Online Lecture at American Space, Almaty, 2nd April 2018
Content and discourse analysis belong to the standard toolbox of qualitative research in the social sciences. They enable scholars to analyze the structures and practices of public communication. Rooted in the positivist epistemological tradition, qualitative content analysis is aimed at the systematic mapping and classification of textual data. Researchers formulate hypotheses and construct a coding frame of categories to structure the data and detect underlying patterns or trends. In contrast, discourse analysis is embedded in the constructivist and hermeneutic traditions of the social sciences. The key aim of this method is to interpret the implicit meaning of discourse fragments and situate them in the context of larger frames, discourses or narratives.
My online lecture was organized by the “Art of Research Lab”, a group of young researchers and scholars committed to improve the quality of social research. The event continued a fruitful cooperation with young researchers from Kazakh National University, Almaty. I discussed exemplary applications of content and discourse analysis in order to facilitate their use in Kazakhstan’s growing community of social scientists.