The Media Tenor Institute for Media Content Analysis is the world's leading provider of international media content analysis on a continuous and wide-ranging basis. Everyday, more than 200 specially trained analysts meticulously monitor global trends in more than 250 media.
Media Tenor differs from its other competitors because no software is used to evaluate the media content. All the analysis is completed by human beings to better ensure intercoder reliability and the quality of coding. So far no software exists which can substitute for the human brain. Daily training and quality control represents 20% of the total cost of the Institute. Results of the quarterly intercoder reliability and validity tests are published in Media Tenor's Research Journal. Media Tenor is the only Institute that publishes and makes its quality test results available to public.
Due to the quality of the data, Media Tenor is able to accurately predict indexes for consumer confidence, business climate, share price, poll and election voting results.
Since 1994, Media Tenor has collected more than 60 million coding units from all over the world. This unique position enables Media Tenor to serve clients with high quality in-depth analysis with an international focus.
Media Tenor's research methodology was developed in cooperation with experts from the universities of Berlin, Leipzig, London, Mainz and Munich, New York and Oxford as well as other partner institutes that belong to the International Media Tenor Association. Media content analysis is a systematic, objective and veri?able method to determine form and content of the text and other media.
Only the ongoing and continuous media analysis of opinion-leading media outlets guarantees a clear understanding of how much coverage it takes to get messages to reach certain target groups. All the articles in news, business and politic section are analysed as analysing only certain industries and topics can not show the overall media environment and can not provide appropriate benchmarking. Analysing only articles of certain topic or industry are savings production cost but can bring misleading results and can lead to wrong decisions. Setting of the communication plan and the targets are usually done under wrong estimation of the media market and lead to not fulfilling the yearly targets.
By using Media Tenor's unique methodology of defning Awareness Thresholds for companies, politicians, NGO's and scientists, it is possible to achieve effective communication. Analysts identify and categorize each report, sentence by sentence, issue by issue according to a set of more than 700 defined broken criteria, which are down into 100 000 different aspects, individuals, institutions, sources, companies, CEO's, etc. Each report's content is then appropriately coded and entered into a globally linked database
Coded content includes the primary and secondary protagonists, primary and secondary topics, locations, explicit valuations, implicit ratings, sources' identities, genders, nationalities as well as other pertinent information. Some topical areas are coded in even greater detail, with each of these aspects fully documented for each statement within the report.
All articles in opinion leading print or broadcast media (TV News Shows, TV Magazines) in which a personality or organization is mentioned for at least five lines or 5 second are analyzed.
Media Tenor researchers then analyze the data for trends in the coverage of individual businesses, industry sectors, political events, politicians' and countries' images, and special research areas, such as HIV/AIDS, Holocaust reparations, and a variety of other topics. Media Tenor links this research into the context of overall media content trends as well - individual media are analyzed for general content balance and are compared to competing publications. Overall types of media such as internet newsgroups or television news are similarly analyzed and compared to other media types.
You can see the principle of the coding in the simplified example, coding in Media Tenor goes to greater details.
All articles in print or broadcast media in which an organization or a subsidiary is described in at least five lines or for five seconds, are analyzed. Media Tenor collects and distills data to translate it into strategic and tactical instructions.
Each bit of printed/broadcasted information is evaluated on the message level. All information given about the company or its senior executives is coded as a new individual statement.
Each coded statement contains a person/company, the line of business, the topic, positive or negative rating and the source of the statement/rating. As data is analyzed, if any part of a statement changes (i.e. the topic) a new statement has to be coded.
Media. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Page/Placement . . . . . . .
Section . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Source. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Style . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Area . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Rating explicit . . . . . . . . .
Rating contextual . . . . . .
Company . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Coded aspects . . . . . . . .
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Wall Street Journal
14/5
Business section (12)
Past and present (5)
Journalist (1)
Up to 10 cm (1)
UK, London (1000)
None (0)
Negative (5)
British Airways (700026)
Relationship towards
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customers (315610)
Strike within the company (317070)
Product / Services (313800)
Personal management, other aspect (317099)
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Media Tenor's data is used by many institutions and universities for their own further research.
If you are interested in cooperating with Media Tenor, please contact us.
See Open Studies.
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Professor Frank Brettschneider
University of Hohenheim.
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Professor Dr. Wolfgang Donsbach
Institute for Communication Science, TU Dresden,
President Past of the International Communication Association.
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S. Robert Lichter
President Center for Media and Public Affairs, Washington DC, USA
Media Tenor: Congratulations on a decade of spectacular development
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