The Quantitative Processing of a Qualitative Symbolic Material: The Newspaper “Românul” From Arad (1918)
The Quantitative Processing of a Qualitative Symbolic Material: The Newspaper “Românul” From Arad (1918)

Summary/Abstract: The first issue of the political newspaper “Românul” from Arad appeared on 1/14 January 1911. The publication defined itself as an “organ of the Romanian National Party in Hungary and Transylvania” and appeared in daily format, with a literary supplement every week. At the beginning of the First World War, the newspaper, like other Transylvanian Romanian publications of the same type, was suspended (28 February/10 March 1916). It started being published again on 26 October/8 November 1918 with the purpose of preparing the unification of Transylvania with the Romanian state. The research uses the content analysis method which entails the quantitative processing of a qualitative symbolic material. The algorithm for applying the method contains the following stages: the identification of the referenced unit - in our case, ten issues of the publication from the period 11/24 November - 21 November/4 December; setting the unit of context (the first two issues of the publication from 1911, the first two issues from 1918, respectively);transposing the hypotheses into categories (classes), and these categories into directly measurable text indicators (journalistic themes and genres, keywords, etc.); recording and processing the results. Based on the results obtained, the conclusions that were formulated give a strong argument in favor of the values of the content analysis method as an instrument of study in historical events and socio-political realities.

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