Course : Mass Communication Research

Methods
Effective Period : September 2015

THE QUALITATIVE RESEARCH

PROCESS
Session 8

Acknowledgement

These slides have been adapted from:

Klaus Bruhn Jensen. 2nd Edition, 2012. A Hand
Book of Media And Communication Research,
Qualitative and Quantitative Methodologies.
Routledge, New York. ISBN: 978-0-415-60965-4
(hbk)

Learning Objectives

LO2: Students are able to indentify the difference

communication research, between mass and
interpersonal communication, also between online
and offline interaction.
LO3: The students are able to apply quantitative and
qualitative approaches to media and communication
studies, and to continue the integration, manifest in
the field during recent decades, of insight from the
humanities as well as the social science.

I. Introduction

Until the 1980s, it was still common for humanistic and other
qualitative media and communication researchers to refer to
their own contributions as nonscientific
Two important developments for qualitative research. First,
more dialogues between qualitative and quantitative
traditions, between critical and administrative researchers,
and across the clasic divide between arts and sciences . second,
journal, textbook, and handbook publications have served to
establish standards and procedures for qualitative research

II. Basic Concepts in Qualitative Research

Across theoretical and methodological inspirations and traditions,
however, qualitative communication studies today have at least three
common denominators
First, studies focus on meaning, both as an object of study and as an
explanatory concept. Researchers in turn, interpret the interpretations
that individuals and groups have themselves and their communications
Second, qualitative research normally assumes the communication
should be examined, as far as possible, in its naturalistic context. While
this might suggest classic anthropological fieldwork, qualitative
communication studies have taken several different approaches to
grasping the natives perspective on his/her reality
The third common feature of qualitative studies is the conception of
researchers as interpretive subjects.
In order to characterize this global interpretive activity, research has
referred to two interrelated - emic and etic aspects of the study of
communication and culture

III. Designing Qualitative Studies

a. Formatting the field

To design an empirical study is to identify and bracket a portion of reality what
for further inquiry according to a theoretically informed purpose why and
through systematic procedure of data collection and analysis how
Whereas most researchers will agree that a preliminary delimitation and
conceptualization of the object of inquiry is required, even if central purpose
qualitative research is, precisely, reconceptualization, the additional
operationalization of analytical categories and procedures has been subject to
debate
It is helpful to distinguish three aspects of designing empirical research strategy,
tactics, and techniques:
Strategy, first, refers to a general plan for entering a particular social setting, and
for establishing points of observation and means of communication, in order to
generate relevant evidence
Tactics, next, refer to the researchers attempts to anticipate and, to a degree,
prestructure social interactions that may yield evidence
Techniques, finally, are the researchers concrete means of interacting with and
documenting the field verbal language, but also other sign systems, documents,
and arifacts.

b. Sampling cases
The next step of an empirical project is to sample elements or
constituents of that field
In communication studies, it is most common to think of
samples as subgroups of population that consist of either
people or texts, for example, in surveys or content analysis
Qualitative studies, however, frequently sample other units of
analysis, for instance settings, activities, and events relating to
communication
Qualitative sampling is driven by a purpose, not by a principle
of probability
Multistep Sampling: Qualitative studies can be characterized,
further, with reference to the two or more steps of sampling
that they often involve

 For example, in an early classic of qualitative media research in the US, Kurt
and Gladys Lang (1953) examined the 1951 MC Arthur Day parade by
relying, first, on thirty-one observers on-site in Chicago and, second, on two
observers monitoring the television coverage at home. From each of these
contexts, representations and observations (including recorded
observations, overhead remarks, and content elements) were documented
and compared
Qualitative sampling can be defined as a multistep procedure - of contexts
and within contexts and with reference to at least three types of criteria:
1) Maximum variation sampling seeks to capture as wide a range of
qualities or phenomena as possible. For instance, the ratings of
television programs and the age of the core viewers
2) Theoretical sampling selects its objects of analysis in order to explore
concepts or categories, for instance, politics or fandom, as they relate
to communication
3) Convenience sampling is most often encountered as a derogatory term
for studying whatever individuals or materials are most easily available

 In addition to these three types of qualitative sampling, a

characterisitic and primarily qualitative design case study
should be mentioned
Case study conduct in-depth research on delimited entities,
such as communities and organizations, but also singular
individuals and events, in order to understand these as
interconnected social systems

IV. Interviewing

Interviewing is one of the most commonly used methods of

data collection, in research as in journalism and public
administration
Common sense suggests that, the best way to find out what
the people think about something is to ask them
In-depth interviews, especially, with their affinity to ordinary
conversation, have been considered choice instruments for
tapping perspectives of users (and other communicators) on
media
All interview statements are actions in a context, arising from
the interaction between (or among) interviewer and
interviewee(s)
Interview discourse become sources of information through
analysis, and of meaning through interpretation

Qualitative media studies employ three main types of

interviewing
1) Respondent interviews. In comparison to informan interview
(which have tended to be less common in media studies),
the interviewee is conceived here as representative of
categories such as gender, age, ethnicity, and social status.
A central example of respondent interviews has been
studies of the decoding of media content
2) Naturalistic group interviews. In order to explore, to the
extent possible, what normally goes on in social settings,
qualitative studies examine naturally occuring groups
within both media production and reception
3) Constituted group interviews. Groups that are constituted
specifically for research purposes represent a compromise
between the respondent and naturalistic strategies. For
instance is in focus interview or focus groups

