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A Handbook of Media and Communication Research
Thoroughly revised and updated, this third edition integrates perspectives from the social sciences and the humanities, focusing on methodology as a strategic level of analysis that joins practical applications with theoretical issues. The Handbook comprises three main elements: historical accounts of the development of key concepts and research traditions; systematic reviews of media organizations, discourses, and users, as well as of the wider social and cultural contexts of communication; and practical guidelines with sample studies, taking readers through the different stages of a research process and reflecting on the social uses and consequences of research. Updates to this edition include: • An overview of the interrelations between networked, mass, and interpersonal communication. • A new chapter on digital methods. • Three chapters illustrating different varieties of media and communication research, including industry–academic collaboration and participatory action research. • Presentation and discussion of public issues such as surveillance and the reconfiguration of local and global media institutions. This book is an invaluable reference work for students and researchers in the fields of media, communication, and cultural studies. Klaus Bruhn Jensen is a professor in the Department of Communication, University of Copenhagen, Denmark. His research centers on communication theory and empirical methodologies as they apply to digital media. Previous publications include Media Convergence (2010) and International Encyclopedia of Communication Theory and Philosophy (2016).
This is a great example of interdisciplinarity at work. —Elihu Katz, Annenberg School of Communication This new edition offers a historical, philosophical, topical, and methodological overview that manages to be both deep and wide-ranging. It will be of tremendous use for students and others seeking a better understanding of communication as both a topic and a field. —Nancy Baym, Microsoft Research As society becomes ever more mediated, reliant on and reconfigured by complex and fast-changing digital technologies, academic analysis is urgently in need of fresh thinking. Look no further: this volume offers a wealth of insightful concepts, critical questions and intellectual traditions to revitalise our field. Through a rigorous historical grounding, it simultaneously integrates and yet distinguishes among key approaches to pose a new research agenda for the digital world. —Sonia Livingstone, London School of Economics and Political Science A Handbook of Media and Communication Research is a guiding light of interdisciplinarity, arising from both the humanities and the social sciences. Klaus Bruhn Jensen and his stellar co-authors guide us through the various genres of media and communication (news, entertainment, etc.), as well as the effects of interpersonal media, mass media, and everything in between. They look at how we study the phenomenon (qualitative, quantitative, digital), its cultural and historical dimensions, as well as the position of media industries. The book is a welcome beacon for all students and scholars navigating the current state of media and communication. —Rich Ling, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
A Handbook of Media and Communication Research Qualitative and Quantitative Methodologies Edited by
Klaus Bruhn Jensen
3rd edition
Third edition published 2021 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2021 selection and editorial matter, Klaus Bruhn Jensen; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Klaus Bruhn Jensen to be identified as the author of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. First edition published by Routledge 2002 Second edition published by Routledge 2012 British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Jensen, Klaus Bruhn, editor. Title: A handbook of media and communication research: qualitative and quantitative methodologies/edited by Klaus Bruhn Jensen. Description: Third Edition. | New York: Routledge, 2021. | Revised edition of The handbook of media and communication research, 2012. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020036054 (print) | LCCN 2020036055 (ebook) | ISBN 9781138492899 (hardback) | ISBN 9781138492929 (paperback) | ISBN 9781138492905 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Mass media—Research—Methodology. | Humanities— Methodology. | Social sciences—Methodology. Classification: LCC P91.3. H35 2021 (print) | LCC P91.3 (ebook) | DDC 302.23—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020036054 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020036055 ISBN: 978-1-138-49289-9 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-138-49292-9 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-138-49290-5 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon and Gill by Apex CoVantage, LLC
Contents
List of illustrations Notes on contributors Preface Note on the text 1
Introduction: the state of convergence in media and communication research Klaus Bruhn Jensen
viii xi xiv xv
1
PART I – HISTORY: SOURCES OF MEDIA AND COMMUNICATION RESEARCH23 2
The humanistic sources of media and communication research Klaus Bruhn Jensen
25
3
The social-scientific sources of media and communication research Michael Meyen
54
PART II – SYSTEMATICS: PROCESSES OF COMMUNICATION
71
Media organizations
4
The production of entertainment media Amanda D. Lotz and Horace Newcomb
75
5
News production Folker Hanusch and Phoebe Maares
93
Media texts
6
Analysing news discourse Darren Kelsey and Lyndon Way
112
vi
Contents 7
Mediated fiction Kay Richardson
136
Media users
8
Media effects: quantitative traditions Klaus Bruhn Jensen
156
9
Media reception: qualitative traditions Klaus Bruhn Jensen
177
Media contexts
10
Communication in contexts: beyond mass-interpersonal and online-offline divides Klaus Bruhn Jensen
193
11
The cultural contexts of media and communication Klaus Bruhn Jensen
213
12
History, communication, and media Janice Peck
