CONVERGINGMEDIACase StudyConverging Methods for Studying Mass Media: Qualitative, Quantitative, and Mixed Methods

When making our most important decisions—where to go to school, what classes to take, where to live, who to vote for, what kind of car to buy—most of us would like to make the best choices possible. For each of these decisions there is a wealth of information available—either right in front of us or through a quick search online. But how do we know what information to believe? What methods can we use to test various claims of truth, and how can we separate justifiable conclusions from mere opinion? These are epistemological questions, questions about how we know what we think we know—questions that are of the utmost importance to anyone doing scholarly research.

A full discussion of the philosophy of how we know what we know could take up volumes; for our purposes in discussing mass communication research, it’s helpful to keep two things in mind. The first is that some kind of rigorous method is necessary for research to be taken seriously by other experts. The second is that these research methods typically fall into one of two categories: quantitative and qualitative.

Quantitative methods, as one might guess, tend to make use of tools like statistical analysis and sampling techniques or controlled experiments to understand the place of mass media in the world. Quantitative methods, such as surveys, tend to be used most often in social scientific types of media research. Supporters say this method helps remove researcher bias from the data-collection process, making the results more “objective.” Qualitative methods tend to align with a critical cultural approach to media research and employ methods like ethnography (interviews, observing people in their daily lives) and textual analysis (see also pages 516–517). Supporters say this allows researchers to consider things like history, economics, and culture in ways that are not quantifiable but are still observable parts of the human condition.

Historically, scholars tended to gravitate toward one of these two approaches of understanding mass media. Questions over which approach is epistemologically superior are still the subject of lively debate, as are claims of objectivity and cultural relevance, as well as discussions of the pros and cons of social scientific and critical cultural approaches to research, discussed earlier in this chapter. Researchers are, after all, human, and these debates can get very heated. At the same time, many scholars welcome the intellectual challenge of weighing the advantages and drawbacks of different approaches and grappling with profound questions about objectivity, validity, reliability, and even truth.

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One solution to this intellectual challenge is another kind of convergence: the convergence of methods of media study. A third trend among those studying journalism and mass communication is sometimes called mixed methods, which combines quantitative and qualitative methods in the same research project. The idea is that looking at mass media from different viewpoints allows for a kind of “triangulation,” a concept borrowed from surveying that uses two or more points to observe a distant object in order to get a better fix on its exact position. For example, researchers might combine surveys (with their ability to collect and compare data from a much larger number of people) and interviews (with their ability to evoke greater depth and understanding from a smaller number of people).

This entire book is another example of how research from both traditions might converge to (hopefully) paint a richer picture of the mass media landscape. Key facts—such as how people (and how many people) use various mass media—are often based on survey research. Placing those facts within a historical, economic, cultural, or political context represents an approach at home within the qualitative tradition.

Part of living in modern society involves receiving a ton of information not only from mass media but also about mass media. From textbooks to political pundits, we are flooded with claims about who and what is to be believed, and these claims don’t always agree. How might a discussion of epistemology and research methods help weigh and evaluate these various claims? How might it boost our ability to think critically about competing messages about media? In short, how can understanding these things help us make the best possible choice of what to believe?