Qualitative Methods in Media Research

Sung Woo, The last and may be the longest.

2009-11-22T15:13:00.000-08:00

1. I sympathize with Potter that quantitative studies are reductionist(259). He mainly pointed to the content analysis. But I think, often in social science, and notably in our field, scholars tend to study only those variables that are quantifiable, rather than quantifying the variable. Question remains however, is qualitative research free from this accusation?

2. The terminology of convergence that Potter used, or blurred genres is really blurred. There could be various patterns of convergence, he stopped short of specifying what type he is aiming towards. There may be a tendency to assimilate between approaches, or one complimenting the other, or one becoming a main and the other a sub. Also, since his book was from 1990s, I’d like to know what the latest trend is. I mean, who is winning? Isn’t there a study that analyzed major publications?

3. Some scholars see qualitative approach as having and antecedent value (306). Actually this is what I had gathered while doing assignments for this course. Focus group, participant observation or reception analysis gave me ideas and intuitions for future studies. And numbers of cross-national comparative studies I read used extensive case studies to establish a typology , then moved on to quantitative analysis. I have a proposition. Why don’t we discuss Dr.Harp and Ingrid’s paper that had both quantitative and qualitative method, and talk about which should have been the main and which should have been the sub.

4. I think Potter gave a very nice descriptions about why qualitative and quantitative approach are destined to be complimentary, and what quantitative can’t do what qualitative can. For example, “there is a premium placed on more phenomenological research where there are no prior expectations” (318). For me, joy of doing qualitative assignments was to find something that was not conceived before. Put it simply, I was glad when I got something unexpected in doing qualitative work, whereas when doing quantitative study, the joy was when I got the expected result.

5. Potter argued the most important force behind convergence is the desire of scholars to want it happen(331). I disagree. The most important force behind convergence is that both the quantitative and qualitative approaches are imperfect. And the most important force against convergence is scholars who don’t want it to happen.

Yu kun's questions

2009-11-22T14:41:00.000-08:00

From page 251 to 251, potter discussed the issue of barriers to enter the field of qualitative study. But the barriers he listed also could be found in the quantitative studies. In my opinion I would say the author had an assumption that quantitative studies dominated the field of mass communication. Based on this assumption, all scholars have quantitative backgrounds or must be familiar with the quantitative methods. However, if observed this issue from the historical pattern, we could find that qualitative methods were developed before their counterparts.
From page 265 to 266, the author quoted Toulmin’s argument that “In sciences and humanities alike, we must be prepared to consider the products of human imagination and creation---whether idea or artifacts, poems or theories---from a variety of different points of view”. In my personal opinion, the aim of our research is to solve the problem in this world. But I find quantitative studies can limit our imagination and the issues we can study. On the other hand, qualitative studies can give us more flexibility. Issues in the field of qualitative studies are more interesting.
In page 275 and 276, the author discussed the lack of guidance on methods. I believe that the qualitative methods or theories are so comprehensive that it is impossible to establish a framework to include every methods or theories. In addition, there are still a lot of debates about the communication theory which stand on the shoulders of other fields such as political science and sociology. In the field of qualitative studies, the evidence of borrowing the concepts from the other fields is more obvious.
In page 291, the author indicate generalizing is the direction that scholars in qualitative studies have to go. But I doubt how the qualitative studies can do this. Like what he mentions in page 292” This is a paradox to say that the more specific the descriptions, the more general the results”. In this issue, we need new thinking to deal with this paradox.
About the issue of convergence of those two fields, in my opinion, those two fields all have their own characteristics. Instead of using the term “convergence”, I would prefer to use the term “complement”. The research methods are different tools for me. Facing different issues, I will decide which tools I can use. Will you expect the convergence of the glut and the knife? Because their functions are totally different, the answer is no.

Yonghwan's questions

2009-11-22T13:24:00.001-08:00

1. It has been stated that “if the scholars who identify with the term qualitative are to show that they have formed a community, then they need to show some conceptual cohesiveness” (Potter, p. 249). What’s meant by conceptual cohesiveness, and what seem to be examples of showing some conceptual cohesiveness?

2. It is very interesting to see technical terms as barriers to enter qualitative research community. And I totally agree with a statement that neophytes must learn the specialized language consisting of technical terms that are the tools that scholars use to access the ideas that are important to the area; however, some languages exhibit characteristics that make them more difficult than others. It seems to me that it can be a very similar case in quantitative research; for instance, statistical knowledge is very important to the area of quantitative research and sometimes makes people who are not familiar with quantitative concepts hard to enter this area. Then what seems to be examples of technical terms we as graduate students or neophytes must know? I think we haven’t have many chances to get familiar with these important key technical terms (e.g., ideology—what kind of ideologies?, hegemony—what kind of hegemony and between which groups?, semiotics, symbol, deconstruction, signified and signifier, what else?).

3. It seems to me that technical term in critical studies is important given that the deconstruction (?) of meaning and power relationships is complicated so that it requires complex or complicated tool to analyze them. This is just my general sense. What is original purpose of (difficult to understand) technical terms in qualitative research? Why it should be that hard?

4. Continued to technical terms, then, who seem to be readers of qualitative research? Only for a community of qualitative research, not for ordinary public? I am not saying quantitative research is for both a community of quantitative research and ordinary people and ordinary people like to read academic quantitative research, even though I’ve been told that quantitative articles should be written easy to read for ordinary people. Qualitative research, however, seems to more focus on its own community.

5. It seems to me that both qualitative and qualitative scholars tend not to consider convergence of both paradigms that much when it comes to writing a research paper. If this is the case, what seem to be reasons of this? If this is not the case, to what extent and how convergence has been done?

Marcus' questions

2009-11-22T11:08:00.000-08:00

Q1) I was surprised by Potter’s comment about researchers rarely building on each other’s work. Then why does it take longer to write lit reviews than any other section of a paper? It seems like there’s a lot more consolidation of academic ideas than he’s admitting. I understand that he’s noting a difference between consolidation and cooperation, and that qualitative research is fairly fragmented, but I still wonder if he’s taking it a bit too far.

Q2) Richardson made me want to turn the tables a bit. He argues that much qualitative research, when written, is “boring” because of limitations on language needed to get published, and that qualitative research – the search for “meaning” – can’t be hamstrung like that. So, I’d ask … what is “boring?” How do you define “boring?” Can “meaning” not be found through “boring,” or is “meaning” the opposite of “boring?” Sports use rules, are they “boring?” What about poetry, which often has regulated verse? You can’t use abstract, personality-based concepts to criticize a lack of abstract, personality-based values; that’s the whole point of quantitative research, that everyone has a set starting point and can draw whatever conclusions they want from the data. I understand what he’s saying, that he wants readers and researchers to be more open minded, but he’s also setting himself up for criticism.

Q3) I think “convergence” is a really qualitative way of looking at the topic of academic integration. I understand that quantitative research is the standard, and that it is a kind of power structure; but just the term “convergence” implies a melding of minds, more conglomeration than cooperation, and I’m not sure that’s the best way to boost the status of qualitative research. I think the better appeal to conventional quantitative researchers would be a representation argument, making the point that the field is expanding into qualitative fields and particular institutions risk being left behind without staffing to meet that expansion. There’s also a capitalist argument – OMG, I used that word again! Beware, the hegemon speaketh! :) - that most grad students base their enrollment on detailed programs and research interests, not regional concerns or cultural loyalty (like most undergrads and myself). So, the school with the most diverse repertoire stands to gain the best and brightest graduate students, which would definitely make sense to a quantitative dean. “Convergence,” I don’t think, would carry the same weight.

Q4) I’ve also been thinking about Dr. Jensen’s comment last week that journalism departments are an awkward concoction of disciplines, theories and work experiences. That made particular sense coming from him, since from what I could gather, none of his pornography research has focused on news media, or “journalism.” It’s media research, certainly, but not traditional news media; yet he’s at the j-school, not RTF or Comm Studies. So if there’s a fuzzy difference between the disciplines anyway, and other branches are more open to qualitative research, then how much carryover is there from journalism grad programs to RTF or Comm Studies programs? This will sound tacky, but if qualitative researchers are doing the same work next door and having a party, why keep arguing with the bouncers outside the j-schools? Like I said, it sounds tacky, and I like the idea of qualitative research in journalism – that’s why I’m taking this class – but still, I may be in the minority.

Q5) I also liked the discussion about personally constructed reality, and I think it does speak to the heart of qualitative research … I just don’t agree with it. Either it’s raining or it’s not, and everybody knows which. So is that one of the fundamental gulfs between qualitative and quantitative research, or are their quals that like the idea of an objective reality?

ALEX Questions - Nov. 23

2009-11-22T09:15:00.001-08:00

Q1 – Potter writes (p. 249) that researchers “rarely build on each others work,” in systematic ways that lead to a shared definition of concepts, adding to “clutter.” This seems like a critique, but there are advantages to redefining concepts. The criticism implies that research is haphazard and doesn’t add to collective knowledge. Isn’t that the point of research? To add to collective knowledge and to build on each other’swork? Or is Potter’s point merely the fact that methodologies are so varied that it’s almost like comparing apples to oranges?

Q2 – Potter goes on to comment on the “barriers to entry” within qualitative fields and how lowering the barriers promotes a diversity of approaches and fresh ideas. Is this practically true or a romantic ideal? At the very least, it assumes one has to have a PhD to be allowed entry, or at the least be a PhD student or candidate. Can any neophyte who learns the language and ways of the system and the correct academic jargon reaally have entry into these fields?

Q3 – It seems that Potter’s early point is that definition is everything. He makes semiotic arguments of how appropriate technical language is used by different researchers within different fields. Proper use of technical terms as opposed to common language seems to be the academic code to participation. Is this the key to acceptance?

Q4 – Potter’s whole question about “community” whether it be national or regional or technical or academic or subcommunity is easy for me to understand as a Latino. The concept of dual-indentities or even multiple identities is not difficult for me. I can be a Mexican, Mexican-American, Tejano, Chicano, Latino, Austinite, UT-football fan, Texas football fan, Mexican futbol fan, etc., and still be an American. Much of it depends on the context. Does Potter believe that the context is unclear in his criticism of community?

Q5 – Potter criticizes poorly written justifications for use of methodologies in qualitative studies, and I believe rightly so. Well-written justifications are extremely helpful. I always thought that the method depended on the research goals. Obviously, external practical considerations also play into it. Are there researchers who focus on just one method and try to make all of their studies fit their method simply because they find they can do that method well?

Teresa

2009-11-22T06:30:00.000-08:00

I think we’ve discussed the issues covered in this chapter over and over. So, I have very few comments.
Potter asserts that despite there is lack of shared meaning over what is qualitative research (some say it’s a method; others, a paradigm), qualitative scholars feel there is a sense of community. I wonder to what extent this happens because they feel they’re in a minority position or they are part of a minority group in front of the dominant paradigm. Minorities are usually lumped together despite their diversity.

Potter asserts that sometimes there are positive reasons for high barriers of entrance. What at are those positive reasons? On a similar note, I understand that sometimes scholars have to invent concepts for new phenomena or that it’s hard to explain a complex idea in simple terms. But there is no excuse to write a five-line sentence without a period. I tend to think that qualitative work is more densely written. Why? For example, Baudrillard is very hard to understand. But when you explain it Gabino, it seems a lot easier. Why? What’s really the purpose of writing in such a dense way?

Then Potter talks about the misunderstandings about quantitative research. I think the misunderstandings come from both sides. These mutual misunderstandings are due to lack of knowledge… lack of knowledge leads to stereotypical portrayals and misrepresentations. Therefore, the only way to overcome this problem is being deeply and honestly exposed to both approaches. Only then, people would avoid talking about different approaches in simplistic terms.

I havent finished, so I'll keep reading...

Last post!

2009-11-21T21:45:00.000-08:00

And so we come to the last post. So sad! In any case, I think my first question comes a little too late: what is meaning in research? Are we talking about linguistics? Semiotics? If we can’t answer this satisfactorily, should we just conduct descriptive research? If the “qualitative approach is so amorphous that it is and always will be, undefinable” (p. 249), how dare we criticize it and ask for more of this or less of that?
I appreciated the discussion on writer’s meanings that begins in page 253. As we all know, Saussure, Foucault and Derrida are as erudite and eloquent as they are poetic and abstract. Nevertheless, what the author did not mention that needed to be there was the fact that this authors, through lack of a clear meaning, grant us the freedom to interpret… to make meaning of what they were saying…hah! On the other hand, I have to play the devil’s advocate here: clarity is overrated. So is generalizability (p. 291-292).
I also enjoyed the critique of quantitative research and its reductionist ways, but I feel like that’s not what the end of the book should be about. Why is it so hard to celebrate qualitative research without mentioning quantitative research? Let the counters do their thing and pay them no attention! If the critique “cuts both ways” (p. 269), just drop the damn knifes and do your thing!
The discussion arguing that reality is constructed by us was very interesting and, in my humble opinion, constituted the strongest point in favor of doing qualitative work: we need to give individuals a voice in which to express their reality-building process. It is that process and the things that surround and affect it that we should be studying. Likewise, the point made on page 284 about the researcher becoming part of the making-meaning process is truly important… and something that, I feel, really scares researchers.
I also enjoyed the critique of the way we call ethnography things that are not…but what should we call them if we use the same methods (only not the same amount of time)?
The discussion about writing on page 295 was quite… hypocritical. Researchers seldom feel a powerful need to share their findings with the world; they would write differently if they did. Writers don’t think about what the reader needs, they think about what the editors need. The fact that everyone writes to get published is rarely addressed in books and academic writing, along with the fact that almost nobody writes the stuff that gets published.
Are we headed towards convergence? Hell no. Everyday the counters become bigger and stronger, they get their rather repetitive stuff published and, in a sense, academia has found a way to entice new brains with its “obscure statistical innovations” (p. 304). Thankfully, some folks out there are still doing research that matters.
The last part of the book was a tad boring, or “long and detailed” (p. 308). In a sense, I felt like it was a rehash of the previous chapter. In any case, convergence would be great… but the chasm academia has built between two ways of doing things that should be complementary seems insurmountable. And I don’t care!

Paul's Questions for 11/23

2009-11-20T18:54:00.000-08:00

Potter does not suggest that all qualitative scholars conform to a standard of thinking alike, but that it would be beneficial to have a greater sense of general community. Potter also believes qualitative scholars should be better at communicating this to others intellectually, not just emotionally. It seems to me that whenever I ask someone familiar with qualitative work to describe it, or compare it to quantitative research, inevitably the answer seems to involve the notion that qualitative work is free from the constraints of numbers and statistics and is, rather, focused on thoughtful interpretation of various forms of text. Isn’t this the best answer at the most basic of levels? To me, this seems to constitute a “general community.”

Richardson described most qualitative research as boring because most authors “suppress their voice to a scientific style of writing.” Potter adds that it is ironic that researchers who focus on language are not more careful in their use of it. I imagine many of these “boring” scholars write this way to get published. Are journals that are deemed qualitative more accepting of writing that may be more journalistic in style than academic? If not, why not? Surely it’s not because qualitative theoreticians want to put up barriers to the uninitiated in the qualitative field, right? Potter suggests this as one possible reason for a lack of clarity in most qualitative writing.

In defining the qualitative approach, Potter names seven methodologies: ethnography, ethnomethodology, reception studies, ecological psychology, symbolic interactionism, cultural studies, and textual analysis. Potter adds that scholars using them share a common basis of five axioms, one of which is that researchers “should strive to see the situation from the perspective of the other rather than from predominantly their own perspective.” While I get the reason for this, how realistic is it? Isn’t this difficult to do since we use our own experiences to interpret text? While we may try to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes, don’t we know the fit of our own the best? Even later in the reading is a section asking, “Does reality exist apart from one’s perception?”

The two tensions in qualitative thinking, Fluid-Order and Reflection-Transformation, seem like they can be mixed and matched, depending on what’s being examined. If, for instance, I’m observing the procedural behaviors of a newsroom staff, I may approach the project from the “reflection” perspective since I want to observe activity for as long as possible to best reflect reality. Yet, I may still choose “transformation” to take the information gathered and provide a point of view to transform, or fix a problem I may perceive. Can you have both the reflection and transformation themes working together for the same research project?

I’m hopeful about convergence for my research into presidential debates. For instance, I want to know how often a certain topic may come up during a debate, and compare it to other topics in order to get an accurate picture of the “pie.” But I want to interview the people responsible for the questions that helped “bake” that pie. In this way, the quantitative and qualitative approaches are equally important to answering my questions. That’s why I like Potters belief that “scholars who focus primarily on the question can make a greater contribution.”

Yonghwan's Questions

2009-11-08T17:26:00.001-08:00

1. It has been stated that interpretation is a part of all aspects of qualitative research; however, when we talk about interpretation as a purpose signaled in the writing, we expect to see a high degree of “self-reflexivity” where the author illuminates the decision points in the interpretive process (Potter, Chapter 10, p. 172). What seems to be examples of a high degree versus a low degree of “self-reflexivity” in journal articles? In other words, how can we demonstrate a high degree of self-reflexivity when it comes to writing a qualitative research paper?

2. Is qualitative approach horizontal? It has been described that quantitative research can be viewed as a “vertical” movement from specifics to abstract explanations; in contrast, the qualitative approach is much more horizontal—that is, a premium is placed on examining a wider range of meaning making and the exceptions to the norm; therefore, qualitative researchers require a wider range of expressive tools in order to help them capture the greater variety in the phenomenon and to communicate this in such a way as to make it interesting and useful to the readers. This makes sense to me, but it seems to me that qualitative approach could be vertical as well in a sense that qualitative research seems to be the case of a vertical movement from specifics to abstract explanations (note, for instance, ideological analysis).

3. Contextualization seems interesting and important to me when it comes to doing qualitative research. What is difference between the contextualization and description of background of the study? I can see some (especially case) studies describe the background of research (e.g., a certain countries’ specific historical background, a certain events’ background). Describing “the background of study” is one of ways of contextualization or different one from contextualization mentioned here?

4. If it is the case that describing the background of study, what seems to be differences between quantitative research and qualitative research in terms of contextualizing in each studies. In other words, there are descriptions of background of the study in quantitative research; then what seem to be different aspects of this description in qualitative research?

5. What seems to be examples of “conceptual leverage,” which is one of the things the external quality of qualitative research raises? It has been stated that “conceptual leverage is the concern about the degree to which the researcher can extend his or her results from the concrete evidence to more abstract explanations.” Isn’t this “vertical” movement, which was mentioned in question # 2, and characterized as quantitative research?

Sung Woo's questions

2009-11-08T12:51:00.000-08:00

This week’s readings dealt with two queries I had, since the early stage of this course. Are standards possible? How much interpretation should be allowed or required in writing? As excited as I am, I address more questions that came along.

1. Shouldn’t the qualitative researchers have a more formalized, or standardized way of evaluating methodology? In other words, would it not be helpful if we had sort of consensus about the meaningful standards of judging the quality of qualitative research?
-I concur with Altheide (1996) that one way to argue validity for qualitative research is to “share methodological decision or limitations.” (Potter, 200). But how can we share when we are presented with different standards of evaluating methodologies, or with the idea that every study is different, specific to authors? I think more works should be done about the methodological issues of qualitative studies in communications studies.

2. Is there anything like code of conduct for administering triangulation as a way of cross-checking? Shouldn’t the studies that are cross-checked valued more?
-I think for the purpose of establishing validity and reliability, triangulation should be used under specific guidelines. For example, multiple observers should have at least some contexts in common, such as time or questionnaire. I think respondent validation is also a good way or increasing reliability of qualitative works.

3. How do you distinguish between explanation and interpretation, in the real writing? Where is the place for explanation?
-I know this is explained in the book (p.165). Potter said, interpretation is more short-term whereas explanation is more long-term perspective and purposeful. However, when we did discourse analysis for assignments, I thought the distinction was blur. I thought interpretation should have been right beside the discourse, explanation should have separate place somewhere else in the writing.

4. Can you contain analysis and a meaningful action advocacy in one study? Should it not be separate?
-I think action plan for some cause requires another dimension of study. It needs to be treated as different study because action plan requires analysis of its own. For example, Schwichetenberg’s study showed that the TV series “Love boat” has a stereotyped bias. To provide academically responsible action advocacy for this phenomenon will require information gathering on the network, a feasible plan and projection on the possible outcome of such plan. Not just to sink the boat. Studying what action would be effective will take quite amount of time. I often see activist’s research works that are very irresponsible on this aspect.

5. Can standards of evaluation be extended to both qualitative and quantitative work? Could there be a general set of rules for evaluating all works?
-Denzin’s argument is to apply the standard of quantitative approach such as validity, generalizability, reliability as the major standard of qualitative work (196). I like the idea of applying the same yardstick.
Potter argued quantitative research can be viewed as vertical movement from specifics to abstract explanations, and qualitative research as horizontal, because it deals with variety of phenomenon. I oppose to this idea for the same reason.
I think all academic studies should be vertical, seek generalized truth that could be only termed abstractly.
-I think a qualitative study that is more objective, more valid, reliable and more applicable is possible. I would like to cite Ruth Benedict’s The Chrysanthemum and the Sword, 1946.The book is the result of a massive research on Japanese national culture supervised and funded by US government during the World War II. Methodology used is interviews with Japanese POWs and Japanese Americans, text analysis and historical analysis. Benedict was an anthropologist who has never been to Japan nor studied Japan before. Yet her work produced the two most influential predictions that lead to the success of US occupation after World War II. One is that Japanese will be very compliant after surrender, and continuation of Emperor will contribute to stability. Let’s just think of the numerous studies with statistical correlations that may had influenced US policy in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Sebastian's questions

2009-11-08T12:45:00.001-08:00

Q1. In quantitative writing, I have realized that it is preferable to name a concept and stick with all throughout the article, even if it becomes repetitive and cacophonic in literary terms. The purpose is to be accurate. For instance, if we are talking about news, it’s news, not media or information. Undoubtedly, this makes the text more boring. How do we deal with this problem in qualitative writing? One the one hand, we want to engage the reader and write well, as Richardson emphasizes, but on the other hand we don’t want to be less accurate along the way.

Q2. Similarly, metaphors are key in social science writing. But if we overuse them, do we risk lack of accuracy? That is, do we risk being clear in what we are trying to say or describe?

Q3. Description, according to Potter, refers to writing occurrences without making any inference. I can’t help but think that describing for the sake of describing is the realm of journalism or, at least, a first, initial approach to address a larger issue. I was impressed to learn that there are whole books dedicated to describe (Potter cites Hobson’s work on British soap-opera viewers). Now, why would anyone in communication research be interested in describing without analyzing, interpreting, criticizing or advocating for a specific position when conducting research?

Q4. I appreciated Potter’s treatment of the idea of contextualization, especially the two points of Anderson: that contextualization is a basis for theories of the midrange, and that only through full contextualization we can make sense of what is being examined. It seems to me that some qualitative methods lend themselves better for contextualization than others. For instance, ethnography versus focus group. However, when contextualizing, we must bear in mind to whom are we contextualizing the situation, right? If I’m publishing in Chile, the level of contextualization is lower if my research is on Chile that if I’m publishing in the U.S. How does the purposive audience of our research affect what we include in our contextualization?

Q5. I also found ironic Potter’s finding that “qualitative empirical literature closely resembles what many qualitative theoreticians criticize about the quantitative literature, that is, that the quantitative approach is defective in its assumption that of an ordered reality and a belief that there is an objective process of knowing that reality.” Why is this?

Sungsoo's Questions

2009-11-08T12:43:00.000-08:00

Q1. In Ch 10, Potter introduces action advocacy. I agree that scholars can have specific political opinion. However they should keep proper tensions between academic integrity and passion for social change when they are doing research. Otherwise their works often fall into the cheap political agitation.

Q2. I think Potter’s explanation on degree of self-reflexivity, in CH 11, is very helpful regarding to the matters of objectivity and subjectivity. I think it is important not only for those who are doing qualitative research but also for those who are doing quantitative research. My tentative opinion is that the more the better. However I am still confusing what degree of self-reflexivity I should choose in limited time and space.

Q3. In Ch 11, Potter introduces three degrees of contextualization which is one of the most interesting arguments. I would like to know the way how I can decide which degree I should choose

Q4. What are ethnographic fictional representations? Where can I find writings base on ethnographic fictional representation?

Q5. As Richardson supports experimental writing, it is critical to write creative and experimental. I believe that it is quality of writing that makes some research standout from writings: fact-based, well-organized structure, simple and clear sentence which show the balanced observation by researcher, etc.

