Content Analysis and Online News

In this article, we argue that digital media pose such challenges for analysing media content adequately that the established approach does not work as intended, reflecting underlying assumptions inherited from analogue media formats. We review two relatively new forms of the content analysis method—big data and liquid content analysis—and juxtapose these with established content analysis. In addition, we detail how these two methods tackle content analysis pillars such as mode of analysis, sampling, sampling size, variable design, unit of analysis, measuring point(s), access/capture/storing, conclusions/generalizability and the key agent doing the actual work. We summarize the article by arguing that established content analysis is insufficient for digital media but that common standards, protocols and procedures are yet to be developed for these new approaches to digital journalism research.