Nice introduction

I thought the introduction that Denzin and Lincoln gave was very informative and very politically correct. The authors shy away from attacking quantitative research directly in order to avoid contributing to the never-ending argument of qualitative versus quantitative. Nevertheless, many of the things they say point in the right direction. For example, they point to the fact that there are “no objective observations, only observations situated in the worlds of the observer and the observed.” (p. 24). This idea takes away from the “objective” nature of quantitative research.
Also, the authors bring into the discussion the idea that qualitative research is “soft science.” Here, they’re amicable approach prevents them from saying that communication will forever be a soft science even if at some point in time we developed a way to turn what people think and feel into numbers. The fact that we cannot control the physical aspect of our “science” is what I think they were hinting at when they talked about “the socially constructed nature of reality” (p. 8)
Last but not least, I thought their call for “more local, small-scale theories fitted to specific problems and specific situations” (p. 22) is just what communication research needs at a point in time in which everything is continuously changing, new realities emerge and the digital world eliminates all borders and time constraints. When faced with that changing landscape, how can we deny the fact that we’re entering a post-postmodern era (p. 30)?
The Jensen chapter introduced an important argument: “the question of how social and discursive levels of structuration are interrelated – which is perhaps the main question for an interdisciplinary field of mass communication research.” (p. 29). Aren’t all cultural practices part of a cultural discourse? Discourse or structure: which comes first?
Also, his discussion on the importance of language was very interesting. How can we say we know what people think when a “voice” is the first thing we take away from them when we do surveys (and no, one or two open-ended questions don’t count)?
Jankowski and Wester are a tad more violent in their historical recount of how quantitative research came to “at best, lay the groundwork for “real” science” (p. 49). They also bring in the importance of observation. How much of our current research is performed from a desk? Why has the act of watching society and people being what they are lost its appeal to researchers?
Reading about ethnometodology (p. 53) and ethnography (p. 54), I couldn’t escape feeling that all we do is somehow related to both. Don’t all our questions come from our participation in and observation of the world that surrounds us?
The authors did a great job of explaining the process of doing qualitative research. They also talked about that “prejudice” (p. 65) that qualitative scholars tend to have towards computers. Thankfully, I think that prejudice is disappearing... although if you rely ona computer to count words, how can you really do serious discourses analysis or deconstruction? Hah!
Friendly advice: for an interesting conversation of the qualitative/quantitative war, drop by Dr. Burd´s office!