A content analysis of content analyses: Twenty-five years of journalism quarterly

Journalism and Mass Communication Quaterly

Volumn 74, Issue 4, 1997, Pages 873-882

  Riffe, Daniel ^a   Freitag, Alan ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0038878870     PISSN: 10776990     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/107769909707400414     Document Type: Article

References (38)

1. David Weaver and G. Cleveland Wilhoit, "A Profile of JMC Educators: Traits, Attitudes and Values," Journalism Educator 43 (summer 1988): 4-41.
2. We will refer to the journal, previously (before 1995) known as Journalism Quarterly or JQ , by its current acronym, JMCQ.
3. John C. Schweitzer, "Research Article Productivity by Mass Communication Scholars," Journalism Quarterly 65 (summer 1988): 479-84.
4. Dennis T. Lowry, "Population Validity of Communication Research: Sampling the Samples," Journalism Quarterly 56 (spring 1979): 62-68, 76.
5. Lawrence J. Chase and Stanley J. Baran, "An Assessment of Quantitative Research in Mass Communication," Journalism Quarterly 53 (summer 1976): 308-311.
6. Stephen Lacy and Daniel Riffe, "Sins of Omission and Commission in Mass Communication Quantitative Research," Journalism Quarterly 70 (spring 1993): 133-39.
7. Gilbert L. Fowler Jr., "Content and Teacher Characteristics for Master's Level Research Course," Journalism Quarterly 63 (autumn 1986): 594-99.
8. Frances Coins Wilhoit, "Student Research Productivity: Analysis of Journalism Abstracts," Journalism Quarterly 61 (autumn 1984): 655-61.
9. G. Cleveland Wilhoit, "Introduction," in Mass Communication Review Yearbook Vol. 2, ed. Wilhoit and Harold de Bock (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1981), 13-15.
10. Wayne A. Danielson and G. Cleveland Wilhoit, A Computerized Bibliography of Mass Communication Research, 1944-1964 (NY: Magazine Publishers Association, 1967), xvii.
11. Dennis T. Lowry, "An Evaluation of Empirical Studies Reported in Seven Journals in the '70s," Journalism Quarterly 56 (summer 1979): 262-68, 288.
12. William Evans and Susanna Hornig Priest, "Content in Context: Can Content Studies of Science News Be Theory-Driven in an Information Age?" (paper presented at the annual meeting of AEJMC, Atlanta, August 1994).
13. Daniel Riffe, Stephen Lacy, and Michael Drager, "Sample Size in Content Analysis of Weekly News Magazines," Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 73 (autumn 1996): 635-44.
14. Peter Gerlach, "Research About Magazines Appearing in Journalism Quarterly," Journalism Quarterly 64 (spring 1987): 178-82.
15. E. Albert Moffett and Joseph R. Dominick, "Statistical Analysis in the JOB 1970-85: An Update," Feedback 28 (spring 1987): 13-16.
16. James W. Tankard Jr., Tsan-Kuo Chang, and Kuo-Jen Tsang, "Citation Networks as Indicators of Journalism Research Activity," Journalism Quarterly 61 (spring 1984): 89-96, 124.
17. While he did not address this question specifically, Perloff's twenty-year look at journalism research showed an increased emphasis on quantitative methods (51% during the 1955-64 period, followed by 60% during the 1965-74 period) and statistical analysis (38% and 56% respectively). See Richard M. Perloff, "Journalism Research: A 20-Year Perspective," Journalism Quarterly 53 (spring 1976): 123-26.
18. Guido H. Stempel III, "Introduction," in Journalism Quarterly Special Supplement: Cumulative Index to Vols. 51-60, 1974-83 61 (1984): iii-iv.
19. Guido H. Stempel III, "Trends in Journalism Quarterly: Reflections of the Retired Editor," Journalism Quarterly 67 (summer 1990): 277-81.
20. Stempel, "Trends," however, points out that the growth in number of faculty in journalism/mass communication may not have been matched by growth in scholarly activity (p. 278).
21. Pamela J. Shoemaker and Stephen D. Reese, "Exposure to What? Integrating Media Content and Effects Studies," Journalism Quarterly 67 (winter 1990): 649-52.
22. Robert L. Stevenson, "Defining International Communication as a Field," Journalism Quarterly 69 (autumn 1992): 543-53.
23. The journal's "Research in Brief" section was discontinued in 1989. To maximize comparability across all twenty-five years, therefore, we limited our analysis to only full-length articles. We recognize that some important content analyses were omitted from the study because of this exclusion decision. For example, Stempel (1997, personal correspondence) notes that "Research in Brief" was home to pioneering content analyses of coverage of African Americans in U.S. media, of MTV, and of women in public television.
