vammproject4 (1)

Content Analysis Method
Method Overview
VAMM analyzed newspaper articles and websites of nonprofit organizations from November 2011 to
November 2014. In our analysis of newspaper articles, VAMM examined the attitude of the media towards
nonprofit organizations. Specifically, we sampled news articles containing keywords pertaining
to affordable and low income housing. Tailoring our sampling to be more saturated produced
a broad insight into how the media perceives organizations similar to Hands Up Ministries. Additionally,
VAMM studied how nonprofit organizations represent themselves on their websites. In our examination
we looked at how these organizations portray their events and internal news to the public. After
inputting the data into spreadsheets, we were able to gather statistics on the whole of our data sets.
Sampling Strategy and Data Selection Process
For our content analysis of newspaper articles we used the web database LexisNexis to compile a sampling.
We set our search dates to begin in November of 2011 in order to gather current and relevant information.
To cover a broad selection of news articles, we used three different keywords in our search.
“Non-profit” produced 1,000 results, “affordable housing organization” produced 84 results and “charitable
organization” produced 1,000 results. The results were sorted based on relevance. In our research
of non profit websites, we selected every other non profit on a list of 100 throughout the world. This
list allowed us a random selection of nonprofits here and abroad. From that list we coded 50 websites.
Data Analysis
While 67.3% of the articles featured a quote from a member of the nonprofit, only 22.4% of
the articles featured a quote from a member of the community.
55% of the articles took a positive tone towards the non profit and 28.6% had a
neutral tone towards the non profit. Only 16.3% took a negative tone towards the
community.
Towards the community, the majority of the articles-- 63.2% took a neutral tone
towards the community. Only 8.2% of the articles painted the community in a negative
light, while 28.6% painted the community in a positive manner.
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