Thematic content analysis as challenge to big scale methods
During the last two years I have come to think a lot about method, and how method sometimes blurs what is important in a text. I have, for reasons unknown to me, mostly worked with complex text and context bound methods such as different modes of discourse analysis. However, the texts I am most satisfied with are those I have written based on thematic content analysis, which I during recent years have started to think about as the most underestimated methods. Let’s start with why I think it is underestimated: it is basically because it does not hold an onthology of its own. For instance Foucaldian based discourse analysis, which is the method I have most experience with, comes with a heavy theoretical luggage. To know how a discourse operates is an achievement in itself. The same can not be said about thematic content analysis. Instead it is very straight forward, were the material guides it’s operation. It is seldom you go into a material without a hunch of what you will encounte...