The Scientific Status of Propaganda Analysis

Abstract

When content analysis is used in order to infer antecedent conditions of communication, as is the case in propaganda analysis, logical operations are employed which resemble those necessary to scientific explanation. However, inferences from content analysis do not easily meet the following several requirements of scientific explanation: that general laws be used as part of the explanation; that the phenomenon to be explained be precisely designated; that all relevant antecedent conditions be identified; that the explanation (antecedent conditions and general laws) should bear a logical relationship to the phenomenon explained. In one form in which it was applied, content analysis appears to depart further from scientific inquiry in that it deals with the actual words of the communication and not with a characterization of the communication arrived at by the analyst.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Dec 15, 1954
Accession Number
AD0604627

Entities

People

  • Alexander L. George

Organizations

  • RAND Corporation

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Energy and Power Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Frequency
  • Human Behavior
  • Indicators
  • Language
  • Measurement
  • New York
  • Observation
  • Personality
  • Physical Sciences
  • Propaganda
  • Psychological Phenomena And Processes
  • Psychological Warfare
  • Psychology
  • Reasoning
  • Second World War
  • Social Sciences
  • Validation

Readers

  • Computational Linguistics
  • Organizational Psychology.
  • Systems Analysis and Design

Technology Areas

  • AI & ML