Content Categorization vs. Contextual Analysis; Meaning, Method and Purpose
We will begin with an attempt to understand content, since that is the underlying matter or subject or item on which categorization and contextual analysis will operate, to produce possibly different outcomes, before moving on to a discussion on content categorization vs. contextual analysis. What do we need to categorize? Content. What do we need to perform contextual analysis on? Content, in some shape or form. The word ‘content’ itself has two meanings. One is a feeling of satisfaction or happiness at one’s situation or how the situation is. The other refers to the subject matter or what is contained. It could be the content or contents of a story, it could be the content of a speech made by a prominent personality, it could be the content of an educational program. Our usage of content is with reference to its second meaning. The content could be of something that is written, or a verbal discussion or speech, or an audio recording, or an image or video. It could be a story or a set of numbers. It could be a poem or an abstract sketch. As long as it has the power to communicate or express something, it could be classified as content or having content. oWorkers is an award-winning BPO In the data services space, and identified as one of the top three providers in the world. Our leadership team has over 20 years of hands-on experience in the industry and leads from the front, regardless of the type of service a client requires.
Content categorization vs. contextual analysis: what do they mean?
Let us look at what the terms content categorization and contextual analysis mean.Content categorization
Since the dawn of the internet age, humankind has been besieged by content. There is content everywhere. Unlike the pre-internet days when content publishing was the preserve of a few, today each one of the seven billion people in the world is a content publisher, apart from being a consumer of course. The generation of huge volumes of content creates the need for storing it in a manner that it becomes useful to the owner of the content. It should be identifiable, retrievable when required and held securely so that it does not fall into the wrong hands. While organizations may not have interest in the volumes of content being generated around the world, they are perhaps interested in the content that is being generated by them and for them. This data belongs to them and is their responsibility. In today’s hyper competitive world, content and data can be a competitive advantage that no company would like to forego. Content categorization makes content useful for the future. Organizations with content to store and secure need to have a strategy for it. The strategy needs to be based on its future application and use. It defines how data is to be stored and how it is to be retrieved. It defines the sensitivity of each piece of content and the audience to whom it should be available. The greater the sensitivity, the smaller the audience. Technology systems operate based on these definitions to define access levels for the different roles and people in the organization. Content categorization could be defined as the process of collecting, sorting and storing content in a manner that will enable easy retrieval when needed as well as access for retrieval, editing and deleting only to a defined set of personnel, or positions, based on the policy of the company. With its talented pool of resources who have a deep understanding of content, oWorkers possesses the ability to go beyond the content categorization vs. contextual analysis discussion. Our position as a preferred employer in the communities we work with gives us access to the best talent, who are further polished by our dedicated training team.Contextual Analysis
The word context is described by the Cambridge dictionary as the situation within which something exists or happens, and that can help explain it.” Its usage could be in reference to a text or piece of literature, or it could be in reference to any other happening in the world. As an example, if we are analysing the performance trend of a certain company and find that after a few years of growth, there is a contraction in its business in the year 2020, when we go deeper in an effort to understand the reasons behind the dip and find that the Covid-19 epidemic is the main reason, it becomes the context that influenced the performance of the company in that period. The effort we made in uncovering reasons for the unusual performance, since the last few years it had demonstrated a growth trend, can be referred to as contextual analysis. Some people use contextual analysis to mean an extension of textual analysis. Textual analysis analyses a piece of text and draws out its meaning, in a sort of literal manner, without any reference to the context. When the context is woven into the explanation, it becomes contextual analysis. While this usage is not incorrect, it does not encompass the entire scope of the term. Any analysis where the meaning is drawn with reference to the context, whether it is a piece of text, a game of football or a war, it becomes contextual analysis. Contextual analysis provides a more complete picture of the situation the analysis of which is being attempted. With its access to a rich vein of resources, oWorkers is able to plug the gaps between demand and supply of resources that arise on account of seasonal or short-term spikes. It has the ability to hire an additional 100 people within 48 hours. This is a huge saving for many of our clients who have some variations in their volumes.Content categorization vs. contextual analysis: how they are done
Content categorization
Historically, content categorization has been viewed through the prism of security and confidentiality. Many of us might have witnessed examples in period Hollywood movies where words like ‘Top Secret,’ ‘Confidential,’ ‘Strictly Private & Confidential,’ ‘Classified’ were dramatically stamped on a sealed Manila envelope presumably containing the referred-to documents. They are generally related to the government or the military. That is categorization as it was known in those days. Of course, if none of those stamps found their way onto the envelope, it could be presumed that the content of the documents was for public consumption. The world has evolved. Though processes have changed. With the rise and rise of free markets around the world, a huge private sector has come into existence. Technology and software have taken over many of the manual tasks of yesteryear. The government and military systems of categorization are no longer adequate. Today the preference is for multi-dimensional categorization. Not only must we know the level of confidentiality of the content, we must also know other aspects about the content, like:- What area does it belong to? Is it HR related, or concerned with Marketing?
- Is the content relevant to clients, or employees, or other stakeholders like vendors?
- Who should have access rights to retrieving and updating the content? Should it be the Head of HR or the VP of Marketing?
- What are the aging guidelines? How long does it need to be stored for? At what stage, if at all, would it need to be refreshed?
Contextual Analysis
It is difficult to put boundaries around how any content is to be analyzed. Who is to say what is the right way to analyse data? It all depends on the situation and the person doing the analysis, or for whom the analysis is being done. One school of thought tries to break content down into quantitative and qualitative and then apply tools relevant to each. That is exactly the problem once again. Even if you have broken it down into quantitative and qualitative, there are so many ways of analyzing each, that it does not really bring us much forward. Contextual analysis the boundaries get blurred even more. But where does contextual analysis begin and where does it end? Views differ. According to one view, all analysis is contextual. Without context there is no relevance to an analysis. It should be considered incomplete if the context is not used while arriving at conclusions based on certain content. While there is no direct answer for this conundrum, we could perhaps use some of the techniques of contextual analysis used in the study of literature, where it is an established practice, that provides insight beyond the mere words and their arrangement, to get some understanding of how contextual analysis could be performed even in other situations. In general, there are several questions a contextual analysis seeks to answer about the work in order to gain greater insight. Some of them are:- Does the language provide any clue about the period; either in which it was written or the period it I set in?
- Can we draw on the personal situation of the author to understand the characters and the twists the story takes?
- What about the target audience? Is it intended for the eyes of a certain segment of the population or a certain type of person? It could even be taken a step further in an effort to understand the segment for whom it is not intended.
- Where do the morals, goals, objectives of the work draw sustenance from?
- Can we divine the purpose of the author in writing this text? Is it similar to, or different from, other works of the same author? Either way, does that similarity or difference provide us any insight?
- Does the text provide insights about the social fabric during the times the author lived in?
