Compare methods

	Multimodal Content Analysis	Manifest Content Analysis
Field	Communication	Communication
Family	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
Year of origin	2006	1952
Originator	Multimodality theory (Kress & van Leeuwen)	Bernard Berelson; codified by Klaus Krippendorff
Type	Analysis of meaning across multiple modes (text, image, sound, layout)	Systematic quantitative coding of explicit message content
Seminal source	Kress, G., & van Leeuwen, T. (2006). Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design (2nd ed.). London: Routledge. ISBN: 9780415319157	Krippendorff, K. (2004). Content Analysis: An Introduction to Its Methodology (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. ISBN: 9780761915454
Aliases	Multimodal analysis, Multimodal discourse analysis (content), Text-image-sound content analysis, Çok Kipli İçerik Analizi	Quantitative manifest coding, Surface-content analysis, Manifest-level content analysis, Berelson content analysis
Related	4	5
Summary	Multimodal content analysis studies how communication makes meaning through the combination of several modes at once — written and spoken language, images, layout, color, gesture, music, and sound. Grounded in the social-semiotic theory of Kress and van Leeuwen, it analyzes each mode by its own meaning-making resources and, crucially, how the modes work together, since modern media messages are rarely text alone.	Manifest content analysis is a quantitative research technique that systematically counts the explicit, surface-level features of communication messages — words, sources, themes, images, or actors that are directly visible in the text or media artifact — according to a predefined coding scheme. Rooted in Bernard Berelson's classic definition of content analysis as the 'objective, systematic, and quantitative description of the manifest content of communication,' it is one of the foundational empirical methods of mass communication and media research.