Teresa's questions

2009-11-08T12:18:00.001-08:00

1- Richardson asserts that the model write-when-you-know-what-you-want-to-say has serious problems because it ignores the role of writing as a dynamic and creative process. In practice, what does this mean? How do we approach our writing process? Does it mean start writing as soon as we finish collecting data? Do the analysis and interpretation when we’re writing? Or it just simply suggests that we have to be flexible in the process and incorporate the interpretations that emerge in the writing process?

2- When Richardson talks about experimental writing, she names various approaches including narrative of the self, ethnographic fictional representations, etc. These types of writing allow the researcher to exaggerate, swagger, entertain, and make a point without tedious documentation. I tend to disagree with this approach. If the author is allowed to exaggerate to make a point and get close to fiction, it seems easier to entertain. But the main purpose of research is not entertainment; it is explaining why certain phenomena happen, building knowledge, and promoting social change. Therefore, the main challenge is not to be boring when meeting these goals.

3- Although, the following questions are not my original questions, I think they’re worth discussing in class: Is experimental writing (or experimental research in the sense of very exploratory and original one) a luxury open to those who have secured their jobs? Can only the tenured professors write or do research in experimental modes? Is it a disservice to students to introduce them to alternative forms of writing? Do we have to introduce these types of experimental writing and teaching in realistic or strategic terms?

4- When describing the role of interpretive approaches to qualitative research, Potter presents several examples of scholars selecting data to fit a particular interpretation (e.g., Horowitz, 1987). (Data-driven) quantitative researchers tend to have the same approach: let me run the numbers, first, and then let’s find a theory that supports our “interesting” results. This reminds me of the idea of persuasiveness in research. That is, beyond collecting good data, we have to tell a good story and be persuasive. Therefore, my question is: what is the role of persuasion in communication research?

5- Denzin asserts that the usual standards of quantitative research, that is, reliability, validity and generalizability, can be applied to qualitative research as well. The question I have is how can these be achieved? Didn’t we agree earlier that qualitative and quantitative research have different philosophical approaches and different definition of those terms? If qualitative research is much more about case studies, the particularities of a specific context, and the meaning we attach to it, how can reliability, validity and generalizability be applied to it?

YUKUN's Questions

2009-11-08T11:39:00.000-08:00

Question about self-consciousness
In page 162,”Interpretation reveals a self-consciousness by authors who acknowledge that their findings are not objective facts but rather products of his or her subjective decision”. In my opinion, even in quantitative methods, it is also possible for researchers to interpret data by their self-consciousness. It seems that self-consciousness should not be a basis for a qualified paper. Here Potter wanted to reveal that the basis of qualitative researches is on subjective judgment. But, in my thought, qualitative researches’ interpretations sometimes are still based reliable data, which are even not numbers.
Would it be possible for a researcher using quantitative research methods to be an action advocator?
In theory, the answer is yes. But in my personal experience most scholars becoming action advocators all have background of qualitative methods. Maybe the reason is that in the field of qualitative methods scholars have to make their own decisions in anytime, but in the field of quantitative methods scholars have to keep their judgments away from their studies as far as possible.
Question about contextualization
In page 184 “Contextualization is a major point used by theoreticians to differentiate the quantitative and qualitative approaches”. In my opinion or bias, no matter in quantitative or qualitative approaches, it is very hard to write a paper without any contextualization in the field of journalism study. Without contextualization, a paper will purely to find a causal relationship between factors. Though this is necessary for building a theory, journalism study is different from other fields such as psychology or personal communication studies. Without any contextualization, the research questions or issues studied by researches will be limited.
Question about the standard of writing a qualitative paper
One standard proposed by Anderson is generalizability. However, some qualitative studies are very unique. Generalization is not the goals for those studies. How can we fit those studies with this standard? Denzin also argued for reliability, validity and generalizability for major standards for qualitative studies. In my opinion, those standards can fit with quantitative studies not qualitative studies.
External qualitative and generalizability
“Generalizability is the concern about the degree to which the researcher can generalize his or her findings to other texts, people, or institutions.” Like what I wrote in the former question, sometimes the characteristic of qualitative studies is very unique. How can we make it Generalizability? How can we build a theory by those studies?

Alex Questions - Nov. 9

2009-11-08T09:41:00.000-08:00

Q1 – I learned long ago as a student journalist that there is a fine line between accuracy and truth. Perhaps now is the time to learn the fine line between subjectivity and bias. We’ve had the subjectivity discussion several times in class this semester. And again it is raised in the readings. How do we clarify subjective but not biased once and for all?

Q2 –The more I read quantitative work, the more formulaic it now seems to me. There’s good and bad involved in formula. But since the beginning of this class, the “wide-open” nature of qualitative was both intimidating and hard to grasp. Potter’s focus on contextualization, to me, gets to the heart of the matter in terms of the main difference between qualitative and quantitative methods. This reading helps to formulate what had been growing in my head all this time – the “essay” is everything. Is this what our “writing” focus will be?

Q3 – Obviously one of the advantages of formulaic qualitative research is the ability to scan through the tables, glance at the results and get a quick idea of what happened in a particular study. Richardson’s point that qualitative research is in the words can be taken to heart. But doesn’t this “experimental” writing take time and experience?

Q4 – Richardson’s point, that “writing” is the “method of inquiry” sums up qualitative method better than the original Denzin & Lincoln introduction that we read. This is an exciting article in many ways. To me “academic” writing often seems deliberately dry and violates many of the tenets of good writing we learned as journalists. Do journalists make better qualitative researchers because of the writing? (It would seem so.)

Q5 – I think I learned a lot in the focus group I did with Sebastian. We had done some advanced reading. We thought about our research questions. We felt that a focus group was the best way to answer these questions. So the nature of the research and what we wanted to know dictated the method. But even after conducting the focus group, I did not really know what we had until we talked about what we observed and then actually sat down and wrote it up in a way that made sense to us. Is this how it’s supposed to work?

Potter

2009-11-08T09:23:00.001-08:00

The first reading by Potter, Part III, was a thick, uninteresting reading. I had thought that decision making and the way we organize ourselves were more of a natural, almost organic process. For example, the “expectations for data variable” (p. 211) had two choices, b and d, that, at least for me, have sort of come into being all by themselves in different researches. Could we say that all these depend on what we ask? Maybe on how we work?
In any case, I accept that I was naturally biased against the first chapter. I was absolutely ready for chi square, nonsensical-yet-all-important “statistical significance”, a truckload of tables and deviance to NOT pop up in this class, but I guess we need to learn to do a bit of everything when it comes to mixed methods. At least I was happy to see that he threw a few jabs at quantitative writing at the end of the chapter.
It was interesting to read on page 227 the discussion on how “qualitative empirical literature closely resembles what many qualitative theoreticians criticize about the quantitative literature, that is, that the quantitative approach is defective in its assumption that of an ordered reality and a belief that there is an objective process of knowing that reality.” Maybe they (notice I didn’t say “we”) should start looking at subjectivity in different way…
Also, the author was very brave when he accepted that his research did not deal with “non-American” journals. Not dealing with Europeans, for example, makes all the sense in the world. Why would we even look over there when Baudrillard, Eco, Foucault, Lyotard, the recently deceased Lévi-Strauss, Barthes, Saussure and van Djik, just to name a few of the ones we’ve been reading about lately, are so DAMN CLEARLY AMERICAN! Anyway, who the hell cares what the rest of the world thinks?
The second part of the reading, in which I thought he would discuss articles or simply show us how to write “qualitatively”; turned out to be more like a guide on how to write a book. At least the author didn’t turn the whole discussion into the usual “qualitative is just something that’s not quantitative”.
Part II was very thorough in its description and explanation of description, interpretation and explanation. Should our “level” of description have more to do with the questions we asked or with our ability to write? I was surprised, and truly enjoyed reading, the discussion on types of literary criticism.
The author was, again, very brave when he presented the idea of that scholars can “advocate social change” (p. 171). I already asked this in class: can we do it from academia? Should that be a guiding factor when we’re doing research? Doesn’t advocacy utterly destroy any pretense of objectivity? How can we separate ethical advocacy from passionate feelings about something in our research?
Richardson asks “How do we create texts that are vital?” (p. 347). The answer is: you don’t. We can only make a text vital to ourselves and hope that our readers feel the same way about it. A novel is juts words put together until people interpret it, recommend it and loan it until it becomes a best-seller. A vital text about something that we enjoy can bore to death someone else… especially in academia.
As or the rest of the chapter, I guess I only have a few more questions: Where does experimental writing get published? Isn’t a “narrative of the self” (p. 355) more like a literary essay? Where can we find an “ethnographical fictional representation” (p. 356)? Why does the author dance back and forth between postmodernism and poststructuralism? If we have all these ways of writing, why does everyone stick to the same old same old? How do the journals mentioned on page 361 look on your resume of you want to teach journalism?

Sun Ho's Questions - 11/8

2009-11-08T06:54:00.000-08:00

1. This question came up while we were writing our method section of our final project proposal. I'll address this here since our topic of discussion is writing. We had a lot to say about data gathering but not so much about data analysis. Is this common on qualitative research or is it because we chose to conduct focus groups? We wrote that our analysis will be based on grounded theory and categories or themes will be developed as the two researchers review transcripts. That was about three or four sentence-paragraph. I found the same thing from our past readings and other articles that used FG's. So how detailed or long should an analysis part of the method section be? I always thought articles should describe more about their analysis so readers could learn how they did it but they usually jump to their results and discussions, which is more important..?

2. Another thought on elements to be included in a method section. Some articles explain why the chosen method is appropriate for that particular research but others don't. Is this something you would include or exclude depending on how frequently the chosen method is used for a typical research on that topic - like we don't ask why survey and content analysis are used for agenda setting research?

3. Starting on page 183, Potter introduces three degrees of contextualization. This seems to be one of the most important elements of qualitative research. And I found myself putting this in when I wrote essays for assignments. However, once my writing format changed from an essay to a research paper, I felt like my interpretations are too subjective to be included there. Following Potter's definitions, which is the typical or reasonable degree of contextualization to be included in a research paper among the three - strong, low degree, no conceptualization?

4. How can those standards mentioned in chapter 12 be reflected in writing? I see how qualitative researchers put much effort to establish internal and external validity and I think it should be reflected in their final product just as it happens in quantitative research.

5. I liked the Richardson reading because she suggested researchers to open ourselves to experimental writing but also raised some practical issues we have to face by doing it: getting published. Like she mentioned, there are prescribed writing formats (e.g. discouraged use of footnotes, 150-word abstracts, etc.) and her thoughts on the issue is very encouraging. And I do find it exciting and interesting to read those creative ones. However, I still think experimenting with writing styles would be a luxury to graduate students. Am I too pessimistic?

Paul's Questions for 11/9

2009-11-07T17:12:00.000-08:00

Richardson’s reading is very refreshing. He says unlike quantitative work, with its tables and charts, you can’t just scan qualitative research. The meaning is basically in the words. Does it therefore spoil a really well written qualitative piece to include any kind of tables or chart? That’s my inclination, but I know some qualitative work we’ve seen sometimes has more than just words.

If poststructuralism allows qualitative writers to nurture our own voices, then putting ourselves into our work is certainly part of this. But I realize that does not mean writing in first person exclusively. There is a time and place for this, especially when we’re a participant observer, for example. But is it okay to ever write in first person when the text is not about the writer?

Are there specific journals that encourage metaphoric writing, and others that prefer a more “scientific” approach to writing qualitative articles? I definitely want to stray away from the latter!

Whether its metaphoric, experimental, or any other style of qualitative writing, do qualitative researchers typically stick with one style, or does the subject at hand typically dictate that style? When writing a news story, I typically have a particular style, but it’s more pronounced for profile pieces, and almost invisible in spot news coverage. However, my style is always present, just in varying degrees.

Ethnographic fictional representations seem to me to be an extreme way of conducting qualitative research, and I’m not sure I understand this style entirely. However, I will use a hypothetical to make a point in an article, making it clear that it is such. Is this an example of this type of writing, or is it all or nothing?

Yonghwan's Questions

2009-11-01T13:48:00.000-08:00

1. Regarding the politics of research, what seems to be examples of this politics of research (e.g., personality and institutional affiliation) may cause; and what seems to be results of this politics of research? What’s the implication of knowing the politics of research?

2. What could be examples of ethical issues when it comes to conducting various qualitative studies? In other words, one may confront with different ethical issues when doing qualitative research with different qualitative methods. For instance, when we do a participant observation research, to what extent we disguise ourselves in observation setting can be an issue; while others such as discourse/textual/semiotic/ideological analyses may have different issues. What seems to be examples of ethical issues, for instance, of discourse/semiotic/ideological analysis?

3. When we did a group assignment (Newspaper text and photo analysis), I confronted with this kind of issue. One of my group members mentioned that it seems an ethical issue to analyze a news article with a sort of biased interpretation. He contended that the article we analyzed seems pretty balanced and has a significant role in suggesting one of the aspects immigration issue may have; while I interpreted that the news article articulates immigration issue to only limited aspects—economic aspects, and even to low-SES people. Then, is what I did considered an unethical issue or an interpretative biases/flexibility based on my personal background? Or did I wrong, which may mean low validity?

4. As seen, this example may raise another important question, validity of qualitative research. It seems to me that validity and ethical issue conflicts each other in some sense. For example, when we do a participant observation, disguising researcher would be appropriate to get a better validity of the research. Then, in my case, given a raised ethical issue, which was considered too biased, what could be ways of getting higher validity of my interpretation? Mentioning the opposite side as well could be the case?

5. To sum up, what are the validity issues that have been raised in qualitative research the most especially in various qualitative methods; and what seems to be ways of overcoming these issues when conducting qualitative research we, as graduate students, should keep in mind?

Teresa's questions

2009-11-01T12:11:00.000-08:00

Gans’ description of the psychological costs for researchers who conduct participant observation in regard to being dishonest to human subjects made me wonder about the costs that others types of qualitative methods have. For instance, in a focus group, participants know the general topic of interest to the researchers. However, they still don’t know our guiding research questions. Is this deceiving? Does it have a psychological cost? So what are the risks involved for researchers using other techniques beyond participant observation?

Punch advances the position for a more pragmatic approach to qualitative research, for the “get out and do it” perspective. This runs in contrast to Lofland’s position that fieldwork in qualitative research should be done after adequate training, supervision and careful consideration. What are the advantages and disadvantages of each approach?

From the readings I conclude that it seems there is no point in comparing the concept of validity that derives from the positivist approach with the one that derives from qualitative perspectives. The meaning and purpose of these two words is different. While for quantitative and positivist researchers, validity is equated to truthfulness (i.e., making sure we’re measuring what we intent to measure) for qualitative researchers is equated to usefulness (i.e., is it relevant or valid what we’re studying).

The readings consistently repeat that the process by which the ethnography occur must be clearly stated and delineated so the reader can assess it and judge it. Does this disclosure of ourselves (i.e., who we are, our background, etc) apply to other qualitative approaches such as focus groups or textual analysis? Why?

Denzin classified writing styles into three categories: Mainstream realism (i.e., thick descriptions that assume the author can a give an objective accounting of the object being studied), interpretive realism (i.e., the authors insert their own interpretations), and descriptive realism (i.e., rthe author stays out and let the world being described to speak for itself). What is really the difference between the first and the third category?

Marcus' questions

2009-11-01T11:58:00.001-08:00

Q1) Hopf’s comment about the rights of criminals being less important in a society than the rights of average citizens reminded me of a quote by Dostoyevsky, who argued that “A society can be judged by its treatment of its prisoners.” (And by Dostoyevsky, I really mean John Cusack in Con Air, who attributed the quote to – I think – Dostoyevsky; my Russian Lit knowledge is pretty weak, but I think the quote fits well with Hopf’s argument, regardless of who said it) I can understand the urge to analyze such a power structure as a power structure, even with a Marxian analysis, since a prison system clearly functions on a “have” and “have-not” basis; but it’s also not designed to be arbitrary, and it’s intended to be a reverse meritocracy – admittance into the penal system is not ostensibly based on class, but rather on actions. So, why the focus on prisoners, why not analyze the society from the crime itself?

Q2) I think that working in journalism research, it’s easier to grasp what Hopf is talking about regarding anonymity and ethics. Reporters grapple with the same issues all the time, and weird circumstances lead to weird ethical dilemmas; having been there, it’s easier to deal with them as researchers as well. So I’m curious, is our field better adjusted ethically because of that experience? Or is it pretty much the same as other fields?

Q3) I think Punch is being a bit short-sighted when he says that the ideas of “public” and “private” are debatable. One of the things that I liked about government reporting – particularly compared to the cops beat – is that just about everyone involved in government knew what they were getting into, and that as public figures, arguably anything they said was of public interest. I’d say that at least in the ‘States, we’ve got a pretty good idea of what constitutes “public,” and there are plenty of issues that fall clearly into that category; I’d say it’s the “private” part that gets murky, and there’s a subtle difference there.

Q4) The discussion about writing, I thought, was a bit hypocritical. It also made me think of that scene – getting back on the movie train – from Dead Poets Society, where there’s a very structured rubric in a textbook for analyzing and correlating eloquence and impact, and Robin Williams tells everyone to rip out that entire section of the book. Why complain about rubrics, and the burdens of publishing and the rigidity of quantitative research, and then turn around and play the grammar snob? Qualitative research is designed to be flexible, that makes sense – but don’t ask for flexibility and then enforce your own evaluative scale, you know? How do you define, or interpret, “good writing?”

Q5) I also liked the German Ethics Code, and the point about letting participants withdraw after the fact. I’m not sure I’d call it “deception,” though – I’d approach it the way I’ve approached journalism interviews before, with a “I’m being deliberately vague so I don’t put words in your mouth, and I can be more specific when we’re finished.” That’s not really deception, is it? Or am I just trying to split hairs?

Sebastian's questions/comments

2009-11-01T11:25:00.000-08:00

Punch lists several dimensions that shape the “politics of research” and have a significant impact on qualitative studies that are seldom mentioned. These are personality, geographic proximity, researcher’s institutional background, just to name a few. In my opinion, these features apply to quantitative research as well. In fact, it is a reminder of a point I’ve made several times in class before, which is that the whole idea of discussing bias in social scientific research is nonsensical because there is no such a thing. Our personality, our geographic location, our institutional affiliation and many other aspects shape our research interests, questions, objects of study, methods, etc. That we acknowledging or not is something else, but we should stop saying that some research is biased or unbiased, that our research questions are biased or unbiased, that we did this or that in a biased or unbiased way.
In Altheide & Johnson, Laura Nader criticizes the increasingly reductionist concept of ethnography. She asserts, "'ethnography' has been gradually reduced in meaning in recent years and in proportion to its popularity (...) ethnography entails deep immersion and is seldom accomplished in short periods of time. It is a special kind of description, not to be confused with qualitative and descriptive studies." Why does the concept have to fixed? What does she mean by other descriptive studies? What are the pros and cons of fixing boundaries to a methodological approach?
Some authors have been criticized for investigating social groups while they are not part of the group (i.e., did not know Italian, was not an insider to the group studies, did not understand the importance of the family in Italian group life, etc). Why being an insider or "native" turns out to be a requisite for doing research? Why would that be more valuable than observing from outside? Does this mean that whites cannot do research on African American or Asian Americans and vice versa? What are the pros and cons of this insider/outsider dichotomy?
Hopf defines two key principles regarding research ethics in the social sciences: informed consent and damage avoidance. How about others, such as integrity, responsibility, honesty, competence and transparency? Why single out informed consent and preventing harm?
When Hopf argues that “what is not acceptable (…) is that questions of balancing costs against benefits (…) should be left to committees of research ethics, as is partly the case in the United States,” is she referring to IRBs? Or to panels that decide ethical complaints after they have been brought to the attention of an association, such as the ASA?

Intrepretation

2009-11-01T09:28:00.000-08:00

While reading the articles for this week I couldn’t help feeling that we have been posing questions regarding to them since the beginning of the class. In any case, I think a question posed by Hopf more or less sums up what we have all been trying to ask/argue: “Do utilitarian aspects play a decisive role in defining research ethic regulations or is it possible to argue for single deviations from the rules in a utilitarian way, for example with respect to the gain of knowledge? (p. 335) Also, how can we gauge “partial deception” (p. 336)? How can we come up with a set of guiding rules when what we do is something in which agreement over ethical issues is “rarely possible” (p. 339)?
Altheide and Johnson brought us back to the tired idea that ethnographers are “nonobjective” and that qualitative research is “inextricably bound to the contexts and rationales of the researcher” (p. 288) and then they exposed how the positivist approach is now defunct, leaving an open space that the “hyphenation” phenomenon filled.
The discussion about all the types of validity was a tad confusing: aren’t they all interrelated? How much do they truly matter if we are supposed to “remain loyal or true to the phenomena under study, rather than to any particular set of methodological techniques or principles” (p. 290). I agree that “all knowledge is perspectival” (p. 293)… so where can I find the author’s perspective in a quantitative article?
If we try to follow the “topics” discussed on page 296, wouldn’t we end up with a book instead of an article every time? Also, the discussion about tacit knowledge was quite interesting… but I raised a lot of questions. For example, how much tacit knowledge can there be when academia usually works with very specific theories, subjects, etc.? How can we marry interpretation with tacit knowledge?
In academia, who is that “generalized other” (p. 306) for whom our writing is intended?
Denzin says: “Interpretation is and art; it is not formulaic or mechanical” (p. 317). I agree. If representation is “self-presentation” (p. 319), isn’t the act of interpreting similar to getting naked? I loved this chapter!
The discussion abut writing was probably the best one I’ve read so far. In my humble opinion, the structure of a quantitative paper is stressed so much in academia that the writing per se get thrown to the bottom of the list. What we call a “good writer” in academia is generally someone that has published many papers; what would they be called if 100,000 people read their article? Carver had many of his short stories turned into film because the narrative really told a story… how many articles could we say do the same?
I was surprised that, even though the subject of recreation was touched (p. 328), memory and its faulty nature was not discussed. In our memory (and I’m borrowing from writer J.M. Caballero Bonald) things are always seen as better or worse than what they really were: our memory is always tainted by what we expected, feared, etc. While reading this chapter, the idea that we think of ourselves first as researchers and only then as writers came to me. How can we change this?

Yu kun's questions

2009-11-01T08:53:00.000-08:00

In Hopf’s article p 336, “How can it be justified that the personal rights of a criminal should be less respected in sociology than those of an average citizen”? It reminds me the right of a reporter. I am wondering if it is a privilege. The Upper classes (I mean the press or researchers) always make rule beneficial for themselves. The rule was made by the researchers, therefore, it is nature for them to ask more rights than average citizen.

In Altheide & Johnson’s article (p 289-290), they list some problems about validity: VAC VAI VAG VAL VAR VAS. Though they indicated that the criticism on the validity is from the insiders of qualitative approaches, it seems that the positivism also criticize the qualitative research from those perspectives. In addition, though the quantitative research reduces the bias as much as possible, it still has those faults.

Altheide & Johnson indicated the “reflective turn” is from the insiders of the qualitative approach. In fact, there were a lot of debates between the qualitative approach and the quantitative approach. Did the “reflective turn” mean the qualitative approach adjusted its route to follow the step of the quantitative?

In addition, those faults indicated by the authors also exist in the quantitative approach. Do they believe that the symbol has more validity than the text? In my personal opinion, I don’t agree with that.

In p 296, “Even the most ardent social science wordsmiths are at a loss to transform nuances, subtleties, and the sense of the sublime into symbols.” Then Altheide & Johnson proposed the concept “ tacit knowledge” and exemplify Harper’s case using photography to study a local craftsman. However, in my opinion, it depends on different situations to use different communication tools. In this case, photograph can increase the validity of this study. It doesn’t mean that photograph can increase the validity in every case. In most cases, the text is more capable of conveying the meaning than the image.

Alex Questions - Nov. 2

2009-11-01T08:31:00.000-08:00

Q1 - Hopf, (2004) writes about the general issues behind the rules of ethics laws and policies, and how exceptions can be made but must be justified. At one point, Hopf seems to be splitting hairs, especially when it comes to the issue of complete disclosure and how some temporary deception sometimes needs to be employed. This appears to be acceptable. But isn’t what Hopf really talking about is keeping things from the research subject that could lead to biases in their response? And if so, why then would temporary deception even be an ethical issue?

Q2 - Hopf, (2004) - So what are the confidentiality laws today in terms of researchers and their data? Can courts compel researchers to turn over their data and field notes? Can “anonymity” be “guaranteed” or only promised “to the extent of the law?”

Q3 –I found refreshing in Altheide & Johnson, (1998) the lines written where ours is an interpretive world rather than a literal one. This opens validity up to greater academic possibilities. But is there a fear that this can be taken too far? Afterall within a certain point of view, or within very specific contexts, almost anything can be considered valid.

