Page 71 - DLIS401_METHODOLOGY_OF_RESEARCH_AND_STATISTICAL_TECHNIQUES

Methodology of Research and Statistical Techniques

Notes as “Grounded Theory.” The method of content analysis enables the researcher to include large
amounts of textual information and systematically identify its properties, e.g. , the frequencies
of most used keywords (KWIC meaning “Key Word in Context”) by detecting the more important
structures of its communi—cation content. Yet such amounts of textual information must be
categorised analysis, providing at the end a meaningful reading of content under—scrutiny.
David Robertson (1976:73-75) for example created a coding frame for a comparison of modes
of party competition between British and American parties. It was developed further in 1979
by the Manifesto Research Group aiming at a comparative content-analytic approach on the
policy positions of political parties. This classification scheme was also used to accomplish a
comparative analysis between the 1989 and 1994 Brazilian party broadcasts and manifestos by
F. Carvalho (2000).
Since the 1980s, content analysis has become an increasingly important tool in the measurement
of success in public relations (notably media relations) programs and the assessment of media
profiles. In these circumstances, content analysis is an element of media evaluation or media
analysis. In analyses of this type, data from content analysis is usually combined with media
data (circulation, readership, number of viewers and listeners, frequency of publication). It
has also been used by futurists to identify trends.

Did u know? In 1982, John Naisbitt published his popular Megatrends, based on content
analysis in the US media.

The creation of coding frames is intrinsically related to a creative approach to variables that
exert an influence over textual content. In political analysis, these variables could be political
scandals, the impact of public opinion polls, sudden events in external politics, inflation etc.
Mimetic Convergence, created by F. Lampreia Carvalho for the comparative analysis of electoral
proclamations on free-to-air television is an example of creative articulation of variables in
content analysis. The methodology describes the construction of party identities during long-
term party competitions on TV, from a dynamic perspective, governed by the logic of the
contingent. This method aims to capture the contingent logic observed in electoral campaigns
by focusing on the repetition and innovation of themes sustained in party broadcasts. According
to such post-structuralist perspective from which electoral competition is analysed, the party
identities, ‘the real’ cannot speak without mediations because there is not a natural centre
fixing the meaning of a party structure, it rather depends on ad-hoc articulations. There is no
empirical reality outside articulations of meaning. Reality is an outcome of power struggles
that unify ideas of social structure as a result of contingent interventions. In Brazil, these
contingent interventions have proven to be mimetic and convergent rather than divergent and
polarised, being integral to the repetition of dichotomised worldviews.

Mimetic Convergence thus aims to show the process of fixation of meaning through discursive
articulations that repeat, alter and subvert political issues that come into play. For this reason,
parties are not taken as the pure expression of conflicts for the representation of interests but
attempts to recompose and re-articulate ideas of an absent totality around signifiers gaining
positivity.
Every content analysis should depart from a hypothesis. The hypothesis of Mimetic Convergence
supports the Downsian interpretation that in general, rational voters converge in the direction
of uniform positions in most thematic dimensions. The hypothesis guiding the analysis of
Mimetic Convergence between political parties’ broadcasts is: ‘public opinion polls on vote
intention, published throughout campaigns on TV will contribute to successive revisions of
candidates’ discourses.

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