Field-based Content Analysis — Ethnographic Content Analysis

Field-based content analysis is a qualitative analytic approach that systematically examines documents, artifacts, and texts encountered or produced within a natural field setting. Originally formulated by David Altheide as ethnographic content analysis (ECA), it blends the systematic rigor of traditional content analysis with the reflexive, iterative logic of ethnographic inquiry, allowing the researcher to interact continuously with the data and revise analytic categories as new meaning emerges from the field.