Q4 – Denzin writes about sense-making, representation, legitimation, and desire. And I follow it all well… except desiring. Can you explain this better than Denzin tried to in the two and a half paragraphs? (Sorry, no long setup for this question. I just don’t rightly understand what is meant by desiring in the writing process.)

Q5 – Denzin’s position that a researcher cannot make sense of his or her field notes and truly understand what happened until he or she sits down and writes it makes a lot of sense to me. In the last couple of assignments, we would examine the news program or article, talk about what we saw, but at that point, all we had was some sort of text, some notes, and an assortment of ideas and concepts that have little to no relationship until the writing process puts it all together. Is this how it is supposed to work? If so, why does it seem that most qualitative researchers work alone?

Sun Ho's Questions - 11/2

2009-11-01T07:29:00.000-08:00

Week 10: November 2 – Politics & Ethics, Interpretation & Validity

1. Before I go onto the readings: It seems like ethical issues are more difficult to solve in qualitative research compared to quantitative methods. What could be the reason? Like Punch concluded, "there is no consensus or unanimity on what is public and private, what constitutes harm, and what the benefits of knowledge are" (p 94). If this applies to both qualitative and quantitative research, why are these readings assuming that it is much more difficult for qualitative research to deal with this?

2. Hopf article includes a paragraph about the problems of participant observation Gans stated: "he observes even when he does not appear to be doing so,...he asks questions with covert purposes of which his respondents are likely to be unaware...In short, the observer is acting dishonestly." And what is a consequence of this? Observers' feelings of guilt. Hopf emphasizes the importnace of informed consent by mentioning this and I felt the same way when I carried out assignments 1 and 2. While I felt like I was "spying on them (p. 336)" as a participant observer, running a focus group was much more comfortable because participants were already informed about what I was doing and why. I wonder how others overcame this problem of "psychological risks" coming from "partial deception."

3. On page 338, Hopf mentions about problems of publication. After looking at the Springdale case, topics covered in our area of research don't seem to cause much problem compared to those in other fields. What are some of the typical problems we may face in future research?

4. While Punch article was very practical, Altheide & Johnson reading is very conceptually oriented. They map out issues about interpretive validity by laying out five dimensions of qualitative research. Although it provides us with a firm framework of principles of the ethnographic work, following these principles, however, seems extremely difficult. How do we do that considering there are inevitable and unavoidable problems at the same time?

5. Denzin argues, "interpretation is an art that cannot be formalized." But then like he said, where do we place importance when interpreting news text; lived experience vs the point of view of the Other?

Paul's Questions for 11/2

2009-10-31T14:22:00.000-07:00

Paul’s Questions for 11-2

In the Hopf reading, the section on the principle of informed consent made me think of the observation Alex and I did at the Austin High School football game at the beginning of the semester. Again, this was a group setting with thousands of people there, unaware of our plans to observe. The German Code of Ethics apparently wants “temporarily deceived participants” to be given the chance to withdraw from participation after the fact. I understand that in certain cases you can’t explain the true purpose of an observation ahead of time, because it might spoil things. But in a public setting, what is ethical when you unintentionally recognize someone. Whether in Germany, or anywhere else, are they fair game to identify if relevant to the research?

The so-called “Springdale case” was interesting to me as a working journalist, because my news director has always maintained that we must do our best to minimize harm. That’s not to say that harm won’t be done. In fact, my news director argues that someone is inevitably harmed by a news story, so it’s our obligation to minimize that harm as much as possible through the words that we use and the images that we show. But ultimately it is up to journalists, or at least their editors, to make the determination of weighing this harm against the greater good. In the Springdale case, the participants were given fictitious names and a fictitious setting, yet were easily identified due to their roles. Even so, it was published for scientific progress. In the spirit of what my news director believes, is this what Hopf means in terms of research when stating that it’s not acceptable for committees of research ethics to make such publication decisions?

The Altheide and Johnson reading states that analytic realism is “based on the view that the social world is an interpreted world, not a literal world.” It also says that reflexivity means the observer is “part and parcel of the setting, context, and culture” being observed and represented. Isn’t this the case when journalists approach a story? While the reporter may not be part of the story that’s seen or read, clearly his or her view of the world has had an influence in the final product. What is observed may not be what was intended. A person arrested for a crime who is wearing a Chicago White Sox baseball cap, for instance, may be described as a baseball fan, when in fact is only wearing the cap because of gang colors – the interpreted world versus the literal world. At least ethnographers do, or should, strive to address the problems of validity, as this reading describes, “with straightforward and honest integrity.”

Also in the area of validity, I liked the description of ethnographers in the Altheide and Johnson article. It says that most ethnographers focus on the processes subjects use to create activities, and the established order involved. The article also states ethnographers use descriptions of language, nuances and routines as their foundation in reporting their findings. To me, it’s like comparing information in an encyclopedia on a topic to a news story on the same topic. If the topic is how surgery is done, for example, the encyclopedia may provide a step-by-step description, but the news story would detail the decision-making, routines, and feelings involved. Is this a fair analogy?

Hammersley (1992) is quoted in the Altheide and Johnson reading, stating that “research is a process of inquiry which is collective not individual,” and that assessing ethnography is more about “what we intend by ethnography.” Couldn’t the same thing really be said about quantitative analysis as well? There may be numbers and statistics used to make a case, but really, isn’t the method developed for both quantitative and qualitative research based on our individual beliefs?

Yonghwan's Questions

2009-10-25T11:52:00.000-07:00

1. We did a group assignment (News Program Analysis), a discourse analysis of 60 minutes reporting a sort of unknown prison called Supermax in which inmates are terrorists and gangs. We found that each person had different interpretations on latent meaning and implicit patterns of the text. This may emphasis the interpretive position of the researcher when it comes to “reading” a text. Then, what seems to be differences of positions they (literature) refer? Individual background? Stereotypes or bias? How can we explain what makes different interpretations?

2. Turned to triangulation for showing a validity of the research, in our case, it turned out two researchers showed different analysis or interpretation on a same text. Then does this mean a low validity of the study or a flexibility of qualitative research?

3. It seems to me that a discourse analysis and a metaphorical analysis are closely related each other. What’s the relationship between these two analyses? What’s similarity and difference between these two analyses? When I did a group assignment, I found several metaphors such as “a clean version of hell” and “the perfect of isolation.” And I interpreted that these metaphors may employ/indicate a powerful system of the US for maintaining the US security. Is this making sense?

4. It has been stated, which is interesting to me, that “Foucault’s theory of the social order, discourse practices enact and reinforce dominance relations, by which social position, relations, and identity are constructed”; and “while cognitive metaphor research focuses on isolating the governing type of discourse material, and explains metaphor’s unique role in conceptualizing the social order, Foucault’s model offers a more comprehensive explanation of the discourse processes by which the social order is established and maintained” (in Ana’s piece). In which sense they are different? What could be examples of these two models/approaches?

5. I am still not clear on what are the differences of thematic analysis, critical discourse analysis, ideological analysis, genre analysis, and cultural analysis in terms of interpretative strategies? More practically when it comes to doing research, which research question or topics are most appropriate for each analysis? (which I asked last week) In addition, what seems to be examples of semiotic and Marxist analysis?—anyone who shows examples of research questions and appropriate topics, and method for each analysis?

Sungsoo's Questions

2009-10-25T11:38:00.000-07:00

Q1. I think that Eco’s notion, “if sign can be use to tell the truth, they can also be used to lie (Berger, p13),” elucidates one of the strong point of the semiotics. It enables us to catch the nature of symbol manipulations by the oppressive power. Dictators and its friends always tried to mask their oppressive nature by producing images and rhetoric.

Q2. Berger suggests useful ways of interpreting the television grammar by showing the way how camera works to convey its images: fade in, fade out, pan down and pan up etc (p 31). As Berger notes that semiotics analysis need to focus on the TV program. I see many possibilities of research in this area.

Q3. My answer to Berger’s question in Ch2, “each of us has to decide whether Marxism still makes sense” is that Marxist perspectives have fundamental limitations to analyze the period we are living: it is based and developed in the early stage of capitalism, mass production and mass consumption. There is no class conflict or class consciousness without class.

Q4. According to Van Dijk, the central issue of critical discourse analysis is reveal how discourse plays in reproducing social dominance: how hierarchical social relations are enacted, sustained, and legitimated through discourse. However some critics argue, “How can we explain Hollywood movies that usually describe “the rich” as greedy and selfish, “the core class” as conspiracy-oriented snob?”

Q5. It seems to me that neither Herman and Chomsky’s views on media, news media marginalize dissent and allow the government and dominant private interests to get their messages across to the public, nor Entman’s argument, corporate-owned media have strong power to organize the public opinion, have explanatory power on Internet age we are living now (Santa Ana, Section 6). They seem to reiterate old Marxist’s perspectives: media as an apparatus of ruling class or media owned by ruling class sing a song of their own. We cannot say that corporate-owned news media support the interest of military-industrial complex. Although some corporate-owned news media are supporting conservatives, there are many news media owned by corporate company or family that do not support conservatives.

Marcus' Questions

2009-10-25T10:44:00.001-07:00

Q1) I thought Ana’s “Brown Tide Rising” was an interesting read, and in a way, it made me think of those ‘chicken and the egg’ scenarios in media research – did the media begin referring to Hispanic immigration with storm metaphors, and then politicians picked it up, or were the media responding to language used in the public already? It reminded me of agenda setting theory, which struggles with the same question of timing.

Q2) It also made me wonder about terminology used in stories on actual severe weather. It’s been a really calm hurricane season – which is great, don’t get me wrong – and Austin is usually pretty temperate, so maybe we just don’t see those stories very often, but what words do the media use to describe actual floods and storms? Is it the same language used to describe immigration, or does it just seem like it should use those classic weather terms, and it really isn’t? It’s one of those questions that sounds like a no brainer at first, but it might not be after all.

Q3) I think using Sherlock Holmes as an example for semiotic analysis works perfectly – particularly since there’s a new Holmes movie coming out in December. The plot is, of course, preposterous, and Hollywood has taken a clear departure from the old Arthur Conan Doyle stories, but for at least a few years, when today’s kids hear “Sherlock Holmes” they’re going to think of Robert Downey Jr., not the hounds of the Baskervilles. Another example of different images meaning different things to different people, and the same iconic image being used for very different ends.

Q4) I liked Berger’s usage of Agatha Christie to explain semiotics, and I liked the idea of decoding a mystery as an example of decoding images and meanings. But there’s a critical assumption there that, I think, goes unsaid – it assumes that readers can “crack the case,” so to speak, and there are plenty of mysteries out there where it’s just impossible for the audience to do so. Viewers may be able to solve Murder on the Orient Express based on the clues the story gives out, but what about the Usual Suspects, or Reservoir Dogs? Or even the new Sherlock Holmes, which, once again, is preposterous? Stores aren’t always designed to be unraveled, so is there a sense that some images cannot be definitively decoded?

Q5) I thought Berger’s commentary on Marxism made some sense, particularly his comment that “each of us has to decide whether Marxism still makes sense.” And I think much of it has to do with the loaded baggage – much of it appropriate for semiotic analysis – that terms like Marxism and Communism carry; your average American is going to associate both with the Soviet Union and/or Russia, and possibly its cranky judo-master of a leader. Those words aren’t going to trigger concepts of power relationships or academic analysis; more often than not, it’ll be images of nuclear –nucular? - weapons. And for those few of us that have experience with company towns, like me, that bear some resemblance to classic socialist economic systems, the words have further different meanings.

To comment on Sebastian’s post, I don’t think it has to do with “American exceptionalism;” I’m not even really sure how exceptional most Americans think we are, since there’s a difference between loud patriotism and honest-to-God egocentrism. Our politicians, maybe not, but that’s another story. But I do think we have a unique perspective on Marxist ideologies, rooted largely in the Cold War, that gives us a different interpretation on Marxism than scholars from other nations – but that’s not exceptionalism, that’s classic semiotics.

That being said, I can fully understand the other perspective as well – American culture, and academic ideas, are very prolific, and we do mass produce both for wide export. So I can understand why we would be considered dominant, and why any ideas we don’t favor could feel repressed; I just don’t see it that way. I think yes, we tend to be a bit hegemonic, but I don’t think we’re actively trying to quash Marxist ideology in an academic sense; we have our own reasons for not embracing the ideology, and the two are incidental to me.

Is this blog a metaphor?

2009-10-25T09:27:00.000-07:00

As I said last week, it seems like we can never have enough explanations about the signifier and the signified: people will get confused no matter what. And speaking of confusion, I think I agree with the idea that “everything can be analyzed semiotically” (p. 5); why didn’t Berger offer up examples of how the idea can be “questionable”? In my humble opinion, using Sherlock Holmes as an example to explain signifiers and signifieds was brilliant. Likewise, Eco’s work was explained in a very simple way and had very good examples. Isn’t propaganda the art of creating signs that lie beautifully?
Finding Baudrillard here was a treat. A brilliant and misunderstood thinker, Baudrillard´s ideas must hold the record for being the ones most taken out of context. As usual, hyperreality was only granted a few paragraphs and the three branches that grew from it were totally ignored. Why is this? Why can’t people realize that Baudrillard was very right in what he was pointing out?
I also had a small problem with the fact that Berger discussed “codes” (p. 15-16) without ever mentioning culture. Thankfully, he then mentions culture as soon as he begins his discussion on connotation and denotation. The perfect example of this is given on page 27 when it is stated that: “In order for parody to be effective, audience members must be familiar with the original text…”
For my thesis, I used something that could be compared to Propp´s functions (along with some Foucault), but I don’t think so much space should’ve been dedicated to his work in this chapter…especially after hyperreality was dispatched with by a couple of paragraphs. Could it be said that Berger has more of a quantitative mind?
It was great to see Ana clearing the idea of “socially engaged scholarship” (p. 17). It was also interesting to see that the author brought back the idea that “power-defining discourse practices become so automatic that people do not notice them as they go about their everyday lives” (p.18). In that case, why is discourse analysis never presented as a way to understand ourselves? Why has it become so specialized (i.e. working on a single text)? Should we blame academia for not making discourse analysis available to the general public?
Ana also writes about how public discourse reproduces “societal dominance relations” (p. 21). If we take this idea and the one discussed in the previous paragraph, could we say that the main difference between the public and the “powers” is intent? Doesn’t all this come back to cultivation theory and, in some degree, to a hypodermic-needle idea in which power creates a discourse that gets absentmindedly repeated by the masses?
I agree that metaphor is way more than “poetic color and superficial ornamentation” (p. 26) in most cases, but it can also be used just for that: decoration. The thing that we really need to pay attention to is the fact that the decoration is usually used to paint over something else, to hide true meaning. Also, the discussion about “love as madness” was interesting, but doesn’t it prove that even metaphors can become overused morsels of discourse?
It was interesting to see that the author used “unpacking” (p. 36) to talk about decoding; did he “mean” something by it? In my humble opinion, the first part of the chapter explains metaphors in everyday life pretty well, so much so that the discussion about metaphors in law and social policy were a tad boring and long.
The author calls mass media “undeniably powerful” (p. 50) (he says they “have tremendous power” in the same page) in his discussion of it. Nevertheless, access is mentioned only in passing: should we assume that he expected us to know something about the trickle-down effect of mass media? Last but not least, the discussion in which he included Martín-Barbero (whom I was very glad to see mentioned here) was not complete because Stuart Hall was missing. A conversation about mass media, homogeneity (or lack there of) and culture cannot be had without Hall’s three decoding schemes. So why did Ana wait so long before finally bringing Hall into the discussion?

Alex Questions - Oct. 25

2009-10-25T09:16:00.000-07:00

I was a communication studies major for two years before I switched to RTF as an undergrad and remember being exposed to semiotics in the 1980s. And I’ve always accepted this expanded definition of “text” in semiotics to include all kinds of signs, symbols, TV programs, etc. and how they comprise something of a language in and of themselves. But then this connection to linguistics starts to lose me a little. Is a background in linguistics really all that necessary to do good semiotic examinations?

It’s clear that Marxist theory can still be valuable in terms of critical approaches to examination media as manipulation, etc. But the themes of a conflict in class systems, I think, still complicate modern approaches to media criticism. Is there a post-Marxist approach or theory emerging into modern media critiquing that does not attempt to view everything into a dichotomy of class struggle?

I found the Murder on the Orient Express chapter enjoyable reading. And I can see the value of it as a required reading assignment as an example of analysis. But was it textual analysis? Discourse analysis? Semiotic analysis? A bit of all of the above? I ask because there were times that I did not feel I was reading an academic chapter so much as reading a story about a popular story.

Otto Santa Ana evoked Sweetser in describing polysemy as homonyms with distinct meaning, using the example of “over” (p. 30). So I understand that the use of a word takes on distinct meanings depending on the context and use of the word. Is this one way of approaching metaphor? That is, analyzing the distinctions of meaning based on context? Or am I misunderstanding polysemy?

It’s hard for me to read a work like Santa Ana’s Brown Tide Rising without getting worked up. I guess it’s too real to me not only as a Latino but also as a journalist… one of a small group of national Latino journalists at that. I am particularly sensitive to language, in particular. As I was re-reading this chapter (I read the book when it first came out) I started thinking about recent issues like new Supreme Court judge Sonia Sotomayor, and how her “wise Latina” comments were taken out of context and how news outlets like FOX insisted on mispronouncing her name as Soto – mayor. I always felt something insidious was behind that deliberate mispronunciation and it makes sense in the context of this book and chapter. I don’t really have a question but this observation. Is it possible for a researcher to be too close to a subject that subjectivity starts to get lost? When I read Santa Ana, I personally feel he is preaching to the choir.

Teresa's questions

2009-10-25T08:51:00.001-07:00

1. It seems that mastering a language is necessary for conducting a semiotic analysis. For ESL people, this represents a huge barrier. Are there any examples of semiotic analyses conducted by non-native speakers? From what I could gather, I saw no example of this, which I find it amusing and discouraging at the same time.

2. Berger mentions that Marxist scholars face the danger of knowing the answers before asking the questions. I wonder whether any deductive approach to science faces the same problem: we have a preconceived idea of what is going on and we conduct our research study to demonstrate that this is or isn’t so. If several studies replicate an initial finding, the results become a theory. Does Berger’s critique really apply to Marxist theory only or to the deductive approach in general?

3. Discourse analysis can be approached from two different perspectives: (1) as a linguistic practice (e.g., van Dijk) and as a social practice (e.g., Foucault). In practice, how these two approaches are manifested in a research study or analysis?

4. In order to conduct an ideological analysis, the researcher should be immersed or deeply understand that ideology, so as to make sense of the codes and symbols that reflects the ideology in the text. But if the researcher is so immersed in that culture or ideology, how he/she can question assumptions that became natural or taken for granted? What’s a good practice to follow before doing an ideological analysis?

5. When Santa Ana talks about “the media” he means “mainstream media.” The advent of the digital media represents greater possibilities for the creation of alternative sources and voices; therefore, what are the consequences for the representation of marginalized or underrepresented groups? Does the creation of more alternative media diversify the hegemonic representation of certain groups or they become mere echo chambers of the mainstream media? Also, given that many of these alternative media have allowed the expression of polarizing views, I wonder whether the representation of these groups improves or worsens.

Sebastián's questions 10/25

2009-10-25T08:42:00.000-07:00

Within textual analysis, we can adopt a discourse, an ideological or a metaphoric approach. What are the boundaries between these different approaches? All of them seem to be strongly interrelated. For example, through discourse analysis we are searching for latent themes or ideas that organize the discourse. In order to become meaningful, however, these latent principles must refer to shared ideologies. On the other hand, many of these latent issues become manifest in the discourse through the use of metaphors.

Santa Ana seems to place so much power in the media that he reminded me of propaganda theory and the bullet theory of media effects. I agree that if we are going to conduct a textual or content analysis of media representations we have to be convinced (or, at least, convince others) that the media are powerful so as to justify the importance of research and our findings. But if we focus on media messages only and not on audience responses, don’t we risk overstating the potential power of messages? Isn’t this too much of a media-centric approach? If so, what are the risks of becoming media-centric?

We learn that in semiotic analysis oppositional relationships between concepts is crucial. Concepts don’t have a meaning per se but in relation to other terms, and this relation is always on some topic that connects them. However, I can see that there are several dimensions on which apparently oppositional concepts can be related. Taking the example of rich versus poor, the topic may be wealth, but also a number of other things: information, education, leisure time, health, and –dare I say it?— happiness. How does one make the case for a topic as the connecting theme between concepts, when it may be that several of them apply? Does this matter at all?

I have some questions for semioticians: From a communication perspective, which types of research questions are better addressed through semiotics? If everything is a sign, does that mean that semiotics is a method to study the whole human experience? If the appropriation of signs is what drives advertising, how does this idea apply to news consumption, that is, what does news consumption signify?

On a minor note: I was particularly attracted by Berger admitting the resistance of U.S. scholars to deal with “foreign” ideas, such as semiotics and Marxism. I wonder the role that American exceptionalism plays in explaining this resistance. Perhaps there is a Marxist explanation: the U.S. is the dominant class, hence foreign ideas are seen as, literary, second-class.

Sun Ho's Quesetions - 10/26

2009-10-25T06:00:00.000-07:00

Week 9: October 26 – Semiotic, Marxist & Metaphorical Analysis

1. In chapter 1, Berger (2005) wrote about semiotic analysis of television. Although my group's assignment wasn't grounded on semiotic analysis, there was one thing I kept thinking about while writing up my analysis and Berger also mentions about it in the chapter:

"...in its [semiotic analysis'] concern for the relationship of elements and production of meaning in a text, it ignores the quality of the work itself" (p. 34).

He says it may be like "judging a meal by the quality of the ingredients, without any concern for how the food was cooked or how it tasted like." For example, see how the signifier and signified are defined when camera work and editing techniques are examined: e.g. pan down (signifier) - power, authority (signified); cut (signifier) - simultaneity, excitement (signified). It indeed is exciting to look at the "ingredients" but after a while you think, okay what was the meal again? How was it cooked? Does it taste good? I completely agree and would like to think about some of the solutions to it.

2. Berger concludes chapter 2 by saying, "ultimately, each of us has to decide whether Marxism still makes sense...if not, he or she should approach media analysis from another viewpoint" (p. 70). Interesting to see this part where he recognizes the primacy of individual subjectivity when talking about Marxist analysis..!

3. Berger starts chapter 5 by explaining the process of code-breaking in these analyses using Agatha Christie's work, Murder on the Orient Express: "All kinds of signs and significations are observable, but the connections among them are not obvious. Once we see how they are related and 'break the code' the mystery is solved" (p. 143). As an example, the author examines the story in multiple dimensions including oppositions, social and political dimensions of class vs communality of interest. I guess my thoughts are going back to our conversation last week about interpreting one's grandmother's activities as feminist or not. In journalism and mass communication research, I think we need to be more careful in assembling the codes and making sense of the meanings - but what makes our analyses more powerful when we deal with news programs?

4. Ana (2002) provides a great framework on topics of metaphor and public opinion. Methods and examples included in section 7 was particularly interesting. However, the author once compares journalistic writing with fiction writing about similar political topics and concludes that "the metaphors in newstexts are relatively underdeveloped stylistic devices." Now can journalistic writing be compared to fiction writing in these analyses?

5. Faux & Kim (2006) suggest a multileveled dialectical analysis for examination of photographic images. I really enjoyed reading the first two sections, layering of the image and dialectical perspectives. However, after reading the methods section, I had to read again the above two parts to find out how their method matches the concept of multileveled dialectical analysis. Is it only me who wanted to hear more about their method?!

Paul's Questions for 10/26

2009-10-23T07:00:00.000-07:00

Paul’s Questions for 10/26

If signs, according to Saussure, “have meaning because of relations, and the basic relationship is oppositional,” aren’t there exceptions to this? For example, if an airplane is the “topic,” then one set of oppositional “concepts,” I suppose, is fly and crash. But couldn’t you associate an airplane with travel and a hobby, for instance? This may be a stretch, but does the topic always have to have opposing concepts to be semiotic in nature? Another example: a Volvo represents wealth, but also reliability. Or is it simply a matter of looking for oppositional concepts to really make semiotics insightful, as far as Saussure is concerned?

The Berger chapter on semiotics states that associations change, and we have to be on our toes to catch those changes. For instance, I look at how air travel has changed. Early on it was associated with glamour, and today it is more of a chore that’s potentially dangerous in the wake of 9-11. But I’m curious to know if these associations changed based on not only time, but also age, or a generational gap. My Palm Pre means a “great calendar” to me, but to my 8-year-old son Josh, it represents more games to play.

