Ethnographic Content Analysis
Ethnographic content analysis (ECA), developed by David Altheide, is a reflexive and iterative approach to the qualitative analysis of documents and media that blends the systematic coding of classic content analysis with an ethnographic sensibility toward meaning and context. Rather than fixing categories in advance and counting their occurrence, the analyst moves back and forth between concepts and data, letting categories emerge, change, and deepen as the corpus is read. The goal is to understand how meaning is constructed and patterned in texts — newspapers, reports, broadcasts, online media — much as a fieldworker comes to understand a setting.
Read the full method
Sign in with a free account to read this section.
Method map
The neighbourhood of related methods — select a node to explore.
Sources
- Altheide, D. L. (1987). Ethnographic content analysis. Qualitative Sociology, 10(1), 65–77. DOI: 10.1007/BF00988269 ↗
- Bernard, H. R. (2017). Research Methods in Anthropology: Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches (6th ed.). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN: 9780759112421
How to cite this page
ScholarGate. (2026, June 22). Ethnographic Content Analysis of Documents and Media. ScholarGate. https://scholargate.app/en/anthropology/ethnographic-content-analysis
Which method?
Set this method beside its closest kin and read them side by side — the library lays the books on the table; the choice is yours.
- Digital EthnographyQualitative↔ compare
- Ethnographic ResearchQualitative Research↔ compare
- Qualitative Content AnalysisQualitative Research↔ compare
- Visual AnthropologyAnthropology↔ compare