An introduction to content analysis

1. Content Analysis
• Interested in the results of this study? See Naoroz and Cleary’s 2019
study “News media framing of police-body worn cameras”
Strengths: Examines how problems are framed, understood and
attended to; identifies attitudes and beliefs about a topic; cost-effective,
time efficient, and makes use of existing public opinion data
1st code by newspaper and for overall tone of the article. 2nd code for
media framing through existing measures, such as conflict, human
interest, responsibility, morality and economics
• Provides a detailed account of how you are going to ’comb’ through
the data and the various steps you are going to take
• Frequently influenced by previous research
Using 5 of the most circulated Canadian newspapers (digital and print)
examine all articles from the last three years using search terms ’police
AND body camera’
• Uses existing data sources, such as newspapers or online forums, to
examine research question
• The more narrow your sample, the better
How does news media frame police use of body-worn cameras (BWC)?
• Research question can be qualitative (textual) or quantitative
(numerical)
• Helps determine content to sample and the structure of the
coding scheme
Code &
analyze
Develop
research
question
Identify
sample
Develop
coding
scheme