When it comes to the idea of material culture and semiotics (Berger, pg. 11), it seems to me that the researcher must be a historian of sorts when it comes to considering body ornaments and meaning. A tattoo, for instance, seems to have been something the fringe of society would get, but today has become more commonplace. And this is from my perspective as a middle-aged white male who is an American. But a young person doing the same research may look at a tattoo the way I look at wearing a wristwatch – something everyone may do if they choose. Another tattoo example involves a female co-worker of mine in her 30s who has lots of tattoos. She got them when she was a Marine, which seems to be part of their culture. Yet those who did not know that she used to be a Marine may mistake her for, perhaps, a biker. Don’t you have to be very careful using material culture in this type of research?

The area of music and sound effects in semiotic analysis hit close to home as a television journalist. It seems that all of my past news directors, and my present one, all discourage the use of music and sound effects, and this area of our reading provides a tangible area of research to, I think, back up their reasoning. Well-written news stories should convey the true meaning of a story, without these artificial aids. Let the facts speak for themselves, right? However, my former news directors, and current one, also allowed for exceptions in long-form stories such as documentaries and series – but only when used sparingly and appropriately. For example, providing historical background, one might use music from that era. However, I’m also very much aware that using inappropriate sound bites, or poor writing, can also mislead much like the use of music and sound effects. They all can be used to communicate lies, as Eco points out.

If, as Levi-Strauss describes, syntagmatic analysis reveals manifest meaning and paradigmatic analysis reveals latent meaning, isn’t this an ideal way to examine a television news story? If, in this type of analysis, the researcher is more concerned about what a character “means” rather than what he “does,” it seems to me that it’s worth exploring. Often times, an individual viewer might find latent meaning from a story that was not intended by the reporter. For instance, doing a feature story on one school’s mascot is intended as a cute profile of a hard-working teenager, but may be misinterpreted as endorsing that school over its rival, because the rival’s mascot was not also featured. This is a simplistic example, but to me points out the usefulness of such research to prepare working journalists for this possibility. A harder news example is when the photograph of Barack Obama wearing Middle Eastern clothing was spread during the campaign. Conceivably a reporter could have used this image to show his diversity, but a viewer took it to mean he was a Muslim, and therefore a terrorist. This is an unfair connection (Muslim-terrorist), but one that was made by many Americans. Of course, in this example, the photograph was actually spread by political enemies and used in this light by news reporters.

Yonghwan's Questions

2009-10-18T17:28:00.000-07:00

Week 8: October 19 – Qualitative Content Analysis – Discourse & Ideological

1. It has been stated that analyzing media content was no longer understood as objectively examining or collecting data but as a “reading”; and this term highlighted the interpretive position of the researchers. Then what seems to be the interpretive position of the researchers? Quantitative research position vs. qualitative position? Can researchers’ demographic factors also be the case?

2. Continued to the previous question, it seems that even critical researchers whose research perspectives are generally similar may show different results of textual analysis with a same content due to the interpretive position of the researchers. For example, researchers with feminist theory and researchers with Marxist’s theory may have different focus on the content and show different results of the analysis because of different theoretical frameworks. It seems to me that this is one of the advantages of qualitative research, which is flexibility or openness. However, it seems very important to have valid and appropriate theoretical frameworks to “read” text. Then what seems to be theoretical frameworks or tool for textual analysis? What kinds of theoretical frameworks or tools have been used for this? For example, when conducting ideological analysis, what can be possible ideologies applying to analyzing text (other than elite vs. mass; racism; imperialism etc, which have been traditional ideologies)?

3. It has been stated that cultural studies or textural analysis “acknowledged the autonomy of cultural practices or objects as signifiers in their own right, independent of the intentions of the authors and producers or reception of the audience.” (Fursich, 2008, p. 240). I am little confused with this statement. What’s meant by this statement and what seem to be advantages of noticing this argument in terms of doing textual analysis?

4. It seems to me that textual analysis and framing perspectives may have similarity in a sense that textual analysis allows the researcher to discern latent meaning, but also implicit patterns, assumptions and omissions of a text; and framing also touches on how realities and news frames are constructed. Other than numbers, what seems to be differences of textual analysis and framing perspectives in terms of reading text?

5. What are the differences of thematic analysis, critical discourse analysis, ideological analysis, genre analysis, and cultural analysis in terms of interpretative strategies? More practically when it comes to doing research, which research question or topics are most appropriate for each analysis?

Week 7: October 12 – Design, Process, Evidence & Analysis

1. When I conducted a focus group interview, I was wondering what is the best way of moderating the interview. I sometimes felt myself talking too much about the topic and interrupted participants; and I was worried about how my behaviors affect what participants want to talk and behave during the interview, which may affect the results of the study. What’s appropriate role of the researchers in terms of their moderating role?

2. I’m not familiar with retrospective studies and (from my understanding,) I haven’t seen that kind of studies. What seems to be examples of retrospective studies and what could be appropriate topics for retrospective studies?

3. What are the differences between qualitative research and quantitative research in conducting longitudinal studies? In quantitative research, longitudinal studies are conducted mainly to demonstrate causality between variables. What seems to be the cases for longitudinal studies in qualitative research and what is that for?

4. Regarding generalization, it has been stated that “whether generalization should be permissible or not within the qualitative approach is a debate that will not likely be resolved given the strongly held beliefs of the scholars on each side. So it is best to accept the range of beliefs. However, once a scholar establishes his or her position, we as readers can check to make sure that their beliefs as reflected in their design support the level of generalization in their research” (Potter, p. 133), which seems interesting to me. A major issue concerning generalization is sampling. Different from quantitative research, qualitative research’s sampling is rather purposive or convenient as for access issue, instead of random sampling or national sample. Then what seems to be ways of generalization in qualitative research other than representative sampling?

5. What are the differences of semiotics/semiology and discourse analysis? It seems to me that they are closely related each other in that the social and ideological dimensions of language can be the concept of connotation, which is a second-order signifying system, uses the denoted sign and attaches another meaning to it. What seems to be each case’s research topics/questions in communication research respectively? How they differently applied to communication research?

Sungsoo's Questions

2009-10-18T12:29:00.000-07:00

Questions (10/18)

Q1. As Stuart Hall says in Grossberg interview, modernism and post-modernism are essentially and wholly based on western constructs. How can the people who do not have experience of modernity or Society that have not reached to the modernity be analyzed by the perspective of postmodernism?

Q2. In these context postmodernists are based on the perspective of linear and developmental historical assumptions: modernism and postmodernism in time series. This character seems to let modernist to have a kind of historical goal: criticize and overcome the capitalistic oppression.

Q3. As Marcus notes (p509), the “hackers’ may have produced some of meanings such “nobleness,” “creativity,”, or their anti-institutional logic overwhelms the possibility of this objection being given legitimate voice in the early 1990s, is it still in effective today?

Q4. Fursich’s suggestion on text-only analysis that we need more flexible research method seems to me very interesting articles. I agree on his notion that textual analysis has to evaluate media content in its own right as a creative (and often collaboratively-produced) moment in the circuit of culture often beyond the intentions of the actual producers. Accordingly, media content is not just raw material that can only be authenticated in specific audience readings (p 246). I think that traditional cultural studies can be fall into the fallacy that the media running by capitalist have absolute power over the audience: Owell’s Big Brother or Hobbs’ modern version of Leviathan.

Q5. As van Dijk notes, most of our knowledge and beliefs about the world derives from news reports. However not all information that enables us to deal with the reality comes from media: we are living in reality, that is, we interact with the nature and society, not just reading or viewing or surfing. Many deviants come from the information-controlled country such as Soviet in the past or North Korea today say that people do not believe government-running media, maybe only media they can read or view, it show the limit of the media: media is not all-mighty.

Questions (10/11)

Q1. Potter points out that it is important for researchers to maintain marginality- a distance between themselves and that what is being studied. However he notes that it cannot be answered in general manner that which way is better than others. He just shows three available options: passive observer, active participant, and active observer (p 102~103). In my opinion, the stance which the researchers choose affects the conclusion. So we need established standard for choosing adequate research activity to obtain validity of qualitative research.

Q2. Potter notes that qualitative approach essentially relies on three types of evidence-gathering methods: document examination, interview, and observation (p 95). Some qualitative works which based on document examination argue that their researches are analyzing macro level. How can these kinds of research be justified?

Q3. Regarding to researcher identification (p 100~101), can deception be justified in term of academic ethic?

Q4. Potter notes that good conceptual leverage lies in the correspondence between evidence and conclusions (p 129). How about the researches of the critical scholars who usually use a high level of inference, such as Schiller who argues broad changes in culture as a result of corporate control of media or Meehan who argues that the industries are only providing “artifacts” that are designed to assemble the consumerist cast for measurement and sale? Do they use adequate conceptual leverage?

Q5. In chapter 9, Potter introduces the 20 possible methods analysis in qualitative approach. His conclusion is that method is tool so they acquire their value according to how useful they are in helping the researcher move from evidence to conclusions. In my opinion, the methods tend to decide conclusion, so Potter should have been more critical to deal with each methods: what is strong and what is weak point of each methods.

Teresa's qs

2009-10-18T11:37:00.000-07:00

Last week

In the chapter on data gathering, Potter includes in the classification of researcher identification the possibility of being identified as member of the group but not as a researcher. Also in the classification on sampling, Potter also includes as a category no information on evidence selection. By providing categories for the first and for the second the author legitimizes what for me is unethical (in the first case) and poor work (in the second).

Semiotic analysis is going beyond the study of textual signs. For example, there are studies that focus on the signifying behavior of “outsiders” (e.g., drug users and criminals). Can behaviors and people’s characteristics also be considered signs? I would like to know more about this semiotic analysis and where it is going.

I was pleased to read Flick's observations that requiring theory development to
qualitative research is sometimes an excessive burden. When I read most journal
submission guidelines in communication, theory construction is always regarded as
paramount. Yet, there are other, equally important goals for research, such as
application or replication. Of course, for the theory-oriented researchers, it is
sometimes a burden to think about the practical or policy implications of their theories. But if we are to become a field of relevance in the social sciences (esp. if we want to receive more funding and grants!) then we should spend as much effort on theory development as in application of our research.

Flick discusses different research designs, among them case studies. As any other aspect of a research project, the choice of what case to study should follow a consideration of the research question. But I still wonder if the choice of case studies should focus on "exceptional" or "unexceptional" cases. On the one hand, "unexceptional" cases seem to me a good choice if one is trying to analyze in depth a unit that is representative of a larger population or trend. For instance, studying how a local community newspaper is tackling the challenges posed by the new media environment. On the other hand,"exceptional" cases could be a good choice if one is trying to study the effects of a particular characteristic and draw conclusions about this aspect. I?m thinking on Everbach's study of the all-female led Sarasota newspaper. My question, then, is what criteria should researchers follow when identifying a case that would be significant for the research design?

From the readings, I concluded that discourse analysis is the same as framing. The only thing is that while framing is considered as theoretical approach, discourse analysis is considered a method. What do you think about this?

This week

Van Dijk’s article asserts that news is perhaps the most frequently engaged discourse practice by the people. Would this be outdated with the advent of the blogosphere and social media. Because the discourses in, for example, SNS are socially and collecticely constructed, it is harder to link them to the producer and its cultural, economic, and political context. How ca we do a discourse analysis in these new spheres?

van Dijk notes that most discourse analysis in media research has been conducted in the UK and Australia (and I'd add Latin America), not in the US. Why? What are the historical causes that explain this phenomenon? Is it because the political culture in the US is less inclined to admit ideological cleavages, as opposed to Europe and Latin America where left and right have always been part of the mainstream?

van Dijk defines the news schema as the classic inverted pyramid, AP style. But this way of narrating news events has changed considerably with the online format. Hyperlinks, for example, now allow users to construct their own story when reading an article online. What is the news schema in online journalism?

van Dijk discusses the ideological nature of the Mail by describing its coverage of the deportation of an immigrant. I was wondering if this implies that texts can be
ideologically "neutral." Is there such a thing? If everything is ideological, then what is the utility of using ideology as a characteristic of a text?

In the conclusion of her essay, Fursich states that we shouldn?t let methodological
concerns overshadow original research questions. But I was wondering if meaning analysis is possible without considering methodology simultaneously. We say that research questions go first and methods second, but it?s a fact that good research questions are those that are doable (given time and resource constraints). So, perhaps, a more realistic approach is to think about research questions and ways of answering these questions at the same time, not one after the other.

Sebastian's questions (both weeks)

2009-10-18T11:26:00.000-07:00

POTTER 1: When using numerical evidence, qualitative researchers often use numerical properties. For example, they cite Gallup surveys or Nielsen ratings as secondary sources to make a point. If we follow the argument that translating concepts or attitudes into numbers decontextualizes meaning, using numerical properties is paradoxical. Why do purely qualitative researchers would trust using Gallup, Census or NES data more than their own data collection? Also, some researchers avoid using numbers completely. For example, some say that using test scores to evaluate complex cognitive tasks is useless. I understand the point, but then how can we evaluate large policies? What do they suggest?

POTTER 2: Potter describes unknown collaboration as when authors share credit but they do not specify who did what (the division of labor). Should we state who did what in our collaborative research? What’s the proper way to do it?

POTTER 3: In inductive research, Anderson (cited in Potter) asserts that qualitative researchers do not begin with a theory or hypotheses; instead they begin with a natural curiosity to learn more about who, what, and when of something. Is there such a novel, naïve curiosity? Something must have led the researcher to explore certain phenomenon. He or she probably has some expectations. Feminist studies, for example, always begin with the expectation of unequal and gendered relations of power.

FLICK 1: Flick discusses comparative studies, but I think that the author missed an important tenet of comparative research designs: the difference between most similar and most different systems designs. Most similar systems design refers to the choice of cases that are more or less the same in every other aspect except the one of interest for the researcher. For example, studying the influence of East Coast and West Coast mentality on news coverage of women by comparing the New York Times vs. the Los Angeles Times (both are newspapers of record, influential, operate in big cities, and so forth, but are located in different geographical regions) Most different systems designs, in contrast, refer to the study of cases that differ in most aspects but have one or two commonalities that explain a similar outcome process. For instance, studying how pervasive is racial stereotyping in the coverage of crime stories by analyzing a big national newspaper, a local TV station and a citizen journalism outlet (all three reach different markets, have different formats, resources, and so on, but share similar news values and, thus, cover crime in a racialized way).

FLICK 2: Fick explains biographical research as a retrospective research design in which past events are analyzed in respect to their meaning for individuals. But how do we apply this design in a communication environment? I’m particularly curious because people’s memory is so fickle in regard to media experience and communication patterns (perhaps because we are constantly communicating and media are so pervasive that remembering a particular episode is hard). In other words, what is it about biographical research that could help us learn something unique in communication research?

FLICK 3: In the section of generalization goals and representational goals of qualitative research, Flick mentions that presentation goals should be considered when conducting qualitative research (e.g., will you write an essay based in your results? Or will you write a narrative account of your findings?). But I was wondering how the consideration of the final product affects the data collection stage. Because I’d suppose that if I’m planning to write a book or conduct a dissertation I’m going to collect data differently that if I’m just planning to write an article for a conference and/or journal. At least, the breadth of the data collection is going to be different. Or not?

MANNING & CULLUM SWAN 1: Manning and Cullum-Swan’s (p. 252) definition of sign as “something that represents or stands for something else in the mind of someone” reminded of the concept of schema and network models of memory activation (one idea connected to another through networks of related concepts). It always surprises me when I find that different literatures refer to the same phenomena, define it in similar terms, and yet neglect to acknowledge each other or see the connection between them. It’s the same with discourse analysis: I couldn’t help but think all the time about framing analysis. Yet, only once or twice this connection was explicitly made.

VAN DIJK 1: van Dijk argues that the discourse approach in media research pays special attention to ideological and political dimensions of media messages. Why is this? Is it because it has been related to these approaches in the past? Because it should adopt a critical or political-economical stance? What about using discourse analysis for other purposes not related to ideology or politics?

VAN DIJK 2: van Dijk says that most of our social and political knowledge and beliefs about the world derives from news reports. What about other sources, particularly other people? Why not adopt discourse analysis to study people’s communicatory behaviors? Ever since the 1950s we know that interpersonal communication is more influential and persuasive than media messages. Why is it that discourse analysis has not been employed as frequently to study people’s everyday talk? To what degree this is due to the ease of access to transcribed news reports (e.g., Lexis Nexis)?

VAN DIJK 3: “The analysis of the ‘unsaid’ is sometimes more revealing than the study of what is actually expressed in the text” (van Dijk, p. 11). True, and that’s the main shortcoming of quantitative content analyses. But how can two researchers agree on what is unsaid? The world of the unsaid is vast and open, as opposed to the world of the said. The said is verifiable. The unsaid is not. Is more an act of faith to state what is the unsaid part of the text? Try this simple exercise of reading the following sentence: “Obama is the _____ president said Bill O’Reilly”. How many of you think that the missing word is negative (e.g., “worst”)? And what if the missing word was just “United States”? In any case, I’m not saying that manifest content is or should be the only aspect of a text worth analyzing. But I’d be very careful when defining discourse analysis as a research tool for the analysis of the unsaid content.

GROSSBERG 1: In the interview of Stuart Hall, he mentions that there is a difference between asserting that with postmodernism meaning does not exist and agreeing that postmodernism brings multiple meanings, or an “endlessly sliding chain of significance.” What are the implications of this controversy on the way we approach the study of meaning? Do we accept that ours is one way of “reading” a text, one of many others, or should we strive for a “consensus,” that is, meaning is whatever a sizeable group of researchers or accumulated evidence yield?

Marcus' Questions

2009-10-18T10:36:00.000-07:00

Week 7:

Q1) I think Potter’s discussion of “translating” data really speaks to the heart of the quantitative-qualitative debate. His argument is that translating numbers to present meaning, in effect, adds needless circuitry; but I would argue that he’s missing the point of quantitative research. Qualitative methods are all about meaning, certainly, and it’s difficult to construct “meaning” with a multiple-choice question. Meaning is a subjective concept, and it’s hard to objectively establish subjective concepts. But I don’t think the goal of numerical research is “meaning” – I think it’s context, and there’s a huge difference. We can talk all day about the meaning of teenage pregnancy, or the meanings behind new media usage in isolated schools, or the feelings associated with neo-conservative or neo-liberal ideologies – but without statistics on the number of teenage pregnancies every year, or the total usage of new media tools in classrooms, or the voting trends associated with neo-con or neo-lib politicians, then “meaning” becomes intangible.

Yes, you have to translate numbers – “Variable 12” is completely unhelpful in and of itself, you have to break it down. But that numerical research provides benchmarks and context for cultural study that otherwise would have no frame of reference – no agreement on what is, or what isn’t, to even begin establishing “meaning.” I’m not saying that “meaning” is unimportant, I’m just saying that it needs context. And I don’t think Potter gets that.

Q2) I’m inclined to agree, though, that the goal of the traditional interview is to get a verbal response. I think that’s because, in traditional print media especially, it’s generally frowned upon to discuss non-verbal communication – either the mayor commented or she didn’t, but debated whether she frowned or not opens up a whole new can of worms. Even in television, where the image is right there, I can see scenarios where debates pop up about what is or is not a frown. That being said, that rule doesn’t necessarily need to be standard fare for academic research, since the rules are different; I think it adds some flexibility that would’ve been useful back in my small newspaper days.

Q3) I like that Flick establishes criteria for long-term qualitative study, since I think trend research is traditionally reserved for quantitative research. What I think he could have explained a bit more, though, is how controls are established for the passing of time. Do you almost have to pick as tame a time frame as possible, just to reduce the likelihood of outside variables from influencing your interviews? Or did I misunderstand his argument?

Q4) I think the discussion of convenience vs. relevance when selecting focus groups is a pertinent one, and it reminded me of a conversation I had with my adviser back at Trinity last week. We were talking about the tendency of conservative ideologues to type cast academics and university research as liberal and out-of-touch ( there was a catalyst involving a hyper-conservative newspaper ad that I won’t get into, we ran it at the Trinitonian a few years ago but a school in Wisconsin just made headlines for rejecting it, so that’s how it came up). But the connection here is that if focus groups are allowed to use university students too much, doesn’t that reinforce the cultural gap between the academics and the public – or, put more crudely, the well educated and the less educated? It bugs the hell out of me when anti-educational initiatives, like the tirades my old adviser was discussing, get so much traction because the debate spirals very much into a “leave them kids alone” direction, which doesn’t work as well on the college level as Pink Floyd would have us believe – especially if they just stay home from college, which happens a lot. But I do wonder if there’s been any study on the cultural effects of research like this – do university lifestyles tend to really be that insular, and is ol’ Rushbo right about a self-perpetuating liberal ideology? Or has it been established that it’s just a matter of convenience?

Q5) And actually, along the same lines, although I know it’s a bit of a tangent – we’ve discussed that quantitative research in journalism study tends to be the norm, but it just occurred to me that the bulk of the conversation, and many of the authors, are from well-established and often large universities. That makes sense, since they’d likely have the most to offer; that’s why those authors are employed there in the first place. But as far as research norms go, do the same routines apply in some of the smaller satellite schools out there? Do research practices at UT-Tyler, for example, tend to follow the same patterns as UT-Austin?

Week 8:

Q1) I liked Manning and Cullum-Swan’s description of semiotics in these readings. Much easier to follow than some of the other explanations I’ve seen in the past. It was actually something that kept popping into my mind yesterday – I was watching college football, and it occurred to me that the “Hook ‘Em” is a perfect example. To anyone tied to the Horns or college football, that’s a symbol for UT, but there’s nothing about the pointer and pinky fingers that is fundamentally tied to any one university. Then a commercial for one of those rock band video games came on, and there was an animated musician throwing the same symbol to a crowd; to them, it meant something completely different.

Q2) Which, now that I think about it more, really speaks to the idea of a “mass audience.” It’s hard to get more massive than 100,000 + fans watching the same 22 men on a field. But I’m not sure that’s a “dehumanizing” practice; it’s about conformity, sure, but you can be part of a group without turning life into one of Erich Fromm’s nightmares. And I don’t think it negates evolution at all, since over time – going back to the hook ‘em example – UT’s identity has changed, from an out-of-the-way Texas school to an urban, liberal institution with a very different cultural identity than A&M or Tech. You could make similar arguments about OU and OSU, and certainly about Ole Miss and Mississippi State, although I’m not sure how many of them have established hand gestures. So as long as those symbols are semiotically tied to ideas, and those ideas aren’t completely stagnant, then how can it be dehumanizing or negate evolution?

Q3) This may be a no-brainer, but how can you code for implications that are not present? I understand that what’s not said can be just as important as what is said, that makes perfect sense. I’m just not sure how you would justify a study of what’s not said, for our uses, since potentially any number of things could be left unsaid? Does that make sense?

Q4) I think Makus has a point about dominant societies stigmatizing those outside its own cultural identity. But I think recessive societies do it just as much – there can’t be a gothic sub-culture in a high school, for example, without the cheerleaders and the football team establishing their norms. But I think it’s more than that – I think many sub-groups wouldn’t be around without their opposition to the dominant culture, so in those cases, I think it’s hard to argue that the dominant groups are “stigmatizing” outside sub- and counter-cultures; it’s a symbiotic relationship at that point, not a power struggle. Certainly that’s not always the case, particularly when violence is concerned, but am I the only one thinking that the power structure model doesn’t always apply?

Q5) Makus’ discussion of dominant societies actually made me think about my own education. I graduated from middle school in a western compound in the Middle East – oil brat – and in the middle of nowhere, there’s no football. No sports of any kind, really, since we were the only school for miles and there was no real competition. So the traditional jock/cheerleader society that tends to dominate in the States didn’t apply out there; that left the skater-punks, who here would be considered a stigmatized counter-culture, feeling like they were at the top of the social order. On the one hand, it’s an interesting vindication of Makus’ commentary, since a traditionally recessive society behaved just as the dominant ones do when given the opportunity; but, it’s also a rebuke of that model, since outside groups gladly defined themselves in opposition to those skater punks. The local Boy Scout troop was huge – again, middle of nowhere, plenty of desert to wander off into, at least back in the 90’s before it got too dangerous – and we were enthusiastic about not being the skater punks and, you know, not wearing our pants around our knees. So it wasn’t really a power structure at all, it was a symbiotic relationship that developed in about as close to a vacuum as you can find when discussing American kids. So why the insistence on power structures, then?

Alex Question

2009-10-18T09:57:00.001-07:00

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OCT. 19

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Manning & Cullum-Swam write in their section on content and narrative analysis that the “microinteractional aspect of content analysis has never been fully solved (p. 248)” and that this remains an “open or moot” point. But if I understand correctly what they mean, they are discussing what and how people believe things, or more basically how they apply meaning to words, texts and symbols. Is this what they are talking about? And if so, doesn’t that go to the heart of communications and semiotics? (Why would it be so easily dismissed?)

