¹ 3 - 2010
Mishanova Ye.V.

Problem of Operationalization of the Ideological Field in Content-Analytical Studies


This work is focused on the problem of coding schemes in content analysis of ideological texts. It discusses various content-analytic approaches to the study of ideologies, their applications to empirical studies, and their relative (dis)advantages. Scaling seems to be the most productive approach, but most proposed scales are typically unidimensional, and their single dimensions often prove insufficient for an adequate description of reality. The present work proposes a coding scheme based on three ideological dimensions; this makes it possible to describe the whole ideological spectrum fuller. The scheme is then applied to the analysis of Russian newspaper articles of the late 1990s.