Interdisciplinary

Introduction and Theoretical Framework

Fox News claims to be "America's 1 Cable News Network." Its tagline reads, "Fair and balanced." But is Fox News truly "fair" and truly "balanced"? Content analysis is the best method to analyze Fox News. Used frequently in media and communications studies, content analysis can be a quantitative and/or a qualitative approach. A quantitative approach is helpful when counting instances of specific words or images and using that numerical data for classification, tracking, or comparisons with other texts. A qualitative approach is broader in scope, potentially multidisciplinary, and rich with potential for discourse.

External validity is the goal of content analysis (Downe-Wamboldt, 2009). This is because content analysis enables the social sciences to have real-world meaning and application (Colin, n.d.). Content analysis of major media sources like Fox News are meaningful in the real world, because of the huge impact television viewing has on human...
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