quantitative description of the manifest content of communication".<ref name="Berelson1952">{{cite book|last=Berelson| first=B.|title=Content Analysis in Communication Research|year=1952|publisher=Free Press|location=Glencoe|pages=18}}</ref>

Quantitative content analysis has enjoyed a renewed popularity in recent years thanks to technological advances, being fruitfully applied in mass and personal communication research. Content analysis of textual [[big data]] produced by [[new media]], particularly [[social media]] and [[mobile devices]] has become popular. These approaches take a simplified view of language that ignores the complexity of [[semiosis]], the process by which meaning is formed out of language. Quantitative content analysts have been criticized for limiting the scope of content analysis to simple counting, and for applying the measurement methodologies of the natural sciences without reflecting critically on their appropriateness to social science.<ref name=":0">{{Cite book|title=Content Analysis: An Introduction to Its Methodology|url=https://archive.org/details/contentanalysisi00krip_916|url-access=limited|last=Krippendorff|first=Klaus|publisher=Sage|year=2004|isbn=978-0-7619-1544-7|location=California|pages=[https://archive.org/details/contentanalysisi00krip_916/page/n101 87]–89}}</ref> Conversely, qualitative content analysts have been criticized for being insufficiently systematic and too impressionistic.<ref name=":0" /> Krippendorff argues that quantitative and qualitative approaches to content analysis tend to overlap, and that there can be no generalisable conclusion as to which approach is superior.<ref name=":0" />

Content analysis can also be described as studying [[Trace evidence|traces]], which are documents from past times, and artifacts, which are non-linguistic documents. Texts are understood to be produced by communication processes in a broad sense of that phrase—often gaining mean through [[Abductive reasoning|abduction]].<ref name="Tipaldo 2014 42"/><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Timmermans |first1=Stefan |last2=Tavory |first2=Iddo |title=Theory Construction in Qualitative Research |journal=Sociological Theory |date=2012 |volume=30 |issue=3 |pages=167–186 |doi=10.1177/0735275112457914 |s2cid=145177394 |url=http://grap.ulb.ac.be/wp-content/uploads/Timmermans-and-Tavory_Abductive-Analysis.pdf |access-date=2018-12-09 |archive-date=2019-08-19 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190819065302/http://grap.ulb.ac.be/wp-content/uploads/Timmermans-and-Tavory_Abductive-Analysis.pdf |url-status=dead }}</ref>

=== Latent and manifest content ===
Manifest content is readily understandable at its face value. Its meaning is direct. Latent content is not as overt, and requires interpretation to uncover the meaning or implication.<ref>{{Cite book|last1=Jang-Hwan Lee|last2=Young-Gul Kim|last3=Sung-Ho Yu|title=Proceedings of the 34th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences |chapter=Stage model for knowledge management |year=2001|page=10|publisher=IEEE Comput. Soc|doi=10.1109/hicss.2001.927103|isbn=0-7695-0981-9|s2cid=34182315}}</ref>