Doesn’t the McDonald’s example in Manning & Cullum-Swam actually provide evidence in favor of semiotics? I remember traveling with my wife once and she wanted to go to a McDonald’s that was nearby our hotel. I complained that I don’t like McDonald’s at home, why would I like it here? She explained that she was hungry and was not familiar with the town, the local food, and was filled with uncertainty. McDonald’s, for her, represented assurance. Sure, I did not like the food at McDonald’s. But at least she knew what she was getting and her uncertainty was diminished as a result. (So we ate there.) The meaning that is given seems to cross many cultural and regional barriers.

I agree with Stuart Hall (Grossberg interview) that modernism and post-modernism are essentially western constructs. I have always had problems with those definitions. I guess in my mind, post-modernism has always been associated with media being aware of itself – like when a TV character suddenly breaks the rules and addresses the camera directly, in effect addressing the audience directly. But the emergence of schools of thought such as post-post modernism, I believe, exemplifies the unsustainability of the notions of modernism and post-modernism. At the heart, I think, is the notion of abstraction. But you can’t blame me for confusion on these concepts. I understand that Hall was coming from a 1980s perspective when this interview took place. But where is the academic world today on the whole modernism, postmodernism, post-postmodernism question?

Makus describes Hall’s theoretically framework in terms of pluralism and conformity v. disenfranchisement and stigmatism, and how these are social constructs. But it seems that while elements of that seem true today, there is a general tolerance for deviants in society, particularly online. In fact, as Makus tries to prove with her look at hackers, a deviant can even have positive societal impact. Not that I’m especially familiar with Stuart Hall’s theory of ideology, but doesn’t Makus’ premise – “Hall's theory of ideology problematizes democratic pluralism (p. 497)” – seem even more true today, 19 years after her article was published?

I think the entire Makus article smacks of the entire “Big Brother” cold war thought and this dichotomy between democracy and Marxism. With the decline of worldwide Marxism, the growth of what Habermas would call the sub-altern has greatly emerged as a result of the digital age. So imperialist type of thinking, creation of meaning, centrist thought, etc, from an ideological or cultural elite seems to reek of pre-21^st century thought. So, are we in a post-post-postmodern age?

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OCT. 12

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I am not at all familiar with “retrospective studies” as a research design and Flick only devotes a paragraph to its description. Is this particular to “biographical research” or are past studies actually re-examined in this approach using more modern or updated tools, information or points of view? I think the latter would be an interesting exercise as particular “truths” or points of view change over time, which could lead to different conclusions of historical studies if they were re-examined in this way.

Some academics simply love to use models as a quick and easy way to describe processes or give big picture summaries. But I have found that the depiction of models almost always requires an accompanying explanation of how the model is supposed to work. I say this because after describing several basic research designs, Flick offers a nice looking model diagram (fig. 4.1.1 page 149). It looks great. But can you explain the relationships that the model is supposed to be making for us?

I understand Potter’s declaration that there are no absolute truths, only interpretations of the truth, and how the debate surrounding those interpretations can change. But the truth is (ha, ha) some people’s versions of truth take on wider acceptance. A good example is the recent Columbus Day holiday. It used to be that Columbus was hailed as a great explorer who discovered a new world and aided in bringing Christianity to millions of people and opening up new trade routes. Modern interpretations now paint the man as a tainted character who stumbled onto a land already populated by millions and he brought slavery, disease and death to native populations. Now, neither of those versions are the “truth” per se, although some elements of truth can be found in both. So, hundreds of years after his so-called “discovery” of millions of people unknown to the European and Asian worlds, we are still debating the truth about Columbus. In this example, the truth debate is in flux depending on point of view. Can we see other examples of truth “imposed” on people, like the long-held belief prior to Columbus that the world was flat?

I was very pleased to read the section in Potter on expectations and to see a debate on this issue in writing. To me it seems that the entire expectations issue is similar to that of objectivity. Just as you can’t really be totally objective because of the baggage of a personal history and a point of view, you can’t NOT have some expectations as you begin your research. I seriously doubt that researchers begin some kind of fishing expeditions out of the blue just to see if they might find something. Even fishermen try to focus where to fish based on knowledge of waters, time of day, weather conditions, feeding habits, etc. Then they pick where to fish in the expectation that their strategies have put them in a place where they will actually find something. We all know that quantitative researchers work from either research questions or seek to test hypotheses. So how do most qualitative researchers handle the expectations issue?

Honestly, I found the whole etic-emic and subjective-objective discussion difficult to wrap my head around. And here’s why. As I read, I generally can follow the line of argument Potter outlines. And all that is fine. But if I put the book down for 30 minutes and then ask myself, “Okay, which one is ‘etic’ and which one is ‘emic’?” I can’t distinguish. “Well, one is more subjective, written from the ‘me’ point of view,” is my response. But which one? If I ever had such a question on an essay exam, I couldn’t really say with confidence. So, my question, really, is: What is the most important thing we need to remember from the whole etic-emic and subjective-objective discussion?

Alex Question

2009-10-18T09:57:00.000-07:00

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OCT. 19

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OCT. 12

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Sun Ho's Questions - 10/12 and 10/19

2009-10-18T05:27:00.000-07:00

Week 7: October 12 – Design, Process, Evidence & Analysis

1. Chapter 6. Nature of Qualitative Evidence: Before he gets into details in this chapter, Potters says that the use of their chosen techniques guides the nature of their evidence (p. 83). Then he adds that type of evidence, level of evidence, and the use of numerical evidence must be considered in qualitative research. I wonder how these two elements of a research, chosen methods and types of evidence, are generally used in our field. For example, if we were to do a textual analysis of newspaper articles, what types/levels/numerical evidences do we generally use? I understand that it all depends on the nature of the research, but I'd love to get a general idea about it just to gain some more understanding about the above statement!

2. Chapter 7. Issues of Evidence Gathering: It was interesting to see how this chapter goes back and describes different methods first and then expands the topic into researcher identification, researcher activity, and so on. I was particularly interested in the section where he explained about three different levels of researcher activities: passive observer, active observer, active participant. This was something I thought about during my first and second assignments. During my participant observation, I was able to add some "participant" aspects to the analysis but there were more "observation" due to the nature of the topic. But how free can a researcher be from including his/her own feelings if one has some experience about the research topic? For example, if I were to do another participant observation about how Asian female students consume online news, I would be much more knowledgeable about the topic. Other than trying to remain objective, what can be done during the process of designing the research in order to take advantage of that knowledge?

3. Chapter 2 also talks about sampling issues: access/relevance vs convenience. We had to encounter these issues during our focus group assignment. About the convenience factor, the text mentions about a professor using some of his/her students for research (p. 105). Now here's a very practical question: if one wants to conduct a research study with 4-5 focus groups and the only way to find those subjects are through UT, what's acceptable and what's not? Of course, we'll do our best to gather a group of people considering representativeness, but sometimes we find ourselves facing that access/relevance vs. convenience vs. "is this acceptable to reviewers" issue.

4. Chapter 8. Issues of Data Analysis: When Potter talks about generalization (pp. 130-133), he mentions about sampling issues/scientific perspective and how it needs to be seen differently in qualitative studies. Although he introduces specific examples of research with and without generalization in the text, I go back to this question: Is generalization that important when we talk about qualitative approach since the nature of the method is so different? Putting things into the context and looking at things with microscopes, rather than generalization, isn't that the beauty of qualitative research?

5. Chapter 9. Methods of Analysis: The author says that many of these methods of analysis are used in combinations so that the weaknesses of one can be balanced by the strengths of another. What are some of the examples of those combinations mostly used in our field?

Week 8: October 19 – Qualitative Content Analysis – Discourse & Ideological

1. Manning & Cullum-Swan (1998) article made me think about an article I read last semester. The article did a textual analysis of internal memos exchanged between the owner of a newspaper company and editors in the newsroom to study ownership control. I wonder what the results could have been like if one could draw indepth interviews just like authors did for the McDonald's experience. Just a thought...

2. Fursich (2008) concludes the article with something I always had in mind but couldn't really do: "It should not be a methodology de jour that drives research topics but original questions of the relationship between media and ideology in society in large." I agree. However, I find myself debating about his statements about repositioning textual analysis as text-only analysis. It's not that I am not strongly against it, but I don't find myself agreeing to his idea either. I am looking forward to hearing how others thought about this article.

3. van Dijk (1991) mentions that most of the integration of linguistic, semiotic, and discourse-analytical approaches has been taken in the UK but little in US. What could be the reason for that?

4. The example provided in the van Dijk article analyzed the textual structures. If the author wanted to add other elements mentioned in the article - i.e. relations between structures of text and talk, and of their cognitive social, cultural, or historical contexts - which one could have been most relevant for the analysis considering the news item?

5. When the author talks about implications, he mentions about how information in a text can be left implicit. I am particularly interested in getting to more about the analysis of "unsaid"; how do we distinguish the implications from those analysis of "unsaid" among various types of implications?

YUKUN's Questions

2009-10-17T23:35:00.000-07:00

Question about objectives of qualitative studies and quantitative studies

In Flick’s “Design & Process in Qualitative Research,” p 149. There are three objectives for qualitative studies: description, testing of hypotheses, theory development. Could those objectives be quantitative studies? I believe testing of hypotheses and theory development could be quantitative studies’ objectives. But I don’t know if description could be quantitative studies’ objectives.

Question about revising research questions

In Flick’s article, from p 149 to 150, there are some discussions about the formation of research questions. I am wondering if we can revise our research questions in quantitative studies. Scholars in quantitative studies seem disagree with this notion. But, in my personal opinion, no matter in qualitative studies or quantitative studies, research questions all could be revised. I don’t know if it is corrective.

Question about levels of evidence

From page 88 to 90, Potter described three levels of evidence: Microlevel, Midlevel, Macrolevel. He listed many researches in each level. It seems that each level is distinctive. Is it possible to combine three different levels of evidence to answer a research question?

Question about active participant

In page 103, Potter discussed active participant. However, I think this activity is dangerous and hurt the objectivity. Though objectivity is not the most important feature of qualitative methods, I still believe researchers should keep a suitable distance from their research target. I believe that there is not problem for a experienced researcher, but a younger research may be misguided in this situation. Maybe we need some guidelines to conduct this activity.

Question about the combination of different methods

In Chapter 9, Potter listed various qualitative methods. At the end of this chapter, he wrote that “Typically the methods are used in combinations so that the weaknesses of one can be balanced by the strengths of other”. In my memory, I seldom found quantitative studies used different methods to answer research questions. Does it mean one qualitative method is not so inclusive that we need combine different ones? Or is there another answer?

Question about Manning & Cullum-Swan, “Narrative, Content, and Semiotic Analysis,”
Their discussions about American fast food===McDonald’s are very interested. It reminded me the Chick-fil-A. Because its owner is a Christian, its religious belief is reflected in this restaurant and company culture. At first, every restaurant of Chick-fil-A is closed on Sunday. Second, in order to stress family value, atmosphere in their restaurants is very friendly to children. Instead of giving children toys, their attachments of kid’s meals are books. In my opinion, this company represents one specific class or religious group.

Questions about Makus’ “Stuart Hall’s theory of Ideology…”

1 In page 497, “ By thus stigmatizing those outside its consensus, dominant society encourages conformity to its norms and produces and reproduces consciousness”. I think it is a one-way thinking. It stressed that the upper class force the lower class to obey the dominant rule, consensus or ideology. Maybe the conformation is a procedure of negotiation or interaction between upper and lower classes.

2 “ Political, economic, technological, social, and ideological factors are interrelated in a complex conjuncture of unity”. It reminded me the discussion about globalization. The dominate created a system such as international laws or regimes to ask other actors to obey, and the winner’s interests are protected by this system. Material powers create ideologies, and ideologies protect material interests.

Question about “In Defense of Textual Analysis”

Fursich criticized Philo’s argument in page 249 “ He seems to privilege journalists’ estimates or selective audience interpretations over the textual media content”. In my opinion, it is the shortcoming for very qualitative method. Even if researches focusing the text, there will be such a failure.

Foucault!

2009-10-17T22:09:00.000-07:00

My soul rejoiced at finally seeing someone quoting Foucault, Baudrillard and Eco repeatedly. It was a tad sad that Manning and Cullum-Swan never said that the computer-based textual analysis is just an easier and less in-depth way of looking for what Foucault called elements of cohesion. On the other hand, I was happy to see that they addressed the issue of “context” (p. 248): what happens with metatext and hypertext?
Their explanation of semiotics (p. 252) is pretty short and to the point. If there’s something I’ve seen in academia almost always is the confusion that “signs” brings. Also, the discussions that arise from the idea that there is no “real world” but only a plethora of interpretants that are hyperlinked to one another (p. 252) is a beautiful thing.
The authors even brought into the discussion that fact that the rigid, tautological nature of structuralism (p. 254) is “dehumanizing” and, in a sense, negates evolution.
The MacDonald’s example was great. Similar “signs about signs” that draw instant images in our minds (the Nike logo, Apple’s bitten apple, Heineken’s particular green, etc.) are so powerful that some people need only a fraction of the sign to conjure up the whole significant. Keeping this in mind, can we now understand the importance of giving the “mass audience” a singular voice to explain the MacDonald’s experience?
I was not as stoked about running into van Dijk again. His constant rehashing of the propositions, macro-propositions and micro-propositions model still sounds to me like a very mathematical approach. On this article, however, he treated “local coherence” (p. 112) and “global coherence” (p. 113) in such a way that it sounded a lot more like a cohesive element approach a la Foucault. In any case, van Dijk still proposes and analysis that, in my humble opinion, can only be aided by a computer.
The Makus piece was interesting… and dense. Hall’s ideology theory is, if I understood Makus correctly, the system by which the powerful control language (and thus meanings of production and, inevitably, the whole discourse?) in order to make their ideas seem like “science.” Isn’t science just the word we use to name the currently dominant ideology? Isn’t that what Hall is talking about in the quote that appears in page 506 and what Makus herself is criticizing in pages 507-508? The thing that I couldn’t really understand was this: when and how do we start creating ideological formulations? Also: are they truly an “unconscious” (p. 500) action on the speaker’s part? How can are we able to “contest” (p. 501) them? How much does culture impact ideology?
A few more questions: are we legitimizing something as soon as we discuss it or disagree over it? How are the connotations (p. 503-505) different from the hypertextuality of signs in semiotics? Last but not least (and I´m pretty sure we can blame word/length issues yet again), why was the discussion about the case study so short?
The Fursich reading should be read at the beginning of the course: that would allow folks to understand a bit more about why some method-related explanations are left “in the dark” (p. 239). The few nonchalantly-thrown punches at the “limitations of traditional quantitative content analysis” (p. 240) were quite enjoyable. “Textualization analysis” (p. 242) should be required for all research; how come I had never seen that name before?
The idea of a “reality” that’s created in people’s (p. 246) minds and that we have to get to brings up a lot of questions: how do we get to it? When and how does the disjunction between a desired decoding and the actual decoding takes place?

Paul's Questions for 10/12 & 10/19

2009-10-15T06:03:00.000-07:00

Questions for 9/12:

In the Flick reading, longitudinal studies don’t appear to be conducive to qualitative research. While certain exceptions are listed, Flick indicates that the strength of a longitudinal study is the ability to document changes of view or action over time “through repeated collection-cycles, where the initial state of a process of change can be recorded without any influence from its final state.” Flick indicates that’s rarely attainable through the qualitative approach. What’s meant by “influence from its final state” and why is this so?

Through our readings already, it’s clear to me that the qualitative approach allows for and requires a more flexible approach than quantitative research, and I like that. On page 149 of Flick’s article, it specifically outlines how to go about formulating research questions. I’m interested to know more about what Strauss (1987) calls “generative questions.” Flick says these are questions that “stimulate the line of investigation in profitable directions.” Does this mean that you start with vague questions, and as you collect data, the questions become more specific, ultimately leading to the creation of hypotheses? Do you ever start with hypotheses (versus research questions) in qualitative analysis?

On page 150 of Flick’s article, Flick says that studies with a “sensibly limited claim to generalization are not only easier to manage but also, as a rule, more meaningful.” Potter also talks about this on Page 105 of his book. Dr. Harp, when I mentioned that my idea for Assignment #2 for our class was somewhat a matter of convenience for me, since I planned to interview co-workers, you replied something to the effect that, sometimes, that’s the best way to go. Are the best qualitative studies a matter of convenience?

Potter on Page 96 details interviewing techniques. Whether structured or unstructured, is it appropriate to go back to a subject during the course of an interview. When I participated in the U.S. Latino/Latina World War II Oral History Project, the interviewees were naturally senior citizens. In both cases, I wasn’t sure they fully grasped what I was looking for in my questions, so I tried to touch on the subject again much later in the interview. Is this appropriate when interviewing for a topical life history?

According to Potter, it’s important to address the issue of length of data gathering, “both in terms of span and degree of contact.” Then the researcher has to justify his or her decisions. What I find interesting is that in qualitative research for text-focused studies, length of the data gathering is never addressed. But that observation by Potter just deals with length of time going over data, right? It doesn’t mean you don’t list the amount of data considered, does it?

Questions for 9/19:

The Manning and Cullum-Swan reading (pg. 263) concerning biographical associations in the semiotic discourse approach to McDonald’s experiences reminded me of another reading from another class I took. The class dealt with American culture’s impact on the world, and vice versa. The book Golden Arches East: McDonald’s in East Asia was one of our assigned books, and it examined how various Asian countries identified with McDonald’s. For example, the idea that McDonald’s provides healthy foods based on nutritional ingredients and scientific cooking methods, according to the book, has been widely accepted by the Chinese media and general public. Isn’t this an example of a sign, the Golden Arches, providing a different meaning and thus providing a need for semiotic discourse analysis?

On page 252 of the Manning and Cullum-Swan paper, it states “a sign is essentially incomplete because it requires an interpretant, or context.” I get that, but further down it says that the “interpretant of a sign is another sign, and that sign is validated as it were by yet another sign, and so on without end (Eco. 1979, p. 7).” What’s meant here?

In the area of structuralism, the term “dehumanizing” (Lemert, 1979b, p. 100) is brought out in our first reading. Basically, the person examined/interviewed is just a spokesperson for a larger group? The structure or situation they are in shaped them enough that the researcher can use them as an overall example?

Our reading about media contents says (pg. 113) “one of the most powerful semantic notions in a critical news analysis is that of implication.” It latter states that examining what’s “unsaid” can sometimes reveal more than the text itself. I remember News 8’s coverage of the murder of five people in the Hill Country a couple of years ago. One of the victims was a bartender who was heroic in his actions. After days of coverage, the heroic description was left out of our coverage, simply referring to the victim as a bartender. His family was upset because simply saying “bartender,” to them, had negative implications. Am I right that this is an example of the statements above?

I have an observation rather than a question here. Style and rhetoric within news schema really interests me (and concerns me). A research project I’m working on right now deals with how and when minority sources are used. But as part of the research, we have found that unattributed statements, or descriptions, abound. On page 116 of van Dijk’s article, he states, “Such stylistic choices also have clear social and ideological implications, because they often signal the opinions of the reporter about news actors and news events…” I totally agree, and believe more qualitative research is needed in this area.

A nice little intro

2009-10-11T09:35:00.001-07:00

I was glad to see a discussion on etic and emic approaches. I was also happy to see that Potter had the guts to finally put the dumb objectivity debate to rest with these words: “there is no ultimate, defensible truth; there are only interpretations of it” (p. 85).
The discussion about the three types or research was interesting, but I´m not quite sure if it always works. Aren’t there some researches that fall somewhere between these descriptions?
Although this wasn’t said in readings, I think quantitative research tends to operate in the macrolevel, but, at least some of the time, they go about gathering their data more or less like a researcher working at the mid-level (i.e. they get their data from groups of students, etc.).
The author also approached the numbers thing with some interesting ideas. My only problem with it was that he oversimplified the whole ordeal: using numbers to help describe our methodology is not what we discuss when we talk about quantitative research. As Potter mentioned, the problem that arises when data is “translated” (p. 91) into numbers is that we have to use statistical procedures to MAKE SENSE of it and, as Bob Jensen clearly states, MEANING gets lost in the process. How can we believe we’re getting useful, real data when we ask someone how the feel about something and then we give them four or five answers to choose from?
I have a small problem with saying that an interview is a way to get people to “react verbally” (p. 96). A well-conducted interview can get a person to react verbally and non-verbally in equal manner. In fact, analyzing the facial expressions of our interviewees can be as interesting as listening to what they have to say.
I’ve always been interested in the “going native” (p. 101) phenomenon. If we observe and interact with a group long enough, isn’t it just a byproduct of our research? Does it really affect our ability to be researchers? Hadn’t we gotten over the objectivity BS a while ago?
Pauly (p. 106): I agree! In any case, I think we can blame quantitative research and the way it’s all explained in an almost condescending way for the fact that people freak out when a researcher sort of skips over the sampling information and goes straight to what matters.
I was glad to learn that qualitative research can actually be co-authored… who would’ve thought! If two researchers reach more or less the same conclusion on their own, doesn’t that make the research all that much stronger and, in a weird sense, generalizable?
Expectations (p. 117) are always a part of research: as soon as we ask ourselves a question, our brains tries to conjure up an answer. Some folks call it a hypothesis and some call it “a priori expectations” (p. 118), but what it boils down to is how we deal with it when what we find goes against what we thought we would find.
“The interpretive nature of qualitative research does indeed present a real problem to scholars who attempt to explain the process.” (p.120). Agreed. Nevertheless, we can pick a toll to interpret pour data and, if we’re successful at picking the proper tool, explaining what we did becomes that much more easy. Then again, are interested in what we find or in explaining in excruciating detail how we went about finding it? Maybe it’s because they all do the same process and it is thus taken for granted, but I’ve never read a quantitative article that explains where they clicked on SPSS in order to figure out of something was statistically significant.
Chapter 9 was a commendable endeavor in the sense that concepts and methods that can occupy a very large library with the amount of books that have been written about them are explained (more or less) in a concise way that serves as an introduction. Picking Bathers and Saussure was great: they are the Fathers, but it left out Baudrillard, Eco and Derrida, to name just a few. The same happened with the rest of the analytical methods explained. I’m sure Dr. Harp could write more than the one page Potter had in there on Feminist analysis off the top of her head… and I won’t even start with psychoanalysis.
Anyway, is this all becoming a little clearer now?

Marcus' Questions

2009-10-04T11:54:00.001-07:00

Q1) While I was reading the Bohnsack and Schmidt piece, my mind kept drifting to advertising focus groups – a bit of a stretch from journalism research, I know, but that’s the most common use of a group interview that kept popping into my head. There, the concept of a “socially desirable outcome” is a bit of a moot point, since they’re dealing with market appeal rather than social values (or at least, in so far as those two can be separated). They also care far less about issues like spirals of silence, since they’re looking for a group reaction to a public product, not plumbing the depths of human psyche. Which made me wonder – how much does the intent of a focus group, the overall research goal, affect the participants? The authors touched on that, but is there a substantive difference between responses for an economic product than to questions on a social phenomenon? And is that part of the problem with focus group research, that our society tends to compartmentalize public and private spheres and ideas?

Q2) I also think the debate on small vs. large newspapers is open to criticism. There is a fairly substantial bias in academia and the professional community that small papers are short on news, and big on culture; that the Rotary Club is more important than the city council. I’ll admit I’ve fallen into that trap before myself, having spent over a year covering rural rotary clubs. But I would argue that the words themselves mean different things to different editors – that “community” in a town of 15,000 means something completely different than in a city of 150,000. Since qualitative research relies heavily on terminology, are there ways to compensate for dual meanings like that? I can think of several quantitative ways to establish local and metropolitan community, and much of my research thus far at UT has been devoted to similar ideas. But are there qualitative ways of establishing those differences, beyond the author simply stating his or her observations?

Q3) On a similar note that will sound, at first, like it’s completely out of left field – have there ever been studies of the studies that focus qualitatively on small communities? I understand the party line regarding small town journalism, but I also understand that the kinds of people conducting those studies – primarily well-educated academics living in established urban, typically liberal settings – often have little in common with folks living in small towns, who have well established histories of rural life, conservative ideologies and inaccessibility to higher education. If there’s a serious connection between the author and the study in qualitative research, as we’ve discussed, then is there a possibility that most research on small publications is flawed? If the authors themselves have little in common with their subjects, and if qualitative research is open to that critique, then isn’t that a big deal?

Edward Said’s theory of orientalism was designed for international application – the East is what the West is not. But I wonder if the same could be applied here on an urban/rural level?

