Content Analysis

Reading through Luker this week, I was pleased to see the section on content analysis. Finally after all these weeks, I see something that is a little more familiar and relevant to my project. I have a background in humanities, English and French specifically, so while I understand the experiments and interviews, they aren’t concepts that I’ve dealt with in this capacity before. Content analysis is more similar to what I would do when analyzing a novel or poem in undergrad and likely will play a part in research I do in the future. It’s comforting to know that there are options other than face-to-face research, which is not my cup of tea.

I though it was interesting to note that Luker says that content analysis has “a long and honorable history,” but has “fallen somewhat into disuse these days” (187). Despite her claim that it”can be useful for making points that are difficult to make in other ways,” she only spends a little over two pages discussing it. Whereas she devotes 6+ pages to focus groups, app. 13 pages on interviews, and 11 pages on participant observation. Her lack of attention to content analysis seems to reflect its state of disuse.