Content analysis that merely enumerates acts misses meaning conveyed by structural opposition.

Evidence

We clearly cannot draw any valid inferences from a simple enumeration of his vicious acts (it makes no difference whether there are ten or twenty of them) for the crux of the matter obviously is: what meaning is conferred on the vicious acts by the fact of their juxtaposition with the single good action? … One could say that the meaning of what is frequent is only revealed by opposition to what is rare.… The whole problem is therefore to identify this rare or missing item. Structural analysis provides a way of approaching this problem which traditional content analysis does not. — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 795

Categorization

• XREF: Structuralism and the Saussurean insight that value emerges from opposition within a system — resonates alongside other theoretical texts about how meaning is differential rather than referential. — connects to: Interpretive presentations fail through excess, not just deficiency of content — Freeman Tilden, Interpreting Our Heritage, 485