Media Content Analysis Paper

Asia Pacific Public Relations Journal, 6(1), 1–34.

Media content analysis: Its uses; benefits and best

practice methodology

Jim Macnamara

University of Technology Sydney

The ‘power’ of media

Mass media are believed to cause violence, sexual promiscuity and contribute to

discrimination against women. Media advertising is used to sell products and services. News

in leading media has been shown to significantly affect stock prices; lead to corporate

collapses; cause falls in sales of products; result in the resignation of senior office-holders –

even bring down Presidents. Further information on the effects of mass media is provided in

Macnamara (2003), Mass Media Effects: A Review of 50 Years of Media Effects Research.

Sociologists have been interested in mass media content since the early 20th century, starting

with Max Weber who saw media content as a means of monitoring the ‘cultural temperature’

of society (Hansen, Cottle, Negrine & Newbold, 1998, p. 92).

Media content analysis – an overview

Media content analysis is a specialized sub-set of content analysis, a well-established

research methodology. Neuendorf (2002) describes content analysis as “the primary messagecentred methodology” (p. 9) and cites studies such as Riffe and Freitag (1997) and Yale and

Gilly (1988) which “reported that in the field of mass communication research, content

analysis has been the fastest-growing technique over the past 20 years or so” (Neuendorf,

2002, p.1). Riffe and Freitag (1997) found that the number of content analyses published in

Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly increased from 6.3% of all articles in 1971 to

34.8% in 1995 – nearly a six-fold increase. Fowler (as cited in Neuendorf (2002) reported

that by the mid-1980s over 84% of masters level research methods courses in journalism in

the US included content analysis (p. 27)

Content analysis is used to study a broad range of ‘texts’ from transcripts of interviews and

discussions in clinical and social research...