Tackling the Information Overload Using Automated Content Analysis for Crisis Communication Research

Abstract

The authors provide an overview of the growing amount of research in the field of crisis communication conducted with automated content analysis. They show which particular set of methods is applied, which research interests are pursued, and then structure the existing research according to the four primary areas of crisis communication: organizational crises, public health crises, disasters, and political crises. In addition to the potential benefits of automated content analysis, the authors discuss two major problems of the method: missing analytical depth and insufficient validity. They argue that manual labor is still crucial for validating, analyzing, and making sense of data using computational methods. Vogler and Meissner recommend combining automated approaches with quantitative and qualitative manual content analyses, which seems a promising direction for further research in the field of crisis communication.