Zastosowanie analizy zawartości w badaniach politologicznych

The ubiquity of digital, freely available content opens up wide possibilities to social science researchers. In this paper we present the opportunities and challenges posed by content analysis method in political science. With the problem of personalization of political parties as our running example we discuss the main steps to be taken by a researcher who uses this method. In particular, we draw attention to a number of ontological and epistemological assumptions underlying – often only tacitly – content analysis studies and the need for careful and theoretically well justified conceptualization of all main ideas. For illustrative purposes we present how to use content analysis in order to examine (1) the degree of personalization of „Prawo i Sprawiedliwość” and „Platforma Obywatelska” parties and (2) the degree of „autonomy of actions” of leaders of these parties, using the material from four Polish nationwide daily newspapers.