Q4) This, too, may sound out of left field, but how much qualitative research is devoted to the study of qualitative research? Is it that we’re focusing on that material because this is a methods class, or is it independently common? I’m asking because I don’t have much exposure to qualitative studies, so the context might be helpful.

Q5) Regarding the Dueze piece, how much did language influence those results? I understand selecting the Netherlands to avoid the tabloids in the US and UK, but perhaps it’s more complicated than that – it’s not that American and British publications and sensationalist, but rather, that English language publications are more sensationalist. It also seems fairly difficult to establish a control for that group, since just about every English speaking nation has media that could fall into that category; so how important would establishing controls like that be?

Sunggsoo's Questions

2009-10-04T11:15:00.000-07:00

Q1. As Bohnsack and Schmidt note, when we are doing the interview the matter of social-desirable answer seems to be unavoidable, how can we deal with this kind of innate limitations of these method?

Q2. As Curtin and Maier suggest in their paper, educating numbers in journalism school is becoming important to raise a good journalist, then, how far or to what degree should journalism school teach numbers to their student?

Q3. Reader’s findings on ethical differences at large and small newspapers are very interesting and providing useful paths to understand journalism in reality. Reader did nice interview with 28 professional newspaper editors. However, it seems to me that interviews seem to reveal the things what the newspaper editors just want to reveal. If qualitative interview do not go far, that is, it do not have any difference with simple survey, where can we find advantages of qualitative interview?

Q4. Deuze’s paper, Popular journalism and Professional ideology, and Lewis’ paper, Seeking health information on the Internet, succeed to reveal various aspects of popular journalism and changing usage of health information. They show both what the qualitative research can do nicely and its limit. It provides many valuable understandings regarding to the field which is not well introduced to the readers, but hard to generalize. It seems to me that accumulation of such kinds of research, like many peace of puzzle provide the whole in the end, will enable us to reach more precise and proper view of the whole landscape. Can it be justified?

Q5. Although I admit that there is a fine line between traditional journalism and popular journalism nowadays, especially in terms of the tendency of infotainment, we should set a more distinctive line. What will it be?

I had some fun reading!

2009-10-04T09:45:00.001-07:00

The Bohnsack article was the first one I didn’t really enjoy. First of all, I’ve always had a problem with getting people together and making them talk and then observing them. How can we even say things are representative if we are creating the scene? Second, the author somehow managed to write a rather complicated article about focus groups and group discussion without dealing with the spiral of silence or the other psychological byproducts that follow the emergence of natural leaders and discussion monopolizers.
The Schmidt article was very informative, but it raised a few questions in my head, particularly the “coding” part (p. 256). The idea of having a “coding guide” (p. 256) strikes me as a very quantitative way of doing qualitative research, almost a Van Djik kind of deal. Why doesn’t she discuss methods that, in my humble opinion, are a lot more qualitative (Foucault’s cohesive elements or hardcore semiotics, for example)? In fact, the whole article struck me as kind of quantitative, almost as if the author had forgotten that a semi structured interview is far from a quantitative way of doing research.
I enjoyed the Reader article. The only thing that I missed, and it could be missing from the article due to the 5-thousand-word rule, was a discussion on how ethnic backgrounds, amongst other things, can affect “imagining communities” (p. 854). It seems to me that writing things according to what we think a community would like is not an easy process for a Nigerian journalist in Smithville, a Puerto Rican journalist in Little Rock or a Korean journalist in some small town in Idaho. How much can the interests of “minority groups” (p. 858) be taken care of when they have no representation in a newsroom?
Also, I felt like there was an underlying discourse about small newspapers, especially when quoting editors: small newspaper journalists are idiots… I guess the article, as with all qualitative research, was biased…ha!
I’ve met more than my share of people who suffer from cyberchondria (p. 523), but reading the word was completely new to me. The problem with the quality of the information that she brings up on page 526 was the first thing that came to mind when I began reading the article. Throughout the piece, the author mentions health websites, but aren’t people really getting most of their information from wikipedia, blogs and, as she mentioned, even e-mail and “unofficial” (p. 527) sites? How much of what’s going on can we call disinformation and “misinformation” (p. 527)?
So, besides the fact that the students interviewed were a bunch of narcissists and the Citymission kids were a bunch of uneducated fools who practice unprotected sex, what can we learn from her study? Here’s what I think: 1- health is too broad a topic and 2- if you bring lifestyle (diet, exercise, tattoos, etc.) into the game, everyone and their dog will eventually look for health information online. I was very happy that, after mentioning the health habitus time and again, she finally mentioned Bordieu.
Last but not least, the worst byproduct of all this is, in my humble opinion, expressed perfectly by Paul (p. 535 and… a bit of third person effect or projection?) and the fact that he considers himself a “health expert” even if he studies education. Would it be too much to say that the Internet helps breed these “experts” in a way no book ever could?
The Deuze article was funny. Reading how those “journalists” think of themselves and what they think of their work was a treat. When I read that guy calling it “investigative journalism” (p. 867) I laughed…hard (the same happened with the line “Our reader eats microwave food” on page 868). Why aren’t these folks getting Pulitzers on a regular basis?
A few more questions: I know how this type of journalism works in the US… why can’t we be a tad more like the Dutch? Is not killing a career the extent of ethical journalism? Haven’t “normal” journalists hurt journalism enough so that we are now all in that “low” bracket?
This article will surely be discussed in class. I can only say that, for those of you who say it was biased, you would’ve done the same damn thing if you had such quotable gems.

Sun Ho's Questions

2009-10-04T08:39:00.001-07:00

1. In analyzing semi-structured interviews, Schmidt suggests the analytical strategies of five stages: formation of analytical categories, assembly of those categories into a coding guide, coding, quantifying surveys, and case interpretations. First and second stages of this process, setting up analytical categories based on the material and coming up with a coding guide, seem to be the most difficult and tricky part in carrying out a research study based on interviews. I am planning to do a semi-structured interview for our next assignment and wanted to ask Dr. Harp to share her experience in carrying out a research study like this: What are the do's and don'ts in setting up those categories and coding for interviews? Is there anything we cannot learn from these articles?!

2. Reader (2006) compared journalists working for small vs large newspapers to see if the size of the news organization makes substantial ethical differences in terms of journalistic practice. But he never mentions how demographic differences could have played into the results. Demographic information is something we always include in surveys. What is the most efficient way of taking this into account when conducting interviews?

3. Deuze (2005) sets up comprehensive lists of topical categories and interpretative repertoires based on his interviews. Although his way of categorizing the interview material was pretty clear, some of the categories seemed to overlap. When starting from raw material, how should we draw lines between different analytical categories?

4. Curtin and Maier (2001) conducted focus groups and divided the groups of journalists into math-phobic individuals and nonphobic individuals. Table 1 (p 723) shows how they developed the categories for their open coding analysis and Table 2 (p 724) explains how they distinguished the two groups. However, they didn't explain how the categories from open coding led to the dichotomy for axial coding. If one needs clear rules to follow but willing to turn to outside experts, for example, what do we define that individual as, a phobic or nonphobic?

5. Many of the readings for this week mentioned/used the schema set forth by Glaser and Strauss in coding transcripts. Am I the only one who's not familiar with this? Can anyone offer a further explanation about their coding schema?

Yukun's questions

2009-10-04T04:46:00.001-07:00

1 In Schmidt’s article (p 254 -258), she proposed 5 steps to make a semi-structured interview more systematical. However, I am wondering if this method will hurt the characteristics of qualitative method. Or is semi-structured interview more suitable for selecting a group of interviewees to figure out their common features.

2 Following my first question, in Bohnsack’s article (P217-218), I am still confused by the reliability and validity. For example, Bohnsack believe standards of everyday communication or nature standards and routines communication will improve the reliability and validity. But I doubt it will also hurt the unique of qualitative method.

3 In Reader’s article, he claimed he interviewed top-level editors in 28 newspapers. My question is why he doesn’t use survey which has more reliability and validity. I will suggest to use survey to find out “what”. Then he can select several typical newspaper to interview and then find out “how”.

4 In Curtain and Maier’s article, they use the qualitative method of focus group systematically. Can we say it is some sorts of in-depth survey or scientific-orientation focus group method?

5 In my personal opinion, in contrast to the two articles in J&MCQ, the two articles from MCS are better in the perspective of qualitative method. However, I found the two authors’ backgrounds are not so America. It seems that research methods indeed have regionalism.

Alex Questions - Oct. 5

2009-10-03T20:30:00.000-07:00

Q1- Bohnsack (2004) raised the issue of validity within focus groups and group discussions. One solution he suggests is to reconstitute the “structure of the case.” I’m not certain I understand what this means. Have researchers found ways to make group discussions more reliable – meaning (to me) more replicable?

Q2 – I see that Reader (2006) at the end of the lit review posited four issues one might call “expectations” or even “hypotheses” (although not approached using the “scientific method”). Is this typical of qualitative papers?

Q3 –Reader (2006) mentions this notion of two-types of journalism being practiced – big city newspaper v. small town newspaper. Personally, I’ve done everything from bi-weekly community journalism, to print magazine journalism, to national network radio news. In my experience, journalists must always conform to the audience where they are working. I guess what Reader wanted to show was HOW it was different. Is it common to question some of the tenets and results conclusions of qualitative papers? How? With another paper?

Q4 – I’m having trouble understanding why Dueze (2005) studied pop journalists in The Netherlands. At one point, Dueze mentions that The Netherlands did not have as strong a tabloid (sleaze) journalism history as the U.S. and Britain. And I kept wondering why, then, The Netherlands? Shouldn’t Dueze make more of a case that access to pop journalists in The Netherlands was an opportunity to study some of these issues (if this were truly the case)?

Q5 – I found Curtain & Maier (2001) an interesting read. It seemed like the groundwork for further study, which it said was its purpose. Now, what does one do with a paper like this? (What would be the next step in terms of research?)

Paul's Question for 10/5

2009-10-03T13:09:00.000-07:00

In Bohnsack’s article on group discussion and focus groups, the replicability of results is described as one of the main methodological problems in present-day debate about focus groups within the Anglo-Saxon debate. Later, Morley’s notion that discussion groups are representative of broader entities, and that interactions, not individuals, should be examined is discussed. Does this mean that a focus group, while interesting, must only be used as a supplement to other research to be truly valuable? For instance, use the focus group to better explain responses to a larger survey?

It seems to me that qualitative research can lend itself to subjective conclusions when it comes to interpreting interviews. For instance, in the article comparing ethics within small and large newspapers, one small-paper editor stated that his staff looks at what's in the best interest of the community. That was classified in the article as putting community standards above journalistic standards. I would argue the former is an integral part of the latter. Can interviews be easily adopted into one's own beliefs when drawing conclusions?

The newspaper ethics article used 28 interviewees in 14 geographic areas to ensure that there were several large newspapers in each area. Is there a rule of thumb when it comes to how many interviews are conducted to have a valid sample?

When it comes to coding material, the grounded theory approach means the researcher does not begin the process until after all of the interviews are completed and the data receives several close readings. Is this the norm among qualitative researchers?

I really liked the approach taken in the Lewis article as she described how she came to cover her Internet topic. She uses first person in her writing. Is there a preferred method, or is it simply a matter of the journal's taste?

Teresa's qs

2009-10-03T12:24:00.000-07:00

1- There seems to be many different formats for group discussions. I was wondering what type of research questions is suited for each of these methods. For instance, focus groups seem ideal to extract social construction of meaning, whereas the model of the individual in public debate is, by essence, an individualistic approach.

2- After reading Bohnsack article on group discussion and Curtin and Maier piece on journalism, maths, and self-efficacy, I wondered whether it’s better to organize more homogeneous groups (in terms of SES, race, or any key variable) when conducting focus groups so participants feel more comfortable when speaking or diverse groups are better for the process of collective meaning construction.

3- Curtin and Maier’s study is inductive. From the analysis of the focus groups’ discussions, they theorize about self-efficacy and Bandura’s social cognitive theory as the key problem of journalists´ math anxiety. Is it common in qualitative research to theorize and present a theory for the first time at the discussion section (or final part) of the study?

4- In the article about the analysis semi-structures interviews, the article describes in a very detailed way how to code the material, conduct a “consensual coding,” create cross-reference tables with frequencies, etc. I have two questions: What is the difference between this process and the intercoder reliability and classification of a classic quantitative content analysis? Also, the author makes clear that the tables with frequency of descriptions’ occurrence are not part of the results. Why? I understand that in a qualitative analysis the most important part is the interpretation but why not include the tables with frequencies as part of the results?

5-From Reader’s study, I wondered if there’s sort of a third person effect going
on. That is, editors at small sized newspapers argued that they take into account the community because the community is more interested in what’s being published in there, while at large papers, the community is a more impersonal, distant entity. Using interviews with journalists only, of course, there’s no way of demonstrating if this is occurring. Perhaps, a good follow-up study would be to interview members of the public at both small and large news markets to see if people from small communities are more interested in what is published in the paper than people from bigger communities.

Sebastian's questions Oct. 3

2009-10-03T11:11:00.000-07:00

1. Bohnsack’s overview of group discussions and focus groups includes a long list of formats and methods. One of the shortcomings noted is the lack replicability: you can have the same participants talking about the same issue at different points in time and the discussion is going to be quite different. I wonder: isn’t this true of many other methods in the social sciences, including surveys, content analyses and experiments? In my view, what is replicable is the general finding, not the exact details that lead to that main finding. With focus groups it’s the same thing: perhaps the content of the conversations will vary, but the general pattern –if there’s one— should still be there.

2. In Reader’s study on ethical differences at large and small newspapers, there’s a marked difference on the role played by community “connectivity.” Basically, at large newspapers, journalists relied on universal professional values to determine what’s right and wrong, while at small newspapers, journalists weighted in the impact of a decision on the community. My question is: what are the pros and cons of relying on professional standards vs. community standards in terms of journalistic quality? What advantages/disadvantages small newspapers enjoy over audiences’ trust in news? If size matters, what happens with medium-sized newspapers? What other contextual characteristics may affect ethical decision-making (I’m thinking racial/ethnic divides, political cleavages, etc.)?

3. A methodological point of contention in Reader’s study: why interview editors’ only? Why not include some reporters? He justifies the decision based on the fact that editors were in the “best position to articulate their newsrooms’ policies and practices.” But I wonder if writers and reporters could have provided for a different perspective. Having worked as a journalist for several years, I can assure that those in senior-level positions have a different view of the relationship between the paper and the community from those of us who were working in the trenches. So, perhaps, I would have split my sample between editors and journalists, or do a group interview.

4. In Curtin and Maier’s article on “numbers in the newsroom,” I was impressed at the lack of methodological details. This, I’m sure, is a problem of word length: JQ needs 5,000 words and it’s preferable to cut the methods than the results. But, still, we only know that it was one paper, there were 33 subjects, focus groups were an hour long and participants were assigned to groups by job classification. But how were the focus groups actually conducted: did the moderator follow a script based on the RQs or was it more open and unstructured? Were the discussions taped or videotaped? How many people participated in each group: 2, 3, 7? How representative was the newspaper chosen? Over what period were the focus groups conducted? They mention two coders. Were these the authors, or some trained grad students? Footnotes would have worked in this case…

5. A question about format on the Curtin and Maier piece: is it really necessary to include as many block quotes as possible in order to present results from a focus group? While including participants’ own words is the main purpose of a focus group, reading one quote after another seems to me a bit of a patchwork or collection of quotes. Again, I’m just curious on how to report results from a focus group in a way that helps readers to follow the flow of the paper.

Marcus' Questions

2009-09-27T10:44:00.000-07:00

Q1) Everbach’s study on the Sarasota newspaper’s female management team interested me, largely because it was framed as if this was an anomaly – just about every newsroom I’ve worked in has been dominated by women, and now that I think about it, I’ve had many more female editors than male editors. Now I’ll believe, certainly, that this has not historically been the case; not in journalism, and not in many other fields, either. But that’s not what I’ve experienced at all, so I wonder if it’s a generational gap? Or if Texas somehow is bucking that trend, as weird as that may sound? I don’t know how it works, but it seems to me that at least recently, female journalists are outnumbering us dudes by a fairly healthy margin. In fact, I even had a job interview once where one of the editors expressly said he wanted a male for the position, just because the gender balance in the newsroom was so lopsided in favor of women – which is illegal as all get out, I know, and I wound up taking another job while they were taking way too long to make a decision, but it’s still a noteworthy point. Am I the only one that’s come across this?

Q2) How does Everbach qualify “teamwork” and “consensus?” Those seem like fairly intangible terms to me, and it seems like those are very much open to interpretation – particularly along gender lines, since that’s what she’s focusing on. Example: I’ve worked for two editors, one in college and one in the so-called real world, whose way of telling staffers they did a good job was to sling one of a dozen uncouth variations of “get back to work, shithead!” That worked fine for me, and it worked well for … well, everyone in college was fine with it, and the female reporters at the for-profit paper thought it was funny too, although some of the non-writing small-town female staffers were offended. And then they wound up getting the editor fired, the reporters bailed and the paper’s been in freefall ever since – but my point is, I would have no problem classifying “get back to work shithead” as a variety of teamwork, but I doubt that’s what Everbach was looking for. And there are other newsrooms where “Teamwork” translates to “either be best friends with the boss and everyone here, or get out,” which I’ve also had to deal with.

So, I guess my point is, how dependent is qualitative research on terminology? The Jensen piece touched on this a few weeks ago, I know, but with methods that are so dependent upon perspective, don’t we risk disqualifying or ignoring diversity simply because our data –by definition - isn’t open-ended?

Q3) Gabino and Alex both touched on Adler’s Tearoom Trade, and I thought I’d throw in my two cents as well. On the one hand, Gabino is right that consensual public sex is, by definition, a public act; part of the point is to be a spectacle, which requires an audience. But Alex is right that Adler served as a clear enabler, which – among other things – compromised his research. This wasn’t a random public act that he encountered, it’s one he helped engineer for his research, and there’s a big difference – especially when he’s labeling it as depravity. If it was all that depraved, he wouldn’t have been rigging it in the first place. So in that case, how can accountability be established? Or should it?

Q4) I like Fontana and Frey’s discussion of framing interviews, but their categories seemed pretty academic to me. They’re right, in theory, interviews can be done in a strictly sober way, or they can be very opinion-driven and conversational … in the field, I don’t think it’s possible to separate the two. On the one hand, boundaries need to be established – in most cases, expressing an opinion will set you up for trouble and criticism, especially about something contentious like politics. But on the other hand, nobody likes to talk to a robot, and the best quotes and support come from people that trust you – they know you’re a reporter or a researcher, but they also enjoy talking to you. There are a few exceptions for journalists, but I can’t imagine a researcher conducting a hostile interview, so I think it applies here. So why try to break it down, why try to doctrinally establish the best way to hold an interview? It’s the kind of thing that you can’t really be taught anyway, and if qualitative research is so defensive about being unconventional, then why try to establish a rubric here?

Q5) Note to Gabino – those “poor rich, white, middle-aged men” you speak of are all capitalists … every one of them. I’m just saying. But he does make an interesting point, and I wonder if it’s because men don’t typically conduct gender-based research? Is it that the field is too focused on traditional narratives, or simply that researchers who would present alternatives are focusing on other topics?

Yonghwan's Questions

2009-09-27T10:24:00.000-07:00

1. Ethical issue seems important in qualitative methods. For example, when we conduct participant observation, especially in case other subjects in a specific setting do not know there is an observer-as-participant, it seems pretty unethical. For our participant observation assignment, should we let people know about what we’re going to do before or after observation? If we conduct a real research project, do we need to get IRB approval and consent form from subjects we’re going to participate and observe?

2. Interviewing method also raises ethical issues as stated that “The techniques and tactics of interviewing are really ways of manipulating respondents while treating them as objects or numbers rather than individual human beings. Should the quest for objectivity supersede the human side of those whom se study?” Other than ethical issue, however, concern about validity of qualitative interview (other qualitative research methods as well) seems important. In this sense, it seems to me that the techniques and tactics of interviewing are really important. I had a chance to see one of my colleagues conducted interviewing a subject. After the interviewing I’ve heard from the interviewee that the interview was a kind of obvious to know what the researcher want to, which may affect interviewee’s answer and damage research validity. How can we cope with this issue?

3. I understand that group interviewing or focus group interviewing in not meant to replace individual interviewing, but it is an option that deserves consideration because it can provide another level of data gathering or a perspective on the research problem not available through individual interviews (Fontana & Frey, pp. 53-54). Although the article touches on how group interviewing is used in this field, it seems still blurring to see distinct advantages of focus group interviewing, especially comparing with individual interviewing. Other than the advantages of being inexpensive, data rich, flexible, stimulating to respondents, recall aiding, and cumulative and elaborative, over and above individual responses (p. 55), what else can be group interviewing or focus group interviewing’s advantages. In other words, what’s the advantage of the group interviewing if otherwise (e.g., individual interviewing) can not get?

4. Putting it our focus group interview assignment, if I have a (rough) research question that how colleague student or young adults use new media and how they feel about those newly emerging media technologies, which interviewing, individual or focus group, would be better? If I do focus group interview, what can I get more?

5. It seems very unique and interesting that during a participant observation, at any point in the process, observers are free to alter the problems and questions they are pursuing as they gain greater knowledge of their subject; and compared with more structured methods, then, observation has the flexibility to yield insight in to new realities or new ways of looking at old realities (Kidder, 1981, as cited in Adler & Adler, p. 89). However, this rigor of participant observation method seems to conflict with one of the ways that enhance the validity of the research, which is using multiple observers or teams. While this may make it possible to cross-check each other’s findings and eliminate inaccurate interpretations, it may also limit the flexibility to yield insight. How can we cope with this issue? If our observation team ends up splitting into two or three focuses or the problems and questions, does it indicate low validity of the research?; or can we write two research papers?

Sungsoo's Questions

2009-09-27T10:12:00.000-07:00

Q1. As Adlers and Frey note, the participatory observation and interview become more and more difficult because of the government regulation in the name of right to privacy or protection from harm. I think these kinds of regulations, although I admit the potential danger of experimental and stimulus interview, limit other valuable rights such as the right of knowledge and expression. I read the story about the prison and its life near New York. The report worked as a jailor for two years to write that story. Is it unethical? I would like to have your opinions.

Q2. Many skills of qualitative research including interview and participatory observation look almost same to those of narrative journalism. What is the distinction between qualitative research and narrative journalism?

Q3. Frey’s note on the gendered interview, including the interviewer’s bias and affective features, is interesting. How can we avoid those kinds of error or failure?

Q4. The case study of the Sarasota Herald-Tribune by Everbach provides very interesting message: changing leader affects the working culture of the company -female leader changes the newspaper company more open, more family-friendly, more consensus-building decision making structure. In my opinion, open, family-friendly, consensus building structure is the aims of all companies which want to make their organization more efficient and productive. Can these virtues be the only feature of the company leaded by female leader? Does it come from only female leader?

Q5. Observations and interviews are largely affected by researcher’s bias; to some extent, it is unavoidable. Then how can we obtain the objectivity? Or don’t we need to be objective?

No, we can´t all just get along

2009-09-27T09:04:00.000-07:00

The Adler and Adler piece was a good way to kick things off. I particularly enjoyed their critique of the “detached and sterile view of observation” that we know have and that’s “based in the quantitative observational paradigm” (p. 81)
The piece also raises some good questions: Why does perception impair validity only if I work alone? (p. 87) Isn’t there something like group perception? Don’t all great fiction writers posses “vraisemblance”? (p. 88)
Once again, we ran into the “generalizability” (p. 87) of our findings… I guess that, in order for us to end this debate once and for all, we have to decide if we want to work with an audience or with humans/individuals. I already said it in the other post: quantitative tells us what the audience thinks or does, qualitative gives people back their voice, their individuality. In the end, I guess I’m just “an observational sociologist among number-worshippers” (p. 94) (I loved that!).
The Humphreys ordeal (p. 96) made me think a lot about ethical behavior and research. Although I’m still in the midst of a heated brain-debate, I think that men, or women, that have sex in a public bathroom sort of set themselves up to be… screwed with one way or another, right? The person that chooses to have sex in public, just like the guy that commits suicide on the Internet, is fair game in my book when it comes to research. What is the role of the IRB when it comes to observation?
Last but not least, are we supposed to believe that “subject bias, self-deception, lack of inside and dishonesty” (p. 99) are only present in qualitative research?!
The Flick piece proves two things beyond the shadow of a doubt: observation is an open methodology that we can adapt to all of our research and people usually prefer to conduct research from the comfort of their desk rather than going out there and getting exposed to the “raw real” (p. 227). That last line echoes what Adler and Adler also hinted at: the research about what’s going on out there is now mostly done from behind a desk… why doesn’t that preposterous idea raise doubts about validity?
The Hopf piece was interesting, but I think even the author hinted at the idea that, although we have certain structured ways of doing interviews, as longs as you pay attention to scope, specificity, depth and personal context (p. 205), the interview is a malleable tool that can be changed and adapted in order to answer your specific research questions. Hopf says that the “ability to conduct qualitative interviews is generally viewed as an independent and relatively unproblematic component in the qualifications of social scientists” (p. 207). These makes me think about non-fiction writers and journalists… why are we trying to drag research in journalism so far from this type of research (qualitative) if it so closely resembles what we do in the field?
Everbach was an interesting read. My only problem with the article is that the author seems to put what males and females bring into the field in opposition. I think that women bring that holistic way of doing things on top of bringing whatever men can bring. It was also funny to read that one woman was bummed out because she couldn’t seduce her boss. Should authors keep publishing feminist pieces in which the idea of strong women being bitches and the classic catfight idea are discussed? Why not just forget about all that and move on? In any case, somebody should stand up and defend those poor rich, white, middle-aged men.
Fontana and Frey give a nice overview of the interview and I loved the line: “the fine little mill of the Statistical Ritual” (p. 50). Their definitions and explanations on the different kinds of interviews serve as a guide for folks that don’t have much experience with interviews. What the authors don’t say is that the structured interview is more or less a survey and it closes the door to pursuing new avenues of knowledge that can open up every time you get somebody talking about something.
The reading also brought back a question I had in my Straubhaar class: how long does it take for me, researcher, to truly become part of what I’m observing? How much do I need to understand of a certain subculture before I can really get down to what they mean when they answer my questions?
Also, I feel like postmodern interviewing is just another name for open interviews conducted with an open mind. Last but not least, how come gaining trust and establishing rapport don’t raise more “ethical” questions?

