Critical content analysis: a methodological proposal for the incorporation of numerical data into critical/cultural media studies

ABSTRACT This paper introduces a methodological approach building on advances in mixed-methods communication research to facilitate the integration of quantitative data into qualitative textual analysis. This method allows scholars working in a critical cultural media studies paradigm to incorporate quantitative data into their research to better understand media in an increasingly complicated media eco-system. This paper argues that despite calls for mixed-methods research, there are long-standing ideological and methodological tensions within the fields of Communications and Media Studies that create logistical and conceptual limitations to integrating quantitative methods in a critical cultural media studies context. This paper establishes the need for this intervention, the historical methodological contexts from which it emerges, and walks through how the approach works by looking at two possible studies using the approach in different ways.