A METHODOLOGICAL REVIEW OF AMERICAN CONTENT ANALYSIS OF NEWSPAPER COVERAGE OF ELECTION CAMPAIGNS

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

This paper has reviewed content analysis of newspaper coverage of campaigns with a focus on the methodologies. We have found that bias has been the major concern of researchers and that selection of concepts for study as well as the research designs used, except for a few creative ones, have in general been very homogeneous. Furthermore, many of them have remained very much the same as they were some thirty years ago (Bush, 1951). It seems that there is also a "jackal syndrome"(Altschull, 1977) in conducting research, in the sense that research designs are being repeatedly used uncritically, To advance our knowledge about political campaign coverage in newspapers, we need to cure this "jackal syndrome. " Thus, concepts and areas that need further exploration have been suggested and a "relational approach" has been proposed. What has been said is that we need to move away from preoccupation with the sources to concerns with the audiences and from uni-concept concerns to multi-concept concerns. That is, we want to move beyond content analysis to an analysis that tells us not only the content but also the relationships within the content or between the content and the other links in the communication process.
Homogeneity in research designs and selection of concepts implies another weakness, i.e., the lack of theoretical basis (Note ), This is evidenced in the fact that most researchers are more concerned with assessing the outcomes of campaigns or press performances than the roles played by the press in the political communication process. A relational approach which takes into consideration the relationships among issues and concepts will enrich the theoretical values of election studies for it purposes to examine the process rather than a single segment in the process.
What has been proposed is far demanding in terms of cost and conceptualization. But it is also more rewarding theoretically and methodologically. Though we may see fewer studies in the future, we are ensured to see better conceptualized studies with more powerful analysis.