Symposium: Discourse and content analysis

This symposium grew out of our own interests in content analysis (CA), discourse analysis (DA), and the diverse epistemological and methodological issues that a comparison of the two might raise. In particular, the similar goals of the two techniques made us wonder whether some amalgamation of the two might produce a method that could incorporate the major strengths of each—or whether, conversely, their superficial similarities might mask an insurmountable ontological divide.When John Gerring raised the possibility of a symposium on the subject for this newsletter, therefore, we were intrigued by the possibilities.  We took the opportunity to do what, in our opinion, symposium editors should do: assemble a group of smart people and give them free rein to write about whatever they find interesting about their areas of expertise. We suggested as a starting point the general question of how discourse and content analysis are similar and how they differ; as expected, discussions along these lines led our contributors to a number of interesting additional topics, insights, questions, and (of course) disagreements.