Content analysis in terms of Bardin applied to corporate communications under the sign of a theoretical and empirical approach

Abstract

The objective of this article is to present the content analysis under the methodology developed by Bardin (2010), in two parts: one theoretical, and the other one empirical. In the first part we study the research method by the theoretical bias, and, in the second part, the use of the method on an empirical way, applying all its steps to analyze the corporative communication of a financial institution. The theoretical framework used to support the methodology was Bardin (2010). In terms of the development of the empirical part, Bedani (2008) was used as reference with his doctoral thesis which instructed the analysis of the corpus as far as the corporate profile. Pagès (2008) book was also used about the organizational influence power and analysis of research into the use of the research itself. The application of content analysis methodology resulted in the identification of five categories extracted from the set of nineteen messages, sent between 2011 and 2013, that formed the studied corpus of corporate communication. Two key findings are presented, the first one is that this method of research is highly complex to implement, and the second one concerns the great reliability of the results if the method is properly implemented.