Compare methods

	Narrative Analysis in Media	Manifest Content Analysis
Field	Communication	Communication
Family	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
Year of origin	2008	1952
Originator	Narrative theory (Labov; Fisher); methods synthesized by Riessman	Bernard Berelson; codified by Klaus Krippendorff
Type	Interpretive analysis of how media tell stories and construct meaning	Systematic quantitative coding of explicit message content
Seminal source	Riessman, C. K. (2008). Narrative Methods for the Human Sciences. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. ISBN: 9780761929987	Krippendorff, K. (2004). Content Analysis: An Introduction to Its Methodology (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. ISBN: 9780761915454
Aliases	Media narrative analysis, Narrative criticism of media, Storytelling analysis in media, Medyada Anlatı Analizi	Quantitative manifest coding, Surface-content analysis, Manifest-level content analysis, Berelson content analysis
Related	4	5
Summary	Narrative analysis examines how media tell stories — how events are selected, ordered, and given meaning through plot, character, and perspective. Drawing on narrative theory and the methodological syntheses of scholars like Catherine Riessman, it treats storytelling as a fundamental way humans organize experience and persuade, and it interprets the structure, content, and performance of media narratives.	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.