Sebastian's questions

2009-09-27T09:02:00.000-07:00

Tracy Everbach’s study on the all-female management team of the Sarasota Herald-Tribute (SHT) found that female leaders changed the newsroom culture by bringing their feminine perspective to the workplace and creating an environment of teamwork, consensus, and balance of work and family. Yet, I wonder if she could have concluded otherwise. By studying one newspaper only, she is bound to attribute any particularities in the organizational culture of the SHT to the existence of an all-female leadership. That is, she doesn’t have a benchmark or another all-female run newspaper to which to compare her findings of the SHT. By having clear expectations of what she was going to find and relying on interviews, it was highly likely that her interviewees would agree with her on what changed the newsroom culture. Moreover, the fact that in a content analysis of the SHT (which she published in another article) Everbach didn’t find any substantial differences in terms of news values and gatekeeping compared to male-dominated papers, makes me question the degree to which gender was a really salient aspect for the newsroom.
In Hopf’s overview of qualitative interviews, there’s an explanation of focused interviews and that they were originally conceived as group interviews. We know that individuals behave and communicate differently when interviewed alone or in a group. For instance, some people may perceive that their opinion is not shared by other interviewees and prefer to silence their opinions. Or one may end up with a discussion monopilizer. Fontana and Frey argue that group interviews provide another perspective of the research problem not available through individual interviews. They mention the benefits of being inexpensive, data rich, stimulating, etc. I was wondering, should group interviews be combined with individual interviews? Which research questions are suited for individual interviews and which for group interviews? Do, e.g., reception analyses favor group interviews?
Fontana and Frey delve into the issue of framing interviews and present two schools on how the interviewer should behave: a traditional approach, in which the researchers does not engage in a true conversation, and a more realistic approach, in which the researcher has more leeway to voice personal opinions. I see the benefits of adopting the second approach. However, it may be unrealistic too, because it assumes an equal level of power to set the conversation topics and tone between interviewer and interviewee, when there are many instances in which both are on different levels. It is one thing for a PhD student to interview a group of immigrants or people of lower SES on how they watch TV than to interview a group of business executives and scientists. So, power relationships should be an element that needs to be incorporated when deciding which type of interview to conduct.
In the Adlers’ description of observational techniques, there’s a discussion on the issues of validity and reliability. It’s ironic to me that these concepts, which are part of the quantitative holy trinity (the third being empiricism), are also important issues for a qualitative approach to observation. The authors suggest that one way of increasing the validity and reliability of one’s observations is by having several observers, studying the same group at different times and over varying conditions. But if we take this advice literally, the task of observation becomes more expensive, time-consuming and complicated. At that point, it’s not a case study anymore, it’s a type of survey, which leads me to the following question: can studies based solely on naturalistic observations stand on their own feet, or they necessarily need to be matched with other methods?
On a minor note, I’m wondering how to apply in a communication setting the Adlers’ description of what is it that ethnomethodologists try to do. I had to re-read Potter’s desription of ethnomethodology but still couldn’t figure out why, how and for what purpose such a technique would be helpful for communication scholars. I’d like to read examples of work using this method.

Alex Questions - Sept. 28

2009-09-27T07:36:00.000-07:00

Q1 – Adler in his description of Humphrey’s Tearoom Trade was explaining his role as a covert observer-as-participant. It seems as if Humphrey’s crossed some lines in his research of “deviant” behavior in terms of homosexual acts in public restrooms. Didn’t he as “watch queen” in fact act as an enabler? Doesn’t this type of research raise many ethical issues beyond the so-called “deviant” behavior?

Q2 – Is the Tracy Everbach article typical of such qualitative papers? I ask because after the literature review, I was expecting to see hypotheses… or at least expectations. (Based on what we know from the literature, we expect to find this…) I say this because it seems like she had expectations from the literature and then the “study” supported those expectations.

Q3 – It’s probably obvious that I don’t read a lot of qualitative papers, but again back to Everbach. I enjoyed the article. In fact, I found it an entertaining read. Still, the “results” just reeked of “bias” to me. And as a longtime journalist myself, I personally agree with much of her findings. But her results seemed to me to be a personal essay filled with anecdotes to support her point of view where she tossed in a minor criticism or two from the “other” side. Again I ask, is this typical of a lot of qualitative papers?

Q4 – Given my point of question 3 above, I was pleased to read about “deconstruction” in the Fontana & Frey, (1998) chapter. But it seemed to me to be little beyond a mere mention. Can you expand this concept?

Q5 - As a long time journalist, I feel extremely confident in my interviewing abilities, including an ability to be situationally flexible. I would think this gives me an advantage in conduction interviews with qualitative research. After all, the goal is the same -- get to the truth. Am I setting myself up for a false sense of security, or is it true that journalists make good qualitative journalists?

Sung Woo-Questions

2009-09-27T06:01:00.000-07:00

In Everbach study, I don’t see the connection between the change in newsroom and feminine culture.

->Everbach’s study demonstrated many characteristics of qualitative study that were questionable to me. First of all, I don’t see the connection between feminine culture and the change of Herald Tribune, not in this article.
Qualitative studies make the case out of a specific case, based on a subjective analysis. I don’t have trouble with that. But if you want to connect it to a larger concept like historical background, ethnicity, cultural construct, or gender, I think you need to have some kind of loop, or a lasso that relates the two; the specific and the universality, or generalization. How do you induce a big conclusion from a specific interview? To me, qualitative studies jump to generalization.
Everbach’s study consists of three propositions, a syllogism.
①The news room of Saratosa Herald Tribune has changed.
②The new leadership brought the change.
③ The feminine culture drove the new leadership to change.
①, ② is well described in the article. But ③?
Should we just assume because the editors are females? The statement like “the managers brought their experimental as women to the newsroom culture” is not supported by this study. Or is it that I failed to see it?

Other practical questions about Everbach's article.

- Is three weeks of observation in 9 months a typical period?
- How do you attribute interviews? In Everbach’s article, she made bold statements like “these are characteristics of feminine management style” and attribute it to “see Weaver’s interview”, but we cannot see it.
- Shouldn’t the companion study of content analysis have been one study?

When you do an observation, how much do you have to know about the settings?

Yonghwan and I are doing an observation on second –life teaching class, for example. How much do we have to know about the second life? It seems to me that the more you know, the better your research gets. But according to Adler & Adler you really don’t have to. So I’m confused. Can one freely choose one option among being a complete participant, participant-as-observer, observer-as-participant, or complete observer?

An observer, isn’t it good to be free?

May be observation can rarely be a primary research method (Adler and Adler, 105). But I think it has a strong point of being free. It could be a very good exploratory method to do before you are restrained by rigorous logic of causality, or bound by financial limitations. So I felt, when I set in the second life teaching skill class, disguised as a professor-to-be who came for a pedagogical purpose. As I observed other participants comfortably, I could narrow down the research question I had.

Yu kun's questions

2009-09-27T03:02:00.000-07:00

Questions about variants of qualitative interviews

In Hopf’s “Qualitative Interviews: An Overview”, (204). He listed different types of interviews , give them definitions. Though I don’t have any experience to conduct interview people for research goals. But, based on my experience to be a journalist, I think it is very dangerous to strict ourselves in one particular way to interview people. Combination of different ways to interview people is the most successful way to find the truth. But I am not sure if I can take this thinking in academia.

How to deal with the relationships with the interviewees

In Flick,“Field Observation and Ethnography,” (223). He listed several topics to be discussed in pervious literatures. I am interested in first two topic : How to build up relationships of trust and How to shape one’s role in the field. For me, those skills are hard to learn from books. Therefore, I want to know more about that. In addition, how to keep my objectivity is also a challenge. If I maintain closed relationships with interviewees, I don’t know if I will lose my subjectivity.

Criticisms of Observation

Adler and Adler, proposed two problems in “Observation Techniques,”(p 87-88): validity and reliability. But these two issues are also criticisms of qualitative researches. We can distinguish the qualitative methods with quantitative methods by these two characteristics. In my opinion, if we pay too much attention on these two issues, we will lose some characteristics of qualitative methods.

Questions about ethnomethodology

Adler and Adler (99), “ ethnomethodologists are concerned with how people accomplish their everyday life.” For this issue, I am still concerned about the objectivity of a researcher. How to keep a suitable relationship with the subject is still a question for me.

Questions about formal sociology and new Iowa school

Adler and Adler (91), does it mean that those scholars were affected by science-orientation tradition and tried to improve the validity and reliability of this methods? Does it mean that this qualitative should give up some of its characteristics?

Paul's Questions for 9/28

2009-09-26T19:40:00.000-07:00

1) I like the idea of an insider’s perspective when conducting observational research. In fact, for our project, that’s exactly what I’ve done. My observation of a high school football game put me in a setting in which I routinely belong. But while my presence is routine, I believe other participants may be more fully involved, such as coaches, band directors, players, etc. As a band parent, I’m trying to determine if I fall under the “active membership role” or “complete membership role,” detailed on Page 85 of our first reading this week. At first I thought it was the latter, but now I’m not so sure. Which is it?

2) In the Denzin and Lincoln reading where they discuss studies of the public realm, Cahill’s (1987) role in observation is described as a process where the team “continually reorganized and reviewed [their] field notes in order to discover common patterns, uncover general themes, and evaluate emerging hypotheses.” With that in mind, I wonder how narrow or broad of a focus one should have before initiating an observation in the public realm?

3) Ellis’ auto-observation approach, according to Denzin and Lincoln, offers a great way to get at core meanings and experiences, and complements more formal observational concerns that emphasize structure over content. But I’m also concerned about the ethics of auto-observation. Let’s say that I’m describing my work environment, and keep the names of others out of the report, yet describe their tasks and/or roles. With only a little digging on the part of the reader, don’t I run the risk of identifying them because it’s clear that they work with me? This is briefly addressed later in the reading, but not clearly enough for me.

4) In terms of the flexible research strategy discussed in our second reading on page 226-227, observing over an extended period is only possible if the ethnographer adapts to situational circumstances through the “art of fieldwork” as described by Wolcott in 1995. Various methods are described here and elsewhere in the reading, but what about the tools needed in certain situations? Should the effective ethnographer always carry a recorder or camera with him, for instance, to capture an unplanned or unexpected moment, which may not replicate itself? Or even when flexibility is embraced, should it be accomplished without these tools? Should you simply take in the moment, and then summarize it in writing later? And how much later is too late?

5) Meaning-creation and the author’s subjectivity when writing and reporting ethnographic findings is an aspect of our reading that I can relate to based on the observation Alex and I undertook at a high school football game. As I told him, I already had a preconceived notion about how various groups act in such situations. My concern is that I was looking for what I already expected, and therefore missed other group nuances. Was what I observed truly representative of what was going on? How much of my past opinion must I describe in the reporting of this recent encounter? Clearly, having at least two people involved in the observation will help validate similar findings, and perhaps discount those that I simply “saw” based on my past experiences, right?

Participant observation idea

2009-09-26T12:53:00.000-07:00

Every Tuesday evening, 7:30pm, at the tennis courts of Patterson Park, across from the Blondie Pharr Tennis Center at Airport Blvd. and Wilshire Blvd, a group of the Barony of Bryn Gwlad, the Austin branch of the Society of Creative Anachronism (SCA), meets to practice medieval fighting.

Yes, they are crazy people: they conduct activities such as "baronial announcements" and "adult armored combats". There’s lots of socializing and people wondering around in medieval/renaissance clothing. I'm sure that studying such a group would make for an interesting, to say the least, experience. Remember, these are people who think they are living in medieval Europe!

Teresa's questions

2009-09-25T16:46:00.001-07:00

In the chapter about observation techniques, the authors describe observations with different degrees of participation (e.g., complete participant, participant-as-observer, observer-as-participant, and complete observer). In what factors should we think about when choosing the degree of participation in an observation?

Adler and Adler assert that the complete participant and auto-observation offer the advantage of great depth and insight. However, I wonder if you’re subject of your own observation, how can you analyze culture and norms that are taken for granted and become natural for you? How can we draw conclusions and generalizations?

Ethical issues in participant observations and interviews are similar to journalistic ethical dilemmas. They include disguising identity, denouncing crimes when investigating, etc. Should we apply the same or similar ethical norms in an academic investigation that in a journalistic report? Why or why not?

Ethnographies are supposed to be immersions for a long period of time. In this sense, although Everbach’s study is really good, it seems to be more a collection of interviews in a three-week period than a participant observation. Why should we call it a participant observation?

Finally, the journalists who worked at the Sarasota Herald Tribune clearly knew the purpose of Everbach’s study. Furthermore, they knew that this all-women led newspaper was an anomaly; they called it “amazonia.” Therefore, to what extent the researcher obtained the answers she wanted to get? In other words, should the researcher or interviewer give details or clearly say the purpose of the study beforehand?

A 'pitch' for Sunday baseball

2009-09-22T10:01:00.000-07:00

Hi all!

So far, no takers on the Friday football observation, so I also wanted to "throw" out there my other option of observing a children's baseball game this Sunday afternoon around 3 p.m. We could observe until 4 p.m., and discuss right after that at the concession stand area. The snowcones will be on me. If you're interested in either the Friday football or the Sunday baseball this weekend, just let me know!

Paul Brown

Football observation this Friday?

2009-09-21T17:12:00.000-07:00

If one or two of you are interested in observing this Friday evening's high school football game, let me know. You can email me at dodieandpaul@aol.com or just call me on my cell, 680-9447. We could meet around 6:30 p.m. Friday -- I'd be happy to pick you up if you're around campus, or just meet me at the ACC parking garage on 12th Street between Rio Grande and South Lamar. I'll provide the tickets to the game, you provide the popcorn. After halftime, around 8:45 p.m., we can walk over to the Tavern near the stadium to discuss our findings.

Paul Brown

Teresa's questions

2009-09-20T14:34:00.000-07:00

Potter’s book asserts that synonyms associated with qualitative research are the following: interpretation, ethnography, humanism, postpositivism, cultural studies, feminism among others. Then, when he describes different qualitative methodologies, he also names ethnography, reception studies, and cultural studies. I think this is confusing and he mixes what according to me are different concepts. I may be wrong but for me cultural studies, critical studies, feminism are theoretical approaches while ethnography and reception studies are different qualitative methods. Although I understand they are related, there are not the same thing or cannot be described as synonyms. I agree that most investigations guided by critical or cultural theories use qualitative methods, although it is not a necessary link. For example, although the most obvious way to investigate hegemony is using qualitative tools, I also think it is possible to do it through a quantitative analysis.
In a similar vein, I wonder whether there are different qualitative methodologies of data gathering (i.e., ethnography, interviews, reception studies) while others are methods of data analysis (i.e., textual or semiotic analysis). For example, the interviews’ texts or field notes have to be textually analyzed. If I think about the quantitative approach, a survey or an experiment is a method of data gathering while there are different statistical tools to analyze that data. Therefore, although these qualitative methods are often put together, I wonder whether they represent different steps.
After reading the article on triangulation, I am not clear on one thing: Does triangulation seek to answer the same question with different methods? Or it also seeks to answer different research questions with different methods. If the latter is true, the researcher would be looking at the each issue (i.e., RQ) from different perspectives (i.e., each method). Therefore, what he/she would be triangulating?
In the article on triangulation there is an assertion that I would like to discuss. The author says that triangulation is a strategy leading to a deeper understanding and less toward validity of interpretation. Validity is to make sure you’re studying what you’re supposed to be studying and not something else. Therefore, wouldn’t we conclude that through a deeper understanding we make sure we are studying or seeing what we are really seeing? In the end, aren’t both concepts seeking the same goal?
Toulmin, who advocates convergence between idealism and realism, asserts that scholars draw from other scholars, so their interpretation conform to those of the community and are not purely personal. Although I tend to agree with his/her view, I wonder to what extent this position prevents novel ideas because they usually don’t get accepted or conform to those in the community in the beginning.

Sungsoo's Questions

2009-09-20T10:23:00.001-07:00

Q1.Potter’s suggestion of three-dimension classification of qualitative approach, axiomatic, methodology, and method, helps to catch the broad and often confusing definition of ‘qualitative.’ However I cannot help having the impression that he draws the line in arbitrary.

Q2. Are there any other qualitative methodologies? Since Potter’s book published in 1996, I hope that we must have some newly developed qualitative methodologies.

Q3. Potter’s idea of ‘template’ (Potter, p25) is very interesting, then, how can we describe the template of the quantitative approach?

Q4. Pauwels provides insightful guidance of the Internet research, especially to those of cultural studies. His proposal of hybrid media analysis definitely elucidates many aspects of Internet research which have extremely complexity. I like to know some researches which combine the cultural studies and linguistic analysis to examine the Internet usage.
,
Q5. Belton’s ‘Face at the window’ study’ shows that there are competitive methods of qualitative research dealing with the media effects on the audience or media users. However quantitative researcher may well react like this: We can add the variables of the relationship between children and his parent to the relationship between violent TV program watching hours and violent behavior or violent story telling. What will be the difference between her research and other researches based on quantitative methods?

Sung Woo- questions

2009-09-20T10:04:00.000-07:00

1. Can Triangulation enhance the reliability of qualitative research studies?
-I am curious about Triangulation as a research strategy, because I think it deals with the problems I had with qualitative approach. One of the problem of being qualitative is, I think, reliability. We discussed last week that the result of a qualitative research could be unique to the researcher. How could you tell this uniqueness is not a bias or an academic defect of the author? So Flick mentioned utility of Triangulation as a way of validation. But he did not mention to what extent, to what effect. I am eager to know.
2. In Triangulation, how can we combine the result of different theory application, data or investigators as something of one study?
-I imagine that we can try Triangulation in our group assignment #1 since we participate as different investigators. But I cannot think of a way we can combine different results as that of one study. The readings did not mention this. Systemizing and describing how to Triangulate would add another chapter of a long methodological quest?
3. Boundaries are so blur among methodologies that it is really hard to discriminate?
-Potter said differences among seven methodologies are not so great. At the same time he said they are not interchangeable (65-67). This confuses me a lot because I could see there is a huge overlap between methodologies.
4. How do you find the loop to connect a specific person, institution or text to a historical, cultural background?
-In quantitative research his may be done with sampling, testing external validity. When you do qualitative research, you tend to analyze specific case, with the unique result depending upon a specific researcher. How can you argue that the historical background is crystallized in that result?
5. Which is a good cat? A white cat? A black cat? Or the one that catches mice?
-Having read the Chapter 1 of Potter, and being more confused about the definition of qualitative, I think we should approach the matter of quanti- and quali- in a more utilitarian way. I assume the debate over methodology is a vernacular phenomenon in academia. Definitions based on the dichotomy of quali- and quanti- is reductionist, I think. The two approaches do not have to be mutually exclusive in a specific way. I found definition of Strauss and Corbin (p.7, p.11) especially troublesome. “Any kind that is not arrived at by means of statistical procedures or other means of quantification?” I think that is misleading.

Triangulation nonsense

2009-09-20T09:46:00.000-07:00

Let me begin by saying that Flick is crazy: who has ever heard of more than one researcher working on a qualitative paper at the same time? The idea is preposterous and I’m sure that brilliant reviewers will not let any of this more-than-one-researcher nonsense get published.
Now that that has been cleared up, I think the article was a nice little exposé of triangulation, what it means and how we should use it. My only question would be: how do we go about writing about triangulation in our research? Do only qualitative journals accept it as valid?
I think Pauwels brings up a very interesting discussion with the “virtual” versus “real” worlds. What he fails to mention is that, in many cases, people tend to like the virtual better because they can be whoever they want to be (due to the lack of face-to-face interaction: “identitiy play” on p.608) and they can completely avoid what he calls “potentially threatening forms of feedback” (p. 605). Baudrillard, for example, spoke of the virtual world as the same as giving each users its own vessel, which he can use to travel wherever he goes without having any physical contact with anything and anyone.
Representativity is another huge issue. The research we read is usually focused on Internet users and, I believe, that helps us forget that there are many non-users out there. Dr. Straubhaar conducted some research on this area last year and, if I remember correctly, 25% of the first-generation immigrants hadn’t even HEARD of the Internet.
The critique that Internet research is “still largely confined to textual data” (p. 607) has a lot to do with what we talked about in the last class: it’s easier. The call that the author makes to bring in more ethnography into Internet research instead of just looking at the pages themselves is brilliant. We are trying to study new phenomena using the same textual analysis that scholars have always used to analyze books. Isn’t the Internet more a way of life, a way of doing things and participating rather than a mass-media device? Shouldn’t we stop thinking about an online world and a real world and start thinking that we live, and do research, in the area where they meet and the “borders” become invisible?
The Belton piece was very interesting (I loved the “proof of the pudding is in the eating” deal on p. 634). Besides the fact that Mel was messed up in the head, the piece made me think that we think way too much about what TV is doing to our kids. That’s not to say that we should stop researching, but after reading the article and going over Cultivation Theory and mean world syndrome in my head I couldn’t help thinking that, if we take away the images (which are VERY powerful), TV is not much worse than “children’s stories” that are full of evil witches, bad wolves, cruel stepsisters, monsters and ghosts.
If the piece proves anything, it’s that children can watch all the TV in the world…but their level of m essed-upness is directly related to their real, everyday life (i.e. family, friends, school, etc.). That’s what the author calls “incorporation of personal experience” (p. 639). If they’re using the images from TV to express their own feelings, does it really matter if the images are bad if everything else they’re surrounded by is good?
I apologize for this question: isn’t quantitative research also guilty of completely ignoring human individuality (p. 641)?

Alex Questions

2009-09-20T09:34:00.001-07:00

Q1 – Potter begins essentially by describing how qualitative research is defined by however the researcher decides to define it, noting the lack of consensus and even differing use of terms. Today, is qualitative research still seen as pretty much anything that is not numbers driven research?

Q2 – Potter talks about the rise of empericism. If one accepts empirical as meaning something that can be measured, doesn’t that lend itself to quantitative methods? (Seems like a misnomer…)

Q3 – Potter’s introduction is full of philosophical and ideological camps – constructionists v. realists; idealists v. materialists; ontological v. epistemological; etc… - do most qualitative researchers today find they must subscribe to such camps, or be accepted by their philosophical peers within these points of view?

Q4 – Flick describes how triangulation can mean many things, from triangulation of data, to researchers, to research methods. Does the idea of “more is better” ever come into play? As in triangulate as many research elements as possible in order to get better research? (I can see this is almost being chaotic, actually.)

Q5 – Pauwels raises an important issue of conducting qualitative research in a digital media environment and multi-media environments in general. Does a combination (triangulation) of methods seem to be the preferred way of approaching online media research today?

Yonghwan's Questions

2009-09-20T08:38:00.000-07:00

1. It was interesting to know there are a number of scholars who are reluctant to provide a definition of qualitative research. I could understand what they intent for in that qualitative research and method are very flexible and intersubjective; they don’t want to limit its flexible boundaries and mislead the readers. And I also agree that “this is of very little comfort to students and other scholars trying to understand it” because I don’t want to wander through the literature aimlessly (we may see definitions for qualitative research p. 7 are still helpful for us). Thus the thing is that would resisting making a definition be helpful in growing the field of qualitative research? If it would, how?