232
PART III – PRACTICE: SCIENTIFIC APPROACHES AND SOCIAL APPLICATIONS
253
Empirical research designs
13
Quantitative approaches to media and communication research Jacob Ørmen
255
14
The qualitative research process Klaus Bruhn Jensen
286
15
Digital methods for media and communication research Rasmus Helles
307
16
The complementarity of qualitative and quantitative methodologies in media and communication research Klaus Bruhn Jensen
Multiple media, multiple methods
17
Personal media in everyday life: a baseline study Rasmus Helles
18
Media industries and audience research: an analytic dialogue on the value of engagement Annette Hill
328
349
368
Contents 19
Employing media-rich participatory action research to foster youth voice Lynn Schofield Clark and Margie Thompson
388
Communicating research
20
The social origins and uses of media and communication research411 Klaus Bruhn Jensen References Index
434 495
vii
Illustrations
FIGURES 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 5.1 6.1 6.2 6.3 8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4 9.1 9.2 9.3 10.1 10.2 10.3 10.4 11.1 12.1 III.1 13.1 13.2 13.3 13.4 13.5 13.6 13.7 13.8
Constituents of communication Four models of meaning Three types of interactivity The public-sphere model An anatomy of media and communication research A brief chronology of human communication The hermeneutic circle The process of semiosis Two levels of signification A model of news production Number of articles in individual newspapers Articles across sample period Second World War discourses The stages of communication, as defined by audience research traditions Adoption of black-and-white and color television in the United States Dimensions of campaign objectives and effects 1995 chart of values among Danish media users Milestones of media and communication research Two varieties of reception study Three flows of media use Communicative practices across media types Horizontal and vertical intertextuality Jakobson’s (1960) model of communication Language and meta-language Three communication flows within and between countries Media triangle Six prototypical empirical methods Sampling process Law of large numbers Clustering and stratification sampling techniques Scope of study Standard visualizations of univariate and bivariate analyses The normal distribution curve Regression line with error margins Anscombe’s Quartet
11 12 16 18 21 28 32 35 37 95 115 115 116 157 159 167 174 178 189 192 196 201 206 208 219 235 253 256 257 259 264 276 277 280 281
Illustrations 14.1 The role of language in qualitative methodologies 293 14.2 Production and reception discourses 298 15.1 Network of friendships in a high-school class, based on members’ communication on social media 321 16.1 The signs of science 329 16.2 Two paradigms of research 330 16.3 Six levels of empirical research 333 16.4 Dimensions of validity and reliability 342 16.5 Three domains of reality 346 16.6 Empirical microcosms, theoretical macrocosms 347 17.1 Diffusion of personal media 356 17.2 Mobile media use and age 358 17.3 Normal and log-normal distributions 359 17.4 Age and text messaging 360 18.1 Fieldwork design for the auditions for Got to Dance379 20.1 Types of media and communication research organizations 423 20.2 Ten rules for the conduct of empirical studies 431
TABLES 13.1 Types of experiments 13.2 Levels of measurement 13.3a Observed distribution 13.3b Expected distribution 15.1 TF IDF analysis of the chapters in the Handbook 17.1 A typology of communicative practices 18.1 Got to Dance season 5 social media engagement 18.2 Got to Dance ratings performance 19.1 Complementarities and distinctions across research traditions
265 274 282 282 325 351 384 384 394
IMAGES 6.1 Civilised protesters 6.2 Shame 6.3 Johnson delegitimised 6.4 Hostile Europe 6.5 Knowledgeable Erdoğan
126 128 131 132 133
ANALYSIS BOXES 4.1 5.1 8.1 10.1 14.1 15.1 15.2 15.3 17.1 17.2
Studying media industries in the field The case of audiences as extra-media influences Correspondence analysis of living conditions, lifestyles, and media use Search engines as communication and meta-communication Discourse analysis of qualitative interview data Sampling last.fm Using an application programming interface Calculating term frequency–inverse document frequency Realism and retroduction Sampling and representativity
86 105 174 202 301 316 317 324 354 357
ix
x
Illustrations 17.3 Reliability and validity 17.4 Mixing methods 17.5 Reduction in qualitative analysis
358 361 363
RESOURCE BOXES 1.1 General reference works and journals 1.2 Selected studies and reference works for individual media 20.1 Histories of media and communication research as a field
3 4 418
Contributors
Lynn Schofield Clark is Professor and Chair of the Department of Media, Film and Journalism Studies at the University of Denver. She is author (with Regina Marchi) of Young People and the Future of News (Cambridge University Press, 2017), The Parent App (Oxford University Press, 2013), and several other books and articles on young people and digital and mobile media use. She teaches journalism and media studies in critical race, gender, and class perspectives and engages in ethnographic, participatory action, and mixed methods research. She is currently President of the Association of Internet Researchers and Past-President of the International Society for the Study of Media, Religion, and Culture. Folker Hanusch is Professor of Journalism in the Department of Communication at the University of Vienna, where he heads the Journalism Studies Center. He is also an adjunct professor at Queensland University of Technology. He is Editor-in-Chief of Journalism Studies and Co-Editor-in-Chief of the International Encyclopedia of Journalism Studies (2019, Wiley-Blackwell), as well as Vice-Chair of the Worlds of Journalism Study and Chair of the Journalism Studies Section of the European Communication Research and Education Association (ECREA). His research interests are in comparative journalism studies, journalism and everyday life, digital transformations of journalism, and Indigenous journalism.