24. We chose not to rely on the published annual index. First, there were omissions, perhaps due to how method or focus of a study was labeled. Second, we were also interested in studies which used content analysis in conjunction with other methods but were not included in the index's "Content Analysis" category. An agenda-setting study involving content analysis, for example, might be indexed under "Effects Analysis" or "Communication Theory."
25. Stephen Lacy and Daniel Riffe, "Sampling Error and Selecting Inter-coder Reliability Samples for Nominal Content Categories," Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 73 (winter 1996): 963-73.
26. Ole R. Holsti, Content Analysis for the Social Sciences and Humanities (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1969).
27. Moffett and Dominick, "Statistical Analysis in the JOB 1970-85."
28. Stempel, "Trends in Journalism Quarterly."
29. The "other" category (6.2%) includes studies authored or coauthored by researchers outside academic settings.
30. On the other hand, analyses of entertainment content are likely dominated by a focus on television, and may be more at home in the Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media. Obviously, patterns of publication in JMCQ are a function of what is (or is not) submitted.
31. Daniel Riffe, Charles F. Aust, and Stephen R. Lacy, "The Effectiveness of Random, Consecutive Day and Constructed Week Sampling in Newspaper Content Analysis," Journalism Quarterly 70 (spring 1993): 133-39; Daniel Riffe, Jason Nagovan, Stephen Lacy, and Larry Burkum, "The Effectiveness of Simple and Stratified Random Sampling in Broadcast News Content Analysis," Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 73 (spring 1996): 159-68.
32. Daniel Riffe, Charles F. Aust, and Stephen R. Lacy, "The Effectiveness of Random, Consecutive Day and Constructed Week Sampling in Newspaper Content Analysis," Journalism Quarterly 70 (spring 1993): 133-39; Daniel Riffe, Jason Nagovan, Stephen Lacy, and Larry Burkum, "The Effectiveness of Simple and Stratified Random Sampling in Broadcast News Content Analysis," Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 73 (spring 1996): 159-68.
33. Measurement criteria here were admittedly fairly rigorous. Merely reviewing literature was not sufficient. For example, author(s) had to describe explicitly (we did not "infer" theoretical context) an antecedent process (e.g., gatekeeping and news values) or effect theory (e.g., cultivation or agenda-setting), some aspect of which was related to the data or used to justify its collection.
34. Measurement criteria were equally severe for this variable; simply stating a goal of "finding out" how much newspaper space was devoted to news of industrial strikes, or how many models in magazine ads were smiling, did not constitute hypotheses or research questions. Both required literature review, and hypotheses required specification and prediction that a level of one variable would be associated with another. Research questions, to be credited, needed to reflect a literature-directed purpose beyond simply "measuring things," but without the additional directional prediction of hypotheses. For example, research questions might ask whether a pattern of coverage found in a previous study has changed over time; or how media portrayal corresponded to real-world norms or data. A hypothesis, by contrast, might predict greater emphasis on conflict in Third World coverage than in news from Western nations.
35. Stempel, "Trends in Journalism Quarterly."
36. Philip J. Stone, D.C. Dunphy, M.S. Smith, and D.M. Ogilvie, The General Inquirer: A Computer Approach to Content Analysis in the Behavioral Sciences (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1966 General Inquirer).
37. For example, Hauss describes software programs capable of analyzing media coverage, both print and broadcast transcripts, for the presence of as many as forty variables. Deborah Hauss, "Measuring the Impact of Public Relations: New Electronic Research Methods Improve Campaign Evaluations," Public Relations Journal 49 (February 1993): 14-21.
38. Lacy and Riffe, "Sampling Error and Selecting Intercoder Reliability Samples."