Thematic Proximity in Content Analysis
A novel theme-correlation coefficient is introduced that adds valuable information to traditional theme relation metrics and enables researchers to make new empirical observations in text data.
Abstract
This article explains how to calculate thematic proximity within a mixed methods content analysis approach. Thematic proximity of two themes can indicate the presence of meta-themes. Meta-themes are themes which acquire their meaning through the systematic co-occurrence of two or more other themes. By combining qualitative and quantitative techniques of content analysis, the researcher can reveal these latent text patterns. Using a study on Jihadi media as a showcase, the article describes how to detect meta-themes through content analysis. To this end, the article introduces a novel theme-correlation coefficient that adds valuable information to traditional theme relation metrics. It enables researchers to make new empirical observations in text data.