Across different interview formats, three issues require

consideration and planning:
1) Duration. Interviews range from brief dialogues to establish
the meaning of a technical term at a media production site,
to hour-long and repeated sessions with an individual or
family about media habits, to comprehensive life-historical
interviews
2) Structure. Probably the main challenge in qualitative
interviewing is how, to what extent, to prestructure the
interaction. The exchange may cover a predefined set of
themes, but in no particular order; or it may follow a
particular sequence and structure
3) Depth. Regarding relevant and appropriate depth, the
qualitative interviewers responsibility becomes acure.
Depth, the hallmark of qualitative research, process
important issues for research ethics

V. Observation

Observation refers broadly to the continuous and often longterm presence, normally of one researcher, in one delimited
locale
The observer, in sense, is the method an instrument of
research relying on all sensory modalities and diverse media of
information
Without such documentation [through the observation],
fieldwork may become similar to artwork, inspired and
inspiring, but inaccessible to intersubjective reflection and
discussion
One of the most influential metaphors for observation, also in
media studies, is the anthropologist, Clifford Geertzs (1973)
term, thick description
Thick description: the point is that a very detailed description

 Participant observation: In order to distinguish varieties of

observational fieldwork, it is common to refer to their components
of observation and participation, respectively
Field notes: regarding field notes, it is still not common to refer to
a benchmark of notations and procedures. Three purposes of field
notes, each with an associated discursive form:
1) Substantive notes, which capture representation of scene
under study;
2) Logistical notes, which add information about the
circumstances under which the data were gathered; and
3) Reflexive notes, which initiate the process of analysis and
theorizing on the basis of observations and other data
In additional rule of thumb is to focus on substance (what) and
logistic (how) in the field, and to reserve the main reflexive activity
(why) for later in the research process
Field notes is Working Documents

VI. Data Found and Made

What units of the third group of approaches to data collection,

compared to observation and interviewing, is that data are
found or made
Quantitative studies conduct, for example, data mining of how
information and users flow within across websites and other
media, qualitative studies can rely on metadata to explore the
context in which information an users come together and
interact
First, the textual, visual, and auditory output of media have been
key analytical objects in qualitative media studies, to such an
extent that much humanistic scholarship has focused entirely
on texts as the site and source of meaning

 Second, a wide variety of discourses serve as input to and output

from media production and reception. As complex organizations,
media unceasingly generate documents that prepare and feet into
content
Third, artifacts and various physical arrangements around media
can become sources of evidence. in addition to being means of
representation, media are physical objects and constituents of
other social interaction. Reading a newspaper in mass transit
provides a means of avoiding social contract; in the home, reading
can be a way of insisting on ones personal time and space
A fourth and increasingly central consideration in the choice of
research methodologies is the wealth of metadata that digital
technologies make available. Qualitative studies are especially
suited to exploring the transitions and informations of
communication an unfolding news story or debate, an online
gameplay, a viral marketing campaign that occur within and
across context

VII.Data Analysis
1. Coding and analysis

A distinguishing feature of qualitative research is that key

terms and concepts are articulated and defined as part of the
research process
Qualitative data analysis can be characterized further with
reference to two different conceptions of coding the
mapping of mental categories onto phenomena in reality
through words, numbers, and other notations

 The two concepts; codes as representations or resources

a) Representations
A code can offer an account or representation of the part of
the domain of study, capturing certain qualities of a person,
event, action, text, of other unit of analysis.
One purpose is to arrive as a set of mutually exclusive and
exhaustive categories; another purpose is to enable later
comparisons across cases as well as categories
A common aim of coding as representation, further, is to
work with standard descriptions, so that various qualities
b) Resource
A code can serve as an instrument or resource for identifying
and retrieving a portion small or large of a text or context
Here, the aim is to rely on an open-ended set of categoris and
procedures that may be adapted to different contexts and
levels of analysis

2. Variants of data analysis

The history of qualitative data analysis has been informed by

classical rhetoric, hermeneutics, and semiotics
Also much early social science was based on the exploratory
study of diverse institutions and practices, rather than the
coding of well-defined phenomena, partly in search of
theoretical frameworks for emerging disciplines
Case studies were a standard and prevalent approach from
the 1920s onwards, notably in the Chicago school studies of
urban life
Another approach analytical induction was outlined by
Zaniecki (1934) who wanted to replace enumerative induction
and probabilistic statements with the intensive and stepwise
study of single case in order to arrive at general, even
universal categories of social phenomena

3. Thematic and narrative analysis

By comparing, contrasting, and organizing narrative and other

discursive constituents in categories, studies are able to
abstract various conceptions of the meaning of particular
media content, organizations, or audiences, as far as specific
informants are concerned

4. Grounded theory
The second variant of qualitative data analysis is grounded
theory, which became influential in the social science as an
approach that would legitimate an alternative, not least, to
survey research
It is a methodology which assumes that theory can and
should be grounded in the field of study, that is, generated in
a constant interplay with the social actors and interactions in
question

5. Discourse analysis

It is inspiration from linguistic discourse studies

Discourse studies offer a multilevel and multistep approach to
coding and analysis, including consensual and thematic
procedures
It may avoid the abstraction and decontextualization of
meaning that typically follows from grounded theory
For instance: Speech Acts and Interactions

6. Computer interfaces
In a wide perspective, networked media can support several
stages of the research process as a whole from theoretical
exploration, literature review, and project organization,
through data collection, annotation, and analysis, to
publications, debate, and collaboration with the various
constituances applying research findings
In a longer perspective, the sharing of evidence and finding
can involves not just colleagues, but respondent as well as
policy circles and the general public