2. Continued to this issue, has anyone thought about research questions that would not be solved with existing qualitative method? Are these kinds of issues (i.e., resisting a simple definition of qualitative method and research questions which is sort of hard to answer with existing qualitative methods) related to emergence of Triangulation?

3. Triangulation is used to refer to the observation of the research issue from two different points (Flick, p. 178). In the section of criticisms of triangulation, it is stated that “triangulation is now seen less as a validation strategy within qualitative research and more as a strategy for justifying and underpinning knowledge by gaining additional knowledge (Denzin and Lincoln, 1994, p, 5; cf. Flick, 1992).” What’s the point of differentiating a validation strategy from a strategy for justifying and underpinning knowledge?

4. It is interesting to see that while much of the quantitative approach follows the traditions of humanism, there is also a sizable scholarly community of qualitative researchers who consider themselves as following the traditions of science more so than the traditions of humanism (Potter, p. 34). I remember that I had a conversation with my colleagues regarding this topic. One of my senior colleagues, who are qualitative person graduated from UT RTF, mentioned that qualitative research is also science and can be even more scientific than quantitative research. As a qualitative researcher (or at least a student taking qualitative method class), do you think qualitative research is science? If yes, in what sense?

5. It seems important to consider generalization issue in debating whether qualitative research is science or not, which is closely related to theory (building or developing). How can qualitative research make generalization (at least among those who follow the traditions of science)? In addition, in relation to theory building, which one comes first, theory or observation?

Sun Ho's Questions

2009-09-20T05:33:00.000-07:00

* In chapter 5, Potter introduced three interrelated facets to mass media research (audiences, texts and institutions) and matched up seven qualitative methodologies with those. Then on page 68, he stated that we "usually focus on one of the facets and choose one methodology as a strategy for examining the facet of interest."

1. But what are some of the exceptions to this? Can we think of any examples of research studies that include more than one facet of interest and/or that involve more than one methodology?

2. Is this something doable within the qualitative approach? If yes, how can we manage to conduct the study without losing the primary focus of the study?

* Pauwels, (2005), “Websites as visuals and multimodal cultural expressions: opportunities and issues of online hybrid media research,” Media, Cultural & Society, 27(4); p. 604-613.

3. When I first read this article, some of the "opportunities and issues" of online hybrid media research discussed here seemed outdated in a way since it is a rapidly evolving research area. But at the same time, I realized that we still need to pay attention to some of the "issues" such as the textual bias or triangulation. What are some of the recent developments on these issues?

4. This article focuses on the interactive features of the web and CMCs as it was written at the time when we didn't see much of the web 2.0 technologies that we see now. But it seems like researchers ourselves tend to face different opportunities and issues when we look at different technological features of the digital media. What are some of the latest opportunities and issues we see from online media research now, especially when it comes to qualitative approach?

* Belton, (2000), “The ‘face at the window’ study: a fresh approach to media influence and to investigating the influence of television and videos on children’s imagination,” Media, Culture & Society, 22(5); p. 629-643.

5. On page 642, Belton concludes, "future research would benefit from letting go of crude categorizations and from developing methodologies which take on board the individual, everyday, embedded reality of the viewing experience." The author also explained about the paradigm shift in media research "from an experimental and statistical approach towards 'real world' studies of 'ecological validity'" (p 641). The study seems to suggest that we take a more ethnographical stance. But what other qualitative methodologies can we use specifically for mass comm and journalism research?

YUKUN's Questions

2009-09-20T01:22:00.000-07:00

The definition of qualitative

In Potter's book, Chapter discussed various definitions including direct definitions and indirect definitions. In my personal opinion, qualitative methods existed long before quantitative methods and lnclude various methods such as ethnography, textual analysis.... It is easier to define quantitative approaches. I support the contrasting-type definitions in chapter. I believe scholars should not focus on how to define qualitative approaches as a whole rather than focus on define individual qualitative methods. For example, what is ethnography? or what is textual analysis?

Three facets in Chapter 5

In chapter 5 Potter propose three facets: the Audience facet, the text facet, the institution facet. I am wondering if any scholar compared qualitative approaches and quantitative approaches in these three facets. Which approach is suitable in the first facet, the second facet or the third facet? In my opinion, qualitative approaches are more suitable in the institution facet. Qualitative approaches can overcome the limits of studying the institution. In this level, the qualitative approach has more advantages than its opponent.

How to build qualitative theories

After done Potter's Pauwels and Flick's articles, I wonder how we could build a qualitative theory. Most characteristics of building theories are not in qualitative approaches: generalize, replicate....... In addition, qualitative approaches always stress unique case. Therefore, those differences really confuse me. Or should we reley on triangulation to build our qualitative theory?

Triangulation between convergence and divergence

At the end of Flick's article, he wrote something about triangulation between convergence and divergence. Does the convergance of triangulation mean it is the one step of qualitative theory building? Besides, how do we deal with the conflicts between different methods? If there is a conflict among triangulation, does it mean a new research question?

Question about Pauwels article.

This article reminded me our discussion in last week. In my opinion, the new media seems open a new window for qualitative research. Especially, new media combines verbal and visual communication. Quantantative researches only focus on the manifest information. It is hard for a scholar to study images only by quantantative methods. Qualitative methods or triangulation are the solutions for this pitfall.

Sebastian's q's

2009-09-19T14:27:00.000-07:00

1. Potter, chapter 1. Why the reluctance in defining what's qualitative? Potter provides several answers: definitions may be misleading, limiting or, worse, overly simplistic. However, I do think that definitions are quite helpful. Herbert Blumer once said that without definitions, it's impossible to know where to look, what to look for, or --most importantly-- how to recognize what we were looking for when we find it. If researchers can agree that a discourse analysis is different from an ethnography, I'm sure they can also agree that the qualitative approach has some unique attributes that are worth defining in the first place.

2. Potter, chapter 2, table 2.1. Jensen & Jankowski (1991, p. 4) argue that "qualitative analysis focuses on the occurrence of its analytical objects in a particular context, as opposed to the recurrence of formally similar elements in different contexts." The way I see it, this suggests that qualitative research focuses on particular cases and tries to describe a unique phenomenon, whereas quantitative research is mainly concerned about different units and common patterns across these units. I believe that generalizability is an important attribute of social science, regardless of the method of study. I'm interested in studying a specific population at a specific location at a specific point in time not because I only want to learn, describe and explain that specific population at that specific location at that specific point in time, but because I believe that my study can say something about "us" (and by "us," I mean a community, a country, a culture... the human species, perhaps?). So, where's the principle of generalizability in the qualitative approach? Is it a priority?

3. Potter, chapter 2, table 2.1. Bogdan & Taylor (1975, p. 2) noted that "qualitative methodologies refer to research procedures which produce descriptive data." I wonder: why stop at describing a phenomenon? What's the purpose of describing something? Shouldn't we aim for explanation, prediction, or something else?... Or am I just a prisoner of the quantitative/social science approach by asking this?

4. Potter, chapter 3, p. 32. "Scientists abandoned claims of truth; rather, they opted for utility." So, in the best case scenario, science provides improved explanations. I wonder how this is related to the concept of social construction of reality. If truth is something we reach through consensus and socially shared perceptions of what is and what is not (Potter calls it intersubjectivity), then perhaps an improved explanation can reach the status of truth (I'm thinking about the theory of evolution here).

5. Potter, chapter 4. Despite the illustrations and examples on the seven methods of qualitative research, it was quite difficult for me to picture the differences. I guess my problem was that I always think of research questions and methods simultaneously (what's the purpose of having a question if you can't address it with the methods you have at hand?) So, perhaps, I'd like to cover this semester the fit between the type of qualitative research methods that fit certain types of research questions.

Paul's Questions for 9-21

2009-09-19T10:30:00.000-07:00

1) It’s interesting to read the various definitions scholars give to the term “qualitative analysis.” Some have similar terms and descriptions, and others are almost on their own. But on Page 7 of Potter’s textbook, he says that there are some very good reasons why some scholars won’t try to define it at all. He says the task of defining one’s area is “so complex and fraught with danger” that doing so might mislead the reader. He adds, “Definitions have a static nature whereas the qualitative approach is organic." Later, on Page 21, Potter describes the Component-Type Definition and Procedural-Type Definition, among others, which also show the difficulty of coming up with a definition that makes sense to someone outside the qualitative field. Is it misleading to define qualitative analysis?

2) Potter mentions in the opening of Chapter 2 that he prefers to use the term qualitative approach, because the word approach is not as formal as paradigm and more general than technique, method, or methodology. He adds that an approach consists of a set of assumptions, goals and methods, and qualitative is one such approach. Would quantitative scholars also consider their area an approach? It seems from Potter’s description, both involve assumptions, goals and methods.

3) When trying to define or describe qualitative analysis, Potter uses the example of a “third” dimension and illustrates it by comparing the approach to a cube (page 23). There is the axiomatic position, methodology, and then method. In the first step, Potter says making a certain set of assumptions defines a researcher as quantitative, and making another set of assumptions defines a researcher as qualitative. This three-level “scheme” makes sense to me. I just want to confirm in my mind that it can be applied to both quantitative and qualitative, and that it is in the first phase where the two approaches really differ. Is that right?

4) In the reading concerning triangulation, Flick refers to Denzin in the specific area of triangulation of theories. Denzin says "approaching data with multiple perspectives and hypotheses in mind… . Various theoretical points of view could be placed side by side to assess their utility and power." I think I know what’s meant by “utility,” but what really is meant by “power?”

5) In the description of Between-method triangulation on Page 180 of Flick’s article, he describes a research situation where a combination of reactive and non-reactive procedures is utilized. In the example where the qualitative procedure is reactive, Flick says investigators are part of the research situation. He uses an example where consultation talks that the interviewees had had with their clients in their everyday professional life are analyzed. Is this planned and obvious to the participants? If so, isn’t this like the argument against cameras in the courtroom, where opponents to this journalistic practice contend the presence of cameras impacts how participants act? In order for this approach to be effective, does the observation have to be concealed to be effective?

Sunsoo's Questions

2009-09-13T11:11:00.000-07:00

Q1. According to Denzin and Lincoln (p 5) qualitative research has multiple methodologies, research practices and various moments that simultaneously operate in the present (qualitative researches based on methodological pluralism?), what is the identity or common ground of qualitative research? Does its identity are only contrast to or resistance to quantitative research?

Q2. Denzin and Lincoln point out (P 21~22) that qualitative researchers are now confronting the double crisis of representation and legitimacy: qualitative researchers can directly capture lived experience created in the social text written by the researchers (representation crisis) and evaluating and interpreting qualitative research problematic (legitimacy crisis). What will be the possible solution of that crisis?

Q3. How can we utilize or adopt the Saussure and Peirce’s contributions in semiotics and semantics to communication research?

Q4. Jensen notes the uneasy cohabitation between structuralism and cultural studies regarding to the nature of social life and cultural forms under industrial capitalism, especially the matter of relative autonomy of culture (p 28~29). What is your opinion?

Q5 As Jankowski and Wester examine in the dilemma of feminist scholars (p 57), qualitative researchers are confronting matter of the politics and the epistemology of research: what is the relationship between the objective of a study and the objectivity of the research procedures and findings. If the researchers are activated by specific goals, repression or emancipation, what is the difference between qualitative research and politics? If it is not so different, are the fields of qualitative research the battle field of politics?

Marcus' Questions

2009-09-13T11:00:00.001-07:00

Q1) The depiction of values-based research and value-less research in Denzin and Lincoln bothered me a bit. Their argument seemed to be that by disclosing biases and acknowledging values, qualitative research is more objective than quantitative research – but ironically, that logic is subjective and self-defeating, because how can “values” be established objectively? There’s no universal standard of “value,” and disclosing an author’s personal convictions simply reveals their priorities without guaranteeing honesty in their research. Now, you can turn that right around and say that hiding those convictions is even more dangerous to research, but then you reach the conclusion that neither is effectively objective – which is precisely the argument in favor of qualitative research, and now you’ve come full circle.

I understand the logic behind disclosing those values, I just am not convinced it makes a difference in the long run. And I know for sure that the “disclosing biases” argument barely works when discussing substantive media – people tolerate FoxNews and MSNBC because the subject matter is obtuse and far away, but when it comes to actual news about tangible issues, they just want the facts. Here’s a great example of a “traditional values” newspaper trying to slant local news in the most Republican county in Texas … and it’s flopping.

Q2) How essential is the idea of replication to qualitative research? Sung Woo brings up an interesting point. I know that when you’re talking about physics or math, the idea is that the universe works in constant ways – and that’s why replication is so important, because gravity is the same in Texas and in China. But social sciences seem like a different animal, because there is no assurance of consistency.

Q3) One thought that kept coming back to me as I read these texts is the unneeded exclusivity of it all. I understand that there’s a certain rivalry between quantitative and qualitative research, and I get that academics can be the most obtuse gatekeepers of them all, but it still seems like there are an awful lot of connections between the two. If you’re qualitatively assessing, for example, the photos on the cover of Time Magazine or National Geographic – was that this class that we touched on that? Or another one? – it stands to reason that a few statistics would go a long way. It’s hard to quantitatively analyze the imagery presented in such photographs of women, for example, but it’s also hard to qualitatively establish how many of those photos fell into the subject range in the first place. So can’t we all just get along?

Q4) Am I the only one that felt that the Jensen piece was a bit, uhm … I don’t want to say paranoid, but excessively skeptical? Terminology is certainly very powerful, and how images and ideas are framed is a big deal, but that doesn’t always mean there’s a serious difference between what someone says and what they really mean. Sometimes there’s a difference, but I can think of plenty of times when what a source said was honestly pretty close to what they meant. Plus, most of what’s hidden in an interview is simply unsaid – what’s left out is often more important than what’s included – and it’s hard to linguistically analyze words that aren’t there.

Q5) This is perhaps a bit off-topic, but we keep referring to quantitative research as the “dominant paradigm,” which seems to imply a constant paradigm across communication and social sciences research. But it seems more nuanced than that – how common is quantitative research in women and gender studies, for example? Is it that qualitative methods are really that uncommon, or just that different camps have set up their own preferences for particular subjects?

Also, you could Jensen that phrase, “dominant paradigm,” and argue that it’s clearly preferred by qualitative researchers because it implies that they’re a resistance force or alternative beat. Without poking the proverbial bear, I just wonder how much traction qualitative researchers get from playing the underdog? And how would quantitative folks describe that same dynamic, how would they refer to the "dominant paradigm?"

Nice introduction

2009-09-13T09:32:00.000-07:00

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!

Yonghwan's Questions

2009-09-13T09:19:00.000-07:00

1. Qualitative research and quantitative research seem different in whether it is a value-free framework. While qualitative researchers emphasize the value-laden nature of inquiry, the other side of research, which is a quantitative research, is purported to be within a value-free framework (Denzin & Lincoln, 1998, p, 8). The authors argue that “the age of value-free inquiry for the human disciplines is over, and researchers now struggle to develop situational and transsituational ethics that apply to any given research act” (p. 24). What do you think about this argument?

2. Even though qualitative research has generally criticized positivist tradition, which is more closely related theory driven or theory building research, it seems that qualitative research also has been conducted based on its own theoretical frameworks and in order to develop theory or theoretical paradigms. One may argue that qualitative research is (also) restricted to theory or generalization. What do you think about this argument?

3. Continued to critical theory, what’s the role of critical theory? Is it tool for interpretation of the world? Then how these critical theories are developed and built (especially in comparison with theories of quantitative research)?

4. Regardless of the argument whether qualitative research is rigor in terms of research methodology, every research including qualitative research needs to be done with rigorous methods and procedures. What are the characteristics of rigorous methods in qualitative research? In quantitative research, for instance, systematic sampling, normal distribution (vs. skew) and appropriate statistical analysis are said to be necessary for rigorous methods. Then what about qualitative research?

5. The qualitative perspective has contributed mass communication research by focusing on their emphasis on processes and meanings with pursuing their epistemology. For instance, studies on news production and audience reception by participation observation can be examples of this. I think qualitative research has played an important role in mass communication era because of its inherent nature, which is hierarchical relationship between content producer (i.e., mass media) and audience, in discovering these power relations in a society. Then will this qualitative research or critical theory continue to contribute to this (non-mass) new communication? If yes, how?

Reading Questions for Sept. 14

2009-09-13T08:35:00.000-07:00

Q1 – Given the glowing description of the value and noble goals of Qualitative research by Denzin & Lincoln, why does mass communication research lean so heavily towards quantitative research? Is there a quantitative bias?

Q2 – Denzin & Lincoln openly discussed the inclusion of biased points of view in qualitative research by approaching research within the context of prevailing “paradigms.” Does this mean than quantitative research is considered more “objective?”

Q3 – Jenson seems concerned with the study of linguistics and suggests that genre adds even greater meaning to it. Given that, is it Jenson’s position that Genre is essentially a culturally specific construct?

Q4 – I’m not certain that I understand “positivist” theory and its impact on the “methodological debate.” What was the philosophical goal of positivist theory and how did post-positivism affect this methodological debate?

Q5 – A consistent issue throughout the readings concerns bias and objectivity. And it’s been suggested that quantitative methods are “less-biased” because, after all, “numbers don’t lie.” But the work of ethnic and feminist researchers who have taken over the research of their respective communities has raised question of objectively to new levels. How can an “ethnic” or “feminist” researcher work within their communities without the “bias” label completely undermining the value of their research contributions?

Sung Woo-questions

2009-09-13T08:06:00.000-07:00

1. Denzen & Lincoln or Jensen all point out that multiple methodology characterizes qualitative approach. Then, what are the strong points of each technique? For example, how do participant observation and interview complement each other? What are the good combinations for a certain research?
2. Is it possible to replicate qualitative research? For example if Malinowski observed New Guinean people instead of Mead, would the result have been different?
3. What are the instances that qualitative research embraced physical science?
4. Citation from Jankowski & Wester. “The minimal effect of communication found through survey is largely a product of methodology (Gitlin).” So, are qualitative approaches, largely more into moderate or powerful effect model?
5. Some of the concepts used in Peirces’s social semiotics, how can they be incorporated into SR communication model? Concept like interpretation, or difference?

Sebastian's questions

2009-09-13T07:59:00.000-07:00

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.

yukun's questions

2009-09-13T02:43:00.000-07:00

Questions about objectivity and research ethics

In p 35 (Klaus Bruhn Jensen),” qualitative researchers emphatically interact with their objet of inquiry.” In P 57 (Nicholas Jankowski and Fred Wester), “what degree the researcher should maintain a distance from researched.” Though objectivity is not the standard to evaluate qualitative research papers, in my opinion, how to keep balance between subjectivity and objectivity is a challenge for a good researcher. In addition, I am wondering if a researcher will intervene the interviewees’ life too much. Is there any research ethics issue about that?

Conflicts among different methods

In p64 (Nicholas Jankowski and Fred Wester) “all triangulation is that the weaknesses in each single method will be compensated by the counter-balancing strengths of another.” In p63 “this signals not the end of the study, but the beginning of a phase of theoretical analysis….” According to the authors, combination of different qualitative methods is an excellent approach to conduct qualitative studies. In addition, nowadays more and more researchers combine qualitative and quantitative methods. For me, conflicts between different methods are big issues. I am not satisfied with the notion provided by the authors: it means the beginning of a new study. It is too simplified for me.

How to build a general theory by qualitative methods

In p69(Nicholas Jankowski and Fred Wester), According to Burgess, the third form of qualitative research reports is “substantive accounts intended to contribute to general theory.” One of obvious characteristics of the qualitative method is to detail situations or “thick description”. It is different from the quantitative method, owing science orientations to build general theories. I don’t know how the qualitative method builds a general theory.

Empirical methods and qualitative methods

In p35 (Norman Denzin and Yvonna Lincoln), the fifth moment, they indicated that we are already in the “post” period. This new age means uncertain and messy. After reading all materials of this week, I find qualitative methods are still related to empirical methods. I don’t know if the coming new age present a new route, which is not so empirical.

New media formats and research methods

Those materials stress the role of language in qualitative research methods. Even though research methods applied on visual communication are also from linguistics, we need new research method to study new media breaking the line between words and images and creating some new formats we have never seen before.

Paul's Questions for 9/14

2009-09-12T19:00:00.000-07:00

Our first reading by Denzin and Lincoln provided a description and table (Pg. 27) on interpretive paradigms, or interpretive framework. Two of those listed under paradigm/theory are Feminist and Ethnic. The descriptions regarding criteria, form of theory and type of narration were very similar for both, with the feminist paradigm/theory incorporating just a few more elements. It seems that in the form of theory area, Ethnic uses historical elements, where Faminist does not. Is this the basic difference between the two?
In the Denzin and Lincoln reading on Page 29, the methods of collecting and analyzing empirical materials are briefly described. From direct observation to the analysis of artifacts, documents, and cultural records, to the use of visual materials or personal experience, the descriptions sounds a lot like what a typical television journalist like myself does on a daily basis. Is this aspect of qualitative research just a more extensive form of what working journalists do as part of their routine?
Linguistic discourse analysis is discussed in our second reading this week by Jensen. He details the humanistic methodology of interaction as one of three main levels of analysis, such as interviewing. Conducting interviews is, again, a big part of my routine as a journalist, so this area of qualitative research intrigues me. On page 34, Jensen states, “linguistic analysis of an interview transcript, for example, can suggest how conceptual distinctions and interrelations are established during the interaction.” How is the interviewer performance described as part of the final writing of any qualitative research project?
“The Case of Visual Communication” is described on page 37 of Jensen’s portion of our reading. At the time of his writing in 1991, it’s clear that examining visual communication in terms of qualitative research was in its early stages. How far has it come? I hope to include the youtube debates in my dissertation, but have not determined how to approach it yet.
After giving a working definition of qualitative research on page 44, Jankowski cites Mead (1934) when he says that the notion of role taking suggests, “in order to study human behavior the perspective of the actor must be established.” The researcher’s task, he adds, is to reconstruct and understand this perspective. What is meant by this?

Teresa

2009-09-12T17:43:00.001-07:00

1- From the readings, one may conclude that many times qualitative research’s history and definition seem to be shaped or defined with respect to the quantitative approach. In other words, positivist approaches seem to be overly present when describing qualitative or interpretive perspectives. This doesn’t seem to happen in the opposite direction. From what I remember, quantitative research’s history and definition are not generally described with respect to the qualitative approach’s development. Just to give some examples: In Denzin and Lincoln’s article they state, “Postpositivism functioned as a powerful epistemological paradigm in this moment. Researchers attempted to fit the arguments of Campbell and Stanley about internal and external validity to constructionist models of the research act” (p. 16). In the 1950’s, qualitative research came to be seen as a preliminary activity which could, at best, lay the groundwork for “real science’” (Jankwoski and Wester, p. 49). Is this the case? If so, why?

2- From the readings, one can also conclude that qualitative research aims to provide a deep understanding, interpretation, and description of social phenomena. However, the Chicago school conducted communication research on the effects of films on children (Jankowski and Wester). Is it possible to conduct causal or predictive studies using qualitative tools?

3- Jankowski and Wester quote Steeves (1987) to say that generally feminist critical scholars use qualitative methods while those from a social science background use quantitative ones. But the argument goes further by saying that radical feminists tend to “dismiss quantitative methods as ‘masculine’ strategies of knowledge” (p. 57). What does this mean? Why quantitative methods would be masculine? Does this mean that numbers are intrinsically masculine? Are women in hard sciences more masculine? I wonder whether this argument reproduces or reinforces the available stereotypes that women are for letters while men are for math or numbers, which eventually boosts stereotype threats (i.e., women finally end up believing they are not good at numbers) and prevents equal opportunities.

4- In Jankowski and Wester, there is another idea that seems somewhat puzzling: “To sum up, there are affinities between the qualitative tradition and research with an emancipatory objective…. While it is true that some figures associated with the Chicago School were guided by progressive ideals, its research program was not designed to solve social problems” (p. 57). I understand that researchers are not necessarily activists, but what is the purpose of doing research if it’s not to unfold or solve a problem? Is it just to build knowledge for the sake of building knowledge? Where is the “so what” factor then?

5- Finally, I would like to clarify some questions: Is it correct to conclude that methods dealing with participant observation and in-depth interviews con from the social science approach to qualitative method while text analyses com from the humanistic perspective? Also, I would like to better understand what is the phenomenological approach. I know Gaye Tuchman used this approach in her books but I’m not clear what it is exactly.

September 12, 2009 11:45 AM

Welcome

2009-08-26T11:52:00.000-07:00

Here's where we'll have a chance to chat about using qualitative methods in mass media research. More to come...