Rasmus Helles is Associate Professor, Department of Communication, University of Copenhagen. His research focuses on digital media studies and media regulation, with a special emphasis on quantitative and qualitative methodologies. His publications have appeared in New Media & Society, Surveillance & Society, International Journal of Communication, and European Journal of Communication, and he has co-edited three special issues of international peer-reviewed journals. Annette Hill is Professor in Media and Communication, Lund University, and Visiting Professor at King’s College London. Her research focuses on audiences and popular culture, with interests in media engagement, everyday life, genres, production studies, and cultures of viewing. She is the author of eight books and many articles and book chapters in journals and edited collections, which address varieties of engagement with reality television, news and documentary, tele vision drama, sports entertainment, and live events, including Media Experiences (2018), Reality TV: Key Ideas (2015), and Paranormal Media (2011). Her next book is Roaming Audiences (Routledge, 2021). Klaus Bruhn Jensen is Professor, Department of Communication, University of Copenhagen, Denmark. His research centers on communication theories and research methodologies as they apply to digital and mobile media. Previous authored and edited books include News
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Contributors of the World: World Cultures Look at Television News (Routledge, 1998); Media Convergence: The Three Degrees of Network, Mass, and Interpersonal Communication (Routledge, 2010); and International Encyclopedia of Communication Theory and Philosophy (4 vols, Wiley-Blackwell, 2016). He is Life Member for Service of the Association of Internet Researchers and a fellow of the International Communicology Institute. Darren Kelsey is Head of Media, Culture, Heritage in the School of Arts and Cultures at Newcastle University. He researches mythology and ideology in contemporary media, culture, and politics. His recent monograph, Media and Affective Mythologies, synergizes approaches to critical discourse studies with the work of Carl Jung, Joseph Campbell, and other mythologists. His psycho-discursive approach explores the depths of the human psyche to analyze the affective qualities of storytelling. Amanda D. Lotz is a professor of media studies at the Digital Media Research Centre at Queensland University of Technology. She is the author, coauthor, or editor of eight books that explore television and media industries, including We Now Disrupt This Broadcast: How Cable Transformed Television and the Internet Revolutionized It All, The Television Will Be Revolutionized, and Portals: A Treatise on Internet-Distributed Television. Phoebe Maares is a research associate and PhD student at the Journalism Studies Center, located in the Department of Communication at the University of Vienna. In her dissertation, she explores technologically and economically induced transformations of the journalistic field by examining atypical journalists and their practices in six European countries. Her other interests include the boundaries of journalism, especially concerning lifestyle topics, comparative research, and visual communication research.
Michael Meyen is professor of communication at the University of Munich. His research interests include media freedom, media systems, media discourses, the history of media and communication, and the history of communication research. Horace Newcomb was Professor of Telecommunications and Director of the George Foster Peabody Awards at the University of Georgia. Newcomb is the author of TV: The Most Popular Art, co-author of The Producer’s Medium, editor of seven editions of Television: The Critical View, and editor of The Museum of Broadcast Communications Encyclopedia of Television. He has lectured widely in Europe and Asia on the current state of television and culture. Jacob Ørmen is Assistant Professor, Department of Communication, University of Copenhagen, Denmark. He studies media audiences, digital economy, and research methods. Janice Peck is Professor of Media Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder. She is the author of The Age of Oprah: Cultural Icon for the Neoliberal Era and co-editor of Handbook of Communication History and A Moment of Danger: Critical Studies in the History of US Communication since World War II. Her current research focuses on the intellectual history of critical media studies. Kay Richardson works in the Department of Communication and Media Studies, School of the Arts, University of Liverpool. She has published widely in media and language studies. Broadcast TV drama dialogue was the subject of her 2010 monograph with Oxford University Press (Television Dramatic Dialogue: a Sociolinguistic Study); nonfiction radio was addressed in her article “The Listening Project as Caring Public Talk,” Discourse, Context and Media (2018); and newspaper reportage features
Contributors in “Spelling-Gate: Politics, Propriety and Power,” Journal of Language and Power (2018). Previously, she has also written about social media interaction (Internet Discourse and Health Debates, Palgrave, 2005). Margie Thompson is Associate Professor of Media, Film and Journalism Studies at the University of Denver, and was co- director of the South High Digital Media Club. She was the founder of the first Master of Arts program in the U.S. in International and Intercultural Communication. Her research focuses on critical perspectives on gender, race and culture in multicultural and alternative journalism, global media and communication,
and women’s and feminist activism in a global context. She is currently writing a book entitled, Multicultural Journalism: Critical Reflexivity in News Practice (under contract with Routledge). Lyndon Way received his PhD in Journalism from Cardiff University. He is a communications and media lecturer at the University of Liverpool. He has published on the multimodal nature of digital popular culture, popular music, and news. He has co-edited a book and special edition on music as multimodal discourse and written a monograph on Turkish music and politics. Presently, he is writing a book entitled Analysing Politics and Protest in Digital Popular Culture (Sage, 2021).
xiii
Preface
In its third edition, the Handbook provides an updated account of the state of the field of media and communication research – its sources, current debates, and future potentials. A resource for students, researchers, and media professionals, it offers an in-depth treatment of both methodological approaches and theoretical frameworks. Developments in the domain of study – the media themselves – have accentuated the need to combine quantitative and qualitative approaches to media and communication studies; to complement tried and tested methods with analytical techniques capturing digital media and communicative practices; and to continue the integration, manifest in the field during recent decades, of insights from the humanities as well as the social sciences. The Handbook builds on several longterm collaborations. First and foremost, I am grateful, both to the old hands from previous editions and to the new contributors, for joining me in a spirit of interdisciplinary dialogue. Locally, I have derived
much inspiration from colleagues and collaborators in the program of Communication and IT at the University of Copenhagen and in the Peoples’ Internet project, https://comm.ku.dk/research/digital-infor mation-and-communication/peoplesinternet/. Farther afield, I have received constructive criticism on related papers and presentations, not least in the context of the Association of Internet Researchers, the International Communication Association, and the biannual Nordic conferences on media and communication research. I also have been privileged to serve as Area Editor of Communication Theory and Philosophy for the International Encyclopedia of Communication, published in 12 volumes and edited by the late Wolf Donsbach (2008), and as coeditor, with Bob Craig, of the International Encyclopedia of Communication Theory and Philosophy (Jensen & Craig, 2016).
