For a researcher to take
meaning from a document, they
first need to decide how to do so.
Semiology is the study of
signs and symbols, and
their use in interpretation.
Semiology is a more
qualitative way of interpreting
data found in a document.
Favoured by
Interpretivists.
The meanings behind
pictures, features, and
other qualitative
information is studied.
Positivists (and other critics)
argue that his is an unreliable
and not very valid way of
studying a document as the
researcher's own ideas may be
transferred to the interpretation.
Content analysis is a systematic way
of dealing with the content of a
document. A researcher can take some
qualitative information, and turn it into
some quantitative data.
Favoured by Positivists.
Positivists and Interpretivists all
have their own unique view of what
is the best way to research, so they
both favour different ways of
interpreting documents.
Gill's Description of how content
analysis works, with the example
of how female characters in the
media are portrayed in the media.
1. Decide what categories the
researchers are going to focus on,
use and record: e.g. employee,
full-time housewife, etc.
2. Study the source (this could be a tv
show or a magazine article, for example)
and put the characters that are in it into the
categories which have been decided.
This could be followed up with research using official
statistics to see if what was found in that piece of media is
representative, biased etc., and what that may mean.
Content analysis/semiology is
most used when interpreting the
media - for example, content
analysis could be used to record
how much importance is given to
different issues by recording
how much space different
articles are given in a
newspaper or television news
reports.
Examples
Lobban: used content analysis to
analyse the presence of gender roles
in children's reading schemes.
Tuchman: Television's
portrayal of women
(Both of these studies
revealed that women's roles
were stereotyped and limited.)
Advantages/
Disadvantages
Content analysis is cheap.
Some documents can be very easy and
not very time consuming to access,
compared to doing an involved study.
Positivists favour the quantitative
nature of content analysis.
BUT interpretivists argue that simply
counting up the number of times something
happens is not very valid and doesn't tell us
anything about what it MEANS.