Content analysis: Viewing the World (2000)
The UK government’s Department for International Development commissioned research into
the way that developing countries were reported on British television. The researcher recorded
all the main news programmes on the five main terrestrial television channels for three
months and then analysed them, counting the number and length of news stories that
mentioned developing countries and also the tone of the story - what impression it gave of the
country being reported on.
They also analysed the content of some non-news programmes that had some coverage or
mention of the developing world. It was found that the developing world was underreported
(that is, there were few stories on these countries) and that the coverage was overwhelmingly
negative, focusing on wars, disasters and deaths.
Visits to these countries by famous Americans or Europeans and stories about wildlife were
also reported. Nearly half of all the 137 developing countries were never mentioned at all in
this period. There were also differences in coverage between the channels. Channel 4 had
more news about countries in the developing world and was more likely to go beyond the
normal negative coverage.
Task
1. What decisions would these researchers have had to make when recording their data?
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2. How do you think they measured the tone of the news stories?
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3. What other content in the mass media could be analysed in this way?
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