Content Analysis: An Approach to Exploring the Depiction of Tick-Borne Diseases

Content analysis is a research technique used to gather and analyze content of a text to make replicable and valid inferences from the text. This type of analysis enables researchers to describe, categorize, and make inferences about communication messages qualitatively and quantitatively. This chapter provides a tutorial for conducting such an analysis on social media depiction of tick-borne diseases. Social media, such as Twitter is a critical platform for the development of the tick-borne disease political, social, and health narratives, and thus understanding this narrative’s sentiments is crucial.