Measuring Resurgence of Religion?: Methodological Considerations in a Study of Swedish Editorials

The debate about a resurgence of religion in the public life of Western European societies is ongoing in media and academic circles. Yet there is a shortage of systematic and longitudinal empirical studies of the coverage of religion in European mass media. This article presents some empirical findings, but the focus is on methodological considerations in a longitudinal quantitative content analysis of indicators of religion in editorials in the Swedish daily press from 1976 to 2010. We present and discuss how the selection of keywords and of analytical units affects the outcome of our analysis as to tendencies over time regarding the frequency of religion indicators. As our results show, the question of a resurgence of religion in the daily press has no simple answer. Thus, methodological issues concerning reliability, validity and reflexivity are of crucial importance for this and similar studies measuring cultural change as reflected in the daily press.