Klaus Bruhn Jensen Copenhagen, November 2020
Note on the text
Key concepts and terms are indicated by a marginal note when they are first mentioned in the text. The symbol in the text indicates a cross-reference to the preceding text, which can be found subsequently. The symbol at the foot of a column indicates the cross-reference linked to its mention in the previous column.
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Introduction The state of convergence in media and communication research Klaus Bruhn Jensen
•
a characterization of the field of media and communication research as an interdisciplinary crossroads of different academic faculties • a typology of media of three degrees: humans as embodied media, mass media, and network media • a comparative review of definitions and models of the key concepts of information, communication, and action • an account of media as a distinctive set of social institutions-to-think-with • an outline of the handbook and its purposes and premises
FIELDS AND FACULTIES The field of media and communication research emerged during the twentieth century at the crossroads of several disciplines and faculties, which themselves had taken shape over a period of 200 years. In 1798, around the time of the formation of the university as a modern research institution (Fallon, 1980; Rudy, 1984), the German philosopher Immanuel Kant had identified a conflict among its several faculties, arguing that the humanities (the philosophical faculty), not the theological faculty, must provide the foundations for inquiry into natural as well as cultural aspects of reality within the other faculties (Kant, 1992/1798). Around 100 years ago, the social sciences gradually detached themselves from the humanities to produce new forms of knowledge about, and more professionals to administer, increasingly complex modern societies. About 50 years ago, an interdisciplinary field
of research was taking shape in response to the greatly increased role of print and broadcast mass communication in everyday life, drawing on concepts and methods from both the humanities and the social sciences and, to a degree, natural sciences. With the rise of ‘new,’ digital media in recent decades and the ongoing digitalization of ‘old’ media, the field is more central to political, economic, and cultural developments in society and the world than ever before. Throughout its comparatively brief history, media and communication research has remained a site of disciplinary divides and, occasionally, conflicts among the contributing faculties. Most research traditions will subscribe to shared summary descriptions of key ideas such as information, communication, and action. Media are vehicles of information – they history of media and communication research – Chapter 20, p. 416
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Klaus Bruhn Jensen
neither apartheid nor imperialism
media of three degrees
information, communication, action
make representations of and insights into reality available, as articulated in text, image, and sound. Media are channels of communication – they make information accessible to communicators, and communicators to each other. And media are means of action – communication is performative as it unfolds and as it ends. Most researchers will agree in principle that apartheid is counterproductive to the production of new knowledge about each of these aspects of media and communication – the difficulty is how, in practice, to avoid imperialism (K. B. Jensen, 1995: 141–145). In a future perspective, one test of the maturity of the field is whether and how it may close, or bridge, persisting theoretical and methodological divides between different research traditions examining mass, interpersonal, and networked communication. In its third edition, the Handbook takes stock of the digital reconfiguration of the media environment at large as an occasion to review and assess the state of convergence in the academic field of research. This introductory chapter presents a framework for the rest of the Handbook, with three main elements. First, I distinguish between media of three different degrees: the human body enabling communication face to face; the technically reproduced means of mass communication; and the digital technologies facilitating networked interaction one to one, one to many, and many to many. Like the mass-interpersonal divide, the online-offline dichotomy is increasingly unhelpful in the attempt to conceptualize and study contemporary communications. Humans communicate in the flesh, via wires, and over the air. Second, I review the main variants of those communication models which, explicitly or implicitly, continue to inform undergraduate textbooks as well as cutting-edge theory development. The review is structured around distinctive conceptions of the key ideas of information, communication, and action in various humanistic, social-scientific, and
natural-scientific contributions to the field at large. Third, I characterize media as a special kind of institutions – institutionsto-think-with – that enable societies to reflect on and negotiate their existence and coexistence. Communication solidifies as culture; it lends meaning to human actions and social structures over time. To place the present media environment in historical perspective, I return to Jürgen Habermas’s model of the public sphere and note how new forms of political, economic, and cultural action, facilitated by changing media forms, push at the boundaries of the classic public-sphere model.
institutions-tothink-with
MEDIA OF THREE DEGREES Determination in the first instance The media of communication occupy a middle ground between material and immaterial reality. Printed pages, celluloid strips, electromagnetic signals, and bit streams are all material phenomena. At the same time, different material media give access to a wide variety of actual, possible, and barely imaginable worlds. Being programmable in distinctive ways, digital media have invited more or less radical claims that the boundaries between material and immaterial reality might be shifting in fundamental ways. Research addressing such boundaries ranges from attempts since the 1950s to program a general sort of artificial intelligence (Boden, 1996; Gunkel, 2020; Partridge, 1991), via an early mainstream of new-media studies embracing cyberspaces, cybercultures, and cybersocieties (Bell & Kennedy, 2000; Benedikt, 1991; Jones, 1998), to cultural criticism projecting a cyborg future and a posthuman era of life (Haraway, 1991; Hayles, 1999). Matter matters. Despite the extraordinary flexibility of digital technologies, they lend themselves, like any tool or the public sphere, p. 18
matter matters
Introduction
RESOURCE BOX 1.1 GENERAL REFERENCE WORKS AND JOURNALS ENCYCLOPEDIA
•
International Encyclopedia of Communication – the largest available resource on media and communication research, including theoretical, historical, methodological, and culturally comparative perspectives. A 12-volume and online publication (Donsbach, 2008), it has been supplemented by a series of more specialized encyclopedias, including works on communication theory and philosophy (Jensen & Craig, 2016), on interpersonal communication (Berger & Roloff, 2015), and on organizational communication (Scott & Lewis, 2017)
ABSTRACTS
• •
Communication and Mass Media Complete – abstracts of current research in media and communication research Web of Science – a broad, interdisciplinary resource covering diverse journals, conference proceedings, and other publications
HISTORIES
• • •
(Briggs, Burke, & Ytreberg, 2020) – an overview of media from the printing press to the internet (Peters, 1999) – a history of the very idea of communication, with implications both for the general history of ideas and for current media studies (Simonson, Peck, Craig, & Jackson, 2013a) – a handbook covering both the history of media and communication as such and the history of the historical study of media and communication
HANDBOOKS AND TEXTBOOKS
• • •
(McQuail & Deuze, 2020) – a standard introduction to positions in the field, with a relative emphasis on social-scientific traditions (Lindlof & Taylor, 2019) – an overview of qualitative research methods, including their theoretical and philosophical sources (Berger, Roloff, & Roskos-Ewoldsen, 2009) – a handbook summarizing work that approaches communication studies as a ‘science’
JOURNALS
• • • • • •
Journal of Communication – since the 1970s, a flagship journal in the field, accommodating both quantitative and qualitative, administrative and critical work Communication Theory – another key journal contributing to theory development about technologically mediated as well as face-to-face communication Critical Studies in Media Communication and Media, Culture & Society – two representatives of critical and interpretive strands of media and communication research Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media and Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly – two representatives of mainstream and quantitative research traditions Journal of Cinema and Media Studies and Screen – two journals focusing on film and cinema as art forms and cultural practices New Media & Society and Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication – two journals addressing digital media
technology, to certain social uses and not others. It seems necessary to reemphasize this premise, because some media and communication research has shied away
from issues of determination, perhaps partly to distance itself from early and still popular notions of strong and direct effects, partly under the influence of an
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RESOURCE BOX 1.2 SELECTED STUDIES AND REFERENCE WORKS FOR INDIVIDUAL MEDIA BOOKS
• •
(Vincent, 2000) – an overview of the development of literacy in modern Europe, with reference to books and other media of communication; (Radway, 1984) – an exemplary study of romance novels as institutions, texts, and everyday resources
NEWSPAPERS
• • •
(Habermas, 1989/1962) – a classic resource regarding the historical development and contemporary functions of the press; (Schudson, 1978) – a social history of the US press, complementing the European focus of Habermas; (Hallin & Mancini, 2004) – a comparative approach to the press and media systems in the Western hemisphere (for other culturally comparative perspectives, see Chapter 11, this volume)
FILM
• •
(Andrew, 1976) – an introduction to classic film theories; (Braudy & Cohen, 2016) – an anthology of key texts in film studies
RADIO
•
(Crisell, 2008) – a three-volume collection of classic and contemporary writings
TELEVISION
• •
(Williams, 1974) – the seminal study that defined television (and radio) in terms of their characteristics of ‘flow’; (Gray & Lotz, 2018) – an overview of the industrial practices, genres, and audience experiences of television
DIGITAL MEDIA
• •
(Mansell & Ang, 2015) – a three-volume collection covering digital technologies and their social implications; (Raessens & Goldstein, 2011) – a handbook addressing the history, design, and social uses of computer games
underspecified constructionism across the social and human sciences (for critical discussion, see Hacking, 1999). A reformulation of the question of determination was suggested by one of the founders of cultural studies, Stuart Hall (1983), who introduced a distinction between determination in the final instance and determination in the first instance. cultural studies – Chapter 2, p. 51
In a reappraisal of Marxism, he questioned a tendency for a great deal of critical theory to take for granted that, ultimately, it is the economic bases of society that determine how humans live their lives and make their own history. When all is said and done, money talks. Reversing this analytical perspective, Hall recognized how prevailing economic and material conditions establish outer limits to human agency
Introduction
overdetermination
affordances
text messaging (sms)
and social interaction but underscored the relative indetermination and variability of how, for example, technological inventions are put to particular social uses. Technologies have unforeseen, even unforeseeable consequences. (A comparable conception of determination as a layered process with multiple causal agents was termed overdetermination by Sigmund Freud in The Interpretation of Dreams [1911/1900]. He noted how the events of an ordinary day will mix with long-gone and perhaps repressed experiences in the content as well as in the form of one’s dreams. Transferring Freud’s terminology to critical social theory, Louis Althusser [1977/1965] questioned the economic determinism of traditional Marxism and underscored the relative autonomy of political and cultural practices in shaping social developments.) Technologies have affordances (Gibson, 1979), or potentials that must be actualized (for overview, see Evans, Pearce, Vitak, & Treem, 2017; Hsieh, 2012; Hutchby, 2001). To illustrate, text messages (sms) have been a key factor in the diffusion of mobile telephony around the world over the last two decades (Castells, Fernández-Ardèvol, Qiu, & Sey, 2007). This is in spite of the fact that such messages were initially thought of as a way for service providers to contact customers or to offer specialized services, not as communication between subscribers. Neither the technical potential (which had to be realized and refined) nor the general profit motive (which is a given in market economies) will explain the resulting prominence of text messaging – the first killer application of mobile communication. The social practice of texting was technologically (and economically) determined but only in the first instance, and texting via telephony itself is being replaced, in part, by additional digital messaging services. The material conditions of communication are, evidently, outside the control of any individual human being. The
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perceptual, cognitive, and interactive capacities of my body, while cultivated through socialization and education, are the limits of my communications. Although we commonly say that we have a body, we also are a body; my body is my “general medium for having a world” (Merleau-Ponty, 1962/1945: 146). The extensions of human capacities into diverse technologies (McLuhan, 1964) are collective accomplishments that circumscribe and embed the individual as second nature, as elaborated by the tradition of medium theory.
Bodies and tools – the first degree From the perspective of the history and theory of communication, human beings can be understood as media. The human body is a versatile material platform, hosting speech, song, dance, drama, painting, and creative arts generally – capacities that are cultivated into competences by children as well as professional artists. In itself, the human body is a necessary and sufficient material condition of communication; our bodies become productive and receptive media of communication through socialization and acculturation. In comparison, tools – writing utensils or musical instruments – are neither necessary nor sufficient but extend the human body and its communicative capacities in significant ways. Media of the first degree – human bodies and their extensions in tools – externalize accounts of actual as well as possible worlds and enable each of us to communicate with others about such worlds for both reflective and instrumental purposes. Embodied communication is perhaps most commonly associated with speech and oral interaction. The everyday conversations that join family and friends, neighbors and coworkers, into groups and communities are key to all social life. medium theory – Chapter 2, p. 26 possible worlds, p. 15
the human body as necessary and sufficient condition of communication
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Klaus Bruhn Jensen
humans as audiovisual media
language as privileged modality
Face-to-face interaction, however, comprises diverse modalities of expression. We encounter other people as audiovisual media and in multimodal communication. Our tools and artifacts create more or less durable mediascapes (Appadurai, 1996). One historical example is so-called rough music, as studied by the historian E.P. Thompson (1991: 467–538) in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century England, which had parallels in other European countries and in the United States. If an individual or a family had offended the rest of a community, it was a common practice to name and shame them by chanting, shouting obscenities, and banging pots and pans. And rough music is not entirely a thing of the past: On April 17, 2016, the Wall Street Journal reported that authorities in Mumbai, India, had sent groups of drummers to tax evaders’ houses to make them pay up (www.bbc.com/news/business-22772431, accessed October 15, 2020). Verbal language, nevertheless, constitutes a privileged modality – in evolutionary, psychological, and social terms. Language relays categorical information that can be recategorized – restated, responded to, reprogrammed – in ways that no other modality can. As noted by the linguist Émile Benveniste (1985/1969: 236), “the signs of society can be interpreted integrally by those of language, but the reverse is not so.” Speech interprets images, but images rarely interpret speech, except in the occasional aesthetic experiment. For most of human history, of course, bards or singers of tales were the only media around – singular and localized archives of information and means of communicating a cultural heritage. The literature on non-literate, prehistoric societies has described oral cultures as contextbound and present-oriented (Goody & Watt, 1963; Ong, 1982; Scribner & Cole, 1981). Far from labeling these as inferior, research does suggest that primary orality – a state of culture that is “totally
untouched by any knowledge of writing or print” (Ong, 1982: 11) – is incompatible with a sense of a historical past and of a different future. (This is in contrast to a secondary orality, which Ong [1982: 11] associated with the spoken word of broadcasting, and a tertiary orality that may be emerging with digital media.) In a primary oral culture, communication is an expression and an event in context rather than a representation and a resource across contexts. From a comparative perspective, I include writing with media of the first degree. To be sure, manuscripts supported vast and complex economic, social, and scientific systems for millennia, fixating information as knowledge and facilitating the reflective production of ever more knowledge. As constituents of communicative practices, however, manuscripts depend on multi-step flows of social interaction. Because copies are precious and few, they will be distributed in an extremely selective fashion to central individuals within established institutions. Such individuals – priests, generals, literate servants, and so on – will pass on even more selective and contextually adapted information with oral commentary within dedicated organizational hierarchies. The point is not only that social hierarchies may restrict public access to information (and to the literacy required) – which has notoriously been the case throughout history. Nor is it merely that the copying of manuscripts is laborious and subject to errors (some of them intentional), which limits access to precise and applicable information. Rather, in a scribal culture, communication remains an expression and an event that is primarily enacted in local contexts by embodied individuals. Even a utopian state that would encourage and financially support the literacy of its people, and their copying by hand of as many manuscripts as possible for as wide a group of other readers as possible, would require sheer human labor on a scale that makes anything approaching equal access
orality – primary, secondary, tertiary
writing
7
Introduction to the culturally available information inconceivable. Mass communication is not an affordance of the medium of writing. In unsentimental terms, Joshua Meyrowitz (1994: 54) noted that the comparatively inefficient forms of reproducing and distributing writing made it “a transitional cultural form.” Writing by hand, of course, remains a major cultural practice. Writing is integral to upbringing and education; to much drafting of texts in political life, business administration, and scholarship; and to communication with one’s intimates and, importantly, oneself through notes, even as digital media are taking over some of these functions. In news studies, reference has been made to source media (Ericson, Baranak, & Chan, 1987: 41) – oral interviews, scribbled notes, printed press releases, and so on – all of which feed into what is reported as news in media of the second and now third degrees. As media of record, however, and of interaction within and between the main institutions of society, embodied individuals and written texts were superseded by a second degree of media.
Technologies – the second degree
‘the mass media’
technical reproduction of communication
Until quite recently, it was common to refer to ‘the mass media’ – media that distribute the same, or similar, messages from a few central senders to many distributed receivers. The philosopher Walter Benjamin (1977/1936) famously defined mass media in terms of their technical reproduction and dissemination, specifically of artworks, but with implications for other communicative practices as well. Whereas Benjamin focused on photography, film, and radio, I take media of the second degree to include the various analog technologies – from printed books and newspapers to film, radio, and television – all of which took shape as one-to-many media institutions and practices of communication. Their common features were, first, identical reproduction, storage, and presentation of
a particular content. Second, media of the second degree radically extended the potential for dissemination of and access to information across space and time, irrespective of the presence and number of the participants in communication. Benjamin noted a specific ambiguity that arises from reproduction. On the one hand, it results in the loss of what he termed aura: the sense of uniqueness and, perhaps, transcendence that has traditionally been associated with the fine arts – paintings or sculptures, for instance – and with actors or musical performers appearing on stage. Present artifacts and singular actors mediate an absent reality and thus appear larger than life. (Also other human beings – anyone – as media of the first degree could be said to carry an aura, as informed by their biographies and shared histories and as appreciated by intimates, friends, and strangers in a chance meeting. This, however, was not Benjamin’s original point.) On the other hand, technical reproduction represented a major civilizational advance. When artworks and other cultural products are divorced from their unique, but local origins, they afford many more uses by many more people. Reproduction entails a shift of emphasis in the understanding of art, from singular expression to social communication. Accordingly, Benjamin (1977/1936: 390) concluded, art need no longer be subordinated to religious and other ritual uses: for the first time in world history, mechanical reproduction emancipates the work of art from its parasitical dependence on ritual. To an ever greater degree the work of art reproduced becomes the work of art designed for reproducibility . . . the total function of art is reversed. Instead of being based on ritual, it begins to be based on another practice – politics. “Designed for reproducibility”: reproduction is not an incidental but a planned
aura
8
Klaus Bruhn Jensen
religion as personal matter, politics as public matter
sound recording
soundscapes
activity with structural implications. Two classic examples – books and newspapers – suggest the point. Books, pamphlets, and other printed formats could be considered a necessary (though far from sufficient) condition of Renaissance and Reformation (Eisenstein, 1979). Newspapers, in turn, served as material vehicles in political revolutions and in the formation of nation-states (Anderson, 1991; Habermas, 1989/1962). Print media were at once impersonal and public, potentially outside the reach of the auratic leaders of religious and political establishments. The printing press, thus, facilitated the modern understanding of religion as a personal matter and of politics as a public matter. Compared to the printing press, technologies for recording and disseminating sound came late to media history, from the 1870s onward (for overview, see Millard, 1995; Sterne, 2012). For the first time in human history, sound events – from song and other musical performances, to political speeches, to natural environments – could now be preserved as part of the cultural heritage. Sound became constitutive of the central mass media of the twentieth century: radio, film (from 1929), and television. Moreover, analog sound technologies contributed to new kinds of soundscapes (Schafer, 1977), in private and in public. In shops as well as in workplaces, an important and underresearched ingredient of urban life has been muzak (see, e.g., Barnes, 1988; Lanza, 1994). In the home, radio broadcasts and recorded music came to compete, in different social groups, with piano recitals and community singing. With several radio, television, and stereo sets per household, private listening increasingly equaled personal listening. From the 1960s, the transistor radio made music, news, and other genres accessible on the move. It should be noted that multi-step communication remained the order of the day in print and electronic cultures. For one
thing, access to printed materials in different historical and cultural settings has been severely limited by the economic means of potential readers, low literacy levels, and living conditions generally. For another thing, reading as a communal activity – reading aloud – remained a significant cultural practice (Boyarin, 1992). In a critique and redevelopment of Eisenstein’s (1979) classic study of the role of printing presses and books in the Reformation, Pettegree (2005) showed how both processes of reading and of converting to a new faith were public activities involving singing, preaching, drama, and visual images, as well. Furthermore, readers themselves became writers, adding comments or ‘marginalia’ (Jackson, 2001), perhaps alongside those of others already appearing in book margins (anticipating user tags in digital media), and taking notes for later inclusion in letters. And, in the case of broadcast audiences, reception studies from the 1980s documented how audiences, in addition to actively interpreting media content, collectively engage media as part of their communicative practices in context (Lull, 1980; Morley, 1986; Radway, 1984). Whereas face-to-face and mass communicative practices, thus, have long been intertwined, digital media have lent new material forms to their links and networks.
letter writing
Meta-technologies – the third degree The digital computer reproduces and recombines all previous media of representation and interaction on a single platform of hardware and software. At the beginning of the era of personal computers, Kay and Goldberg (1999/1977), accordingly, described computers as meta-media. As means of expression, digital media join text, image, and sound in some new and many old genres, as inherited from mass media as well as qualitative reception studies, Chapter 9
meta-media
9
Introduction face-to-face interaction: narratives, debates, games, and so on. As modes of interaction, digital media integrate oneto-one, one-to-many, and many-to-many forms of communication. Beyond stationary work stations and portable personal computers, smartphones and tablets have become decisive meta-media serving as access points to other media, to the internet as such, and to a proliferating range of communicative resources embedded in everyday life (Humphreys, Karnowski, & von Pape, 2018). With meta-technologies, communication has come full circle to the sort of interactive and multimodal forms of interchange that characterize face-to-face settings. With mobile phones, technologically mediated speech has become a much more prominent component of everyday life in the coordination of public as well as private affairs. Online computer games, further, exemplify the integration of different auditory and visual modalities, not just in the representation of a game world but in the coordination of the gameplay, for instance, through continuous spoken interaction between multiple players (Jørgensen, 2009). And the sense of being virtually present in some literally absent world may translate into a sense of engagement with major events and issues. One example is the Sonic Memorial project that commemorates the events of September 11, 2001. In addition to presenting sounds from the neighborhood around the World Trade Center, the website includes interactive functionalities so that visitors may themselves “add a sound” (http:// kitchensisters.org, accessed November 1, 2020) (Cohen & Willis, 2004). It should be added that, beyond the addition of many-to-many communications to more traditional one-to-one or interpersonal and one-to-many or mass communicative practices, digital media
have made many-to-one communication a constitutive feature of the current media environment. In and of their engagement with digital media, users leave behind bit trails that are accumulated and serve to structure future communications, with or without the users’ knowledge and consent, within and beyond the medium in question. Whereas humans have always been ‘speaking into the air’ (Peters, 1999), we increasingly also communicate ‘into the system’ (K. B. Jensen & Helles, 2017). The resulting metadata are not just technical features of digital communication systems but records of minimal acts of communication that contribute to the ongoing structuration of society. Digital technologies invite research to refocus studies from media to communication and to clarify the relationship between the two categories. One material medium may support several different communicative practices (viewing and chatting about a feature film or a YouTube video on a tablet); some communicative practices travel well between media (reviewing and debating the news of the day, in turn, through a work station and a smartphone), and certain classic practices come back in style when new platforms become widely available (as illustrated by writing via messaging systems).
