Sebastian's questions

1. "In the positivist version it is contended that there is a reality out there to be studied, captured, and understood, whereas postpositivists argue that reality can never be fully apprehended, only approximated" (Denzin & Lincoln, pp. 8-9). In my opinion, this is a false dichotomy. I believe that there is a world out there that exists apart from ourselves. This doesn't mean that because there is a world out there, I can fully observe it, describe and apprehend it. In fact, we can't and that's why we have a multiplicity of methods on how to describe social phenomena (...and we wouldn't have this silly controversy of qualitative vs quantitative research).

2. In their descriptions of qualitative research, Jankowski & Wester (p. 45) and Denzin & Lincoln (p. 10) argue that the focus of researchers who work within this tradition is on "everyday life" --its signifance and meaning as perceived by people. I wonder what these authors think is the focus of quantitative researchers. Don't all social science researchers try to understand how people behave in their "everyday life" in one way or another? I'm sure that the most quantitative communication scholar would also agree that the purpose of her predictions, hypotheses, surveys, regressions, SEMs and so forth is to arrive at a conclusion about how we behave, who we are and why we do what we do --in short, how "everyday life" works.

3. Having read the three texts, I couldn't help thinking that the authors were somewhat obsessed with distinguishing themselves from quantitative research. They described qualitative research in contrast to quantitative research. I guess this is jut a symptom that the dominant paradigm in communication research is quantitative. My question, though, is why did quantitative became the dominant paradigm? Is it because the speed of publication for quantitative work is faster? Because numbers have more respectability than textual descriptions? Because funding agencies fund research that is most similar to the hard sciences? Because it is seen as more useful for devising campaigns, ads, etc.?

4. Two weeks ago, we agreed that some methods are more appropiate than others contingent upon the specific research question the researcher is addressing. So if I want to know the frequency of exposure to some media content, go for quantitative. But I want to learn how people make sense of some media content, perhaps I should try qualitative. Yet, we read that several theories can only be studied within a specific research framework (e.g., constructivism). Is this so?

5. A minor note, but I find a bit ironic Robert E. Park's recommendation that social scientists imitate the work routine of newspaper reporters (Jankowski & Wester, p. 47). Having worked five years as a newspaper reported myself, I always noticed that social scientists (particularly economists) looked down upon journalists. I could read it in their minds: "You, reporters, are so superficial, biased, sloppy... you make for such a poor researchers". In fact, I can't deny that one of the reasons I went back to graduate school was to learn the tools that would allow me to come back to these people and say the same things I used to, but now with the respectability that a post-graduate degree give you.