QUALITATIVE METHODS IN MEDIA AND COMMUNICATION
(QUAL)
Brennen – Chapter 1. Getting Started
Cultural approach to communication
- Theory as the systematic explanations of real-world everyday practices
- Communication process as a means of production that is based on the
discourse of individuals and groups and is produced within a specific cultural,
historical and political context
- It is through our use of language that we make meaning and construct our own
social realities
Quantitative research
§ Systematic, precise and accurate as it tries to determine validity, reliability,
objectivity and truth
§ Attempts to isolate specific elements, and it uses numbers and numerical
correlations within value-free environments to measure and analyze the
“causal relationships between variables
§ Because it uses numbers to quantify data, quantitative research is often
considered more authentic, important and scientific
Qualitative research
§ Interdisciplinary, interpretive, political and theoretical in nature
§ Using language to understand concepts based on people’s experiences, it
attempts to create a sense of the larger realm of human relationships; attempt
to understand the many relationships that exist within media and society
§ Consider alternative notions of knowledge and they understand that reality is
socially constructed
§ Strives to understand the traditions, contexts, usages and meanings of words,
concepts and ideas; language/discourse as fundamental aspect
§ Active role of the researcher and an understanding that all inquiry is
fundamentally subjective
The development of qualitative research
- Researchers who questioned the dominant social science perspective of mass
communication often envisioned communication as a cultural practice, through
which issues of power, class and social identity could be negotiated
- Qualitative methods to understand communication as a social and cultural
practice; quantitative methods could not help them to answer central questions
regarding the role of “communication as the social production of meaning”
- By the end of the twentieth century, qualitative methodologies had been fully
integrated into the realm of communication and media studies
,Paradigms: intellectual maps and models that provide a set of views and beliefs that
researchers use to guide their work; different ways of conceptualizing the research
process
› Ontology: view on the nature of reality/the (social) world
- What exists? What is reality? Is there such a thing as reality?
› Epistemology: Perceived relationship with knowledge, ‘study of knowledge’
- How do we know the world/reality? What is the relationship between the
inquirer and the known? Are we part of knowledge or external to it?
› Methodology: set of beliefs about how to study/gain knowledge about the
social world and practices/methods of studying it; how to collect and analyze
data + reasons/arguments, how we go about discovering & creating
knowledge
- Method: set of instructions on how to study the social world
It is difficult to create a single qualitative paradigm that represents a specific
worldview à qualitative research is not a unique paradigm but rather is influenced
by several distinct paradigms;
Predictive: belief in a singular, big “T” understanding of truth; unified reality;
researchers as neutral and objective observers who primarily rely on quantitative
methods
› Positivism: consider reality to exist and scientific truth to be knowable and
findable through rigorous testing that is free from human bias; objective
observation of the material world
› Post-Positivist: consider reality to exist but because people are flawed, they
may not be able actually to understand it; complex world
- Positivist but light version: there is a truth out there but we are not entirely
sure we can actually get to it because humans and their methods are flawed
Descriptive: belief in multiple interpretations of a little “t” understanding of truth and
envision many constructed and competing notions of reality; researcher subjectivity;
qualitative methods; process shaped by the very society it investigates
› Constructivism/Constructionism: truth is not universally known; reality is not
independent of its observer
› Critical tradition: focus on power relations; reality and truth to be shaped by
context (specific historical, cultural, racial, gender, political and economic
conditions, values and structures); in their research they critique racism,
sexism, oppression and inequality, and they press for fundamental and
transformative social change, interested in how power shapes the research
process
- Participatory/Cooperative Inquiry: transformative perspective that emphasizes
the subjectivity of practical knowledge and the collaborative nature of research;
breaks down the hierarchy between researcher and researched (interested in
how researchers could empower their own participant to become co-
researchers)
, Brennen - Chapter 2. Doing Qualitative Research
Two different understandings of the communication process:
› Transmission view: communication as a process of sending, transmitting or
delivering information in order to control others; focuses on sending messages
over distances in order to distribute common knowledge and ideas
(quantitative)
› Ritual view: people share customs, beliefs, ideas and experiences, a process
that reinforces and maintains a common culture (qualitative)
Doing quantitative research
§ Draw on the denotative or explicit meanings of words in order to operationalize
their research terms and create a precise coding system
§ Identify variables, operationalize research terms, construct hypotheses,
conduct experiments, measure data and replicate findings
Doing qualitative research
§ Focus on the denotative as well as the (multiple) connotative meanings and
implications of the words that they use
§ Ask research questions, search for meaning, look for useful ways to talk about
experiences within a specific historical, cultural, economic and/or political
context, and consider the research process within relevant social practices