one-to-one, one-to-many, and many-to-many communication – Chapter 10, p. 196
many-to-one communication – Chapter 10, p. 208
computer games – Chapter 7, p. 146
social structuration, p. 16
media and/ vs. communication
A FOURTH DEGREE For some time, a further generation of digital media has been referred to in terms of their ubiquity and pervasiveness (for overview, see Bunz & Meikle, 2018; Greenfield, 2006). Information technologies everywhere, in everything, and for everybody have been the commercial and policy buzzwords. One aspect of this development has been another round of research and debate on the potentials of artificial intelligence (Gunkel, 2020).
artificial intelligence
10
Klaus Bruhn Jensen
ubiquitous computing
virtual reality
the world as a medium
While the preferred terminologies still vary, a common assumption is that future digital media will become categorically different from separate devices with dedicated ‘interfaces,’ such as work stations, laptops, and smartphones. Instead, information and communication will be ingrained in everyday artifacts and social infrastructures. The originator of the idea of ubiquitous computing, Mark Weiser (1991), contrasted ubiquity with virtuality. Early versions of virtual media environments during the 1980–90s were based on a model of ‘the world in a medium’ – one local, stationary, and multimodal interface, including goggles, gloves, and a treadmill that enabled the user to enter a separate, virtual reality (for overview, see Levy, 1993). In contrast, ubiquitous computing embeds multiple media interfaces in diverse natural objects and social settings – ‘the world as a medium.’ The development is also referred to as the coming of ‘the internet of things’ (Howard, 2015; ITU, 2005). Compared to the graphic user interfaces that helped to make the computer a popular medium, research has referred to organic user interfaces (Vertegaal & Poupyrev, 2008). Here, the basic metaphor of the interface shifts from one of a tool or extension to one of skin or membranes (Rekimoto, 2008: 40). Simultaneously, hardware systems may move “beyond silicon” (Munakata, 2007) toward even more miniaturized and physically integrated bases of computing, for instance, at the atomic level. At the intersection of hardware and humans, life support systems and implants are examples of media as body parts. At the very least, digital media enable significantly more location-dependent and personalized communications; ubiquitous access to other communicators in image, text, and sound; and more actions at a distance, in a physical as well as a social sense, in ways that are still waiting to be imagined and realized. In a future perspective, mobile, ubiquitous, and pervasive media may
require yet another reassessment of the relationship between material and virtual worlds (D. Williams, 2010) – of the very ideas of ‘media’ and ‘communication.’ In what sense do humans communicate with digitized artifacts and with the rest of material reality, for instance, through the Global Positioning System (GPS)? Cognitive science has described the bandwidth of human cognition and communication with reference to so-called basic-level categories (Lakoff & Johnson, 1999) whose yardstick is the human body. We have, and are, a particular neurophysiological structure that taps into certain levels of reality and not others. We have access to things that are about our size and within the reach of our senses: luminous surfaces and loud music but not infrared radiation or the echoes of the Big Bang. Basic-level categories enable humans to think and speak about what is up and down, in and out, before and after, both literally and metaphorically in terms of who is up or down in a society, in or out as far as a subculture is concerned, first or second in a sports competition or an online auction. The “metaphors we live by” (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980), while determined in the first instance by the human body, are extended in tools, technologies, and meta-technologies. Media developments continuously challenge the field to reconsider its founding concepts.
INFORMATION, COMMUNICATION, AND ACTION Common linguistic habits render information as an attribute of messages or data, or as the purpose of human communication – as if information were an objective entity that could be carried from one place to another, purchased, or owned. This conception is seriously misleading. (Krippendorff, 2008b: 2213) And yet, it is a commonsensical conception of the ‘content’ of communication
basic-level categories
Introduction that underlies the most diverse kinds of research. Also, research traditions that prefer to speak of content in terms of its ‘meaning’ have tended to approach the object of study in essentialist terms, asking: ‘Where is meaning?’ In which material units, discursive structures, mental states, or behavioral events does meaning reside? By considering a different question – ‘When is meaning?’ (K. B. Jensen, 1991) – studies may begin to recognize the categorically different forms in which information and communication manifest themselves in multiple stages and contexts of human cognition and social interaction. The authors of communication models have mostly agreed on the constituents but have disagreed, often fundamentally, about their status and interrelations (McQuail & Windahl, 1993). Figure 1.1 lays out the basic constituents of communication, as presented from a humanistic perspective (adapted from Jakobson, 1960), italicizing two elements that have tended to be conceived differently in humanistic, social-scientific, and natural-scientific or engineering models. First, models differ regarding the role and importance they assign to the codes of communication, that is, registers of signs and symbols, beyond physical contacts