Narrative Analysis in Media

Riessman distinguishes four. Thematic analysis focuses on what is told — the content and themes of the story. Structural analysis focuses on how it is told — the linguistic and formal organization, building on models like Labov's. Dialogic/performance analysis focuses on how a narrative is co-produced and performed in interaction for an audience. Visual narrative analysis extends these to images and multimodal stories. The approaches can be combined, and the choice depends on whether content, form, performance, or visuality is central to the question.

They overlap but emphasize different things. Framing analysis identifies the organizing ideas that select and make salient aspects of an issue (problem definition, causes, evaluation, remedies). Narrative analysis focuses specifically on story structure — plot, characters, sequence, perspective, conflict, resolution — and how that form makes meaning. A narrative often carries a frame, and many studies treat narrative as one vehicle through which frames are conveyed, but narrative analysis attends more closely to the mechanics of storytelling itself.

Yes. Researchers often pair close narrative analysis with quantitative content analysis or computational methods: content analysis can measure the prevalence of narrative elements (e.g., protagonist types or resolution patterns) across many texts, while narrative analysis interprets how those elements work in depth in selected cases. Mixed designs use the breadth of quantitative measurement to establish patterns and the depth of narrative analysis to explain how the storytelling produces meaning, leveraging the strengths of both.