Content analysis: A contrast and complement to discourse analysis

According to experts on discourse analysis, texts are not individually meaningful (Phillips & Hardy, 2002, p. 4). This notion strikes at the heart of a primary commonality between discourse analysis (DA) and content analysis (CA). Both are concerned with drawing conclusions about some aspect of human communication from a carefully selected set of messages. How they do so is rather different, but ultimately their findings can fit together quite nicely, providing a good example of triangulation of methods, a highly desirable situatio