Ethnographic Content Analysis

ABS TRACT. An ethnographic approach to document analysis is offered based on principles of qualitative data collection and analysis. It is proposed that numeric as well as narrative data be collected when studying such documents as TV new and movies. Ethnographic content analysis is briefly contrasted with conventional modes of quantitative content analysis to illustrate the usefulness of constant comparison for discovering emergent patterns, emphases and themes in an analysis of TV news coverage of the Iranian hostage situation. It is suggested that an ethnographic perspective can help delineate patterns of human action when document analysis is conceptualized as fieldwork. It has been claimed that all research directly or indirectly involves participant observation in the selection of a topic, method of study, data collection, analysis and interpretation (cf. Cicourel, 1964; Johnson, 1975; Hammersley and Atkinson, 1983). While it may seem evident that any sustained inquiry is constituted through a complex and reflexive interaction process, it is also apparent that some research methods, e.g., ethnography, embrace this process; while others, e.g., survey research and content analysis, disavow it. In what follows, I suggest that several aspects of an ethnographic research approach can be applied to content analysis to produce ethnographic content analysis (ECA), which may be defined as the reflexive analysis of documents (cf. Plummer, 1983). ECA has been less widely recognized as a distinctive method, although various facets of this approach are apparent in document analyses by historians, literary scholars, and social scientists (cf. Plummer, 1983; Glaser and Strauss, 1967). However, to my knowledge, the method for accomplishing such “grounding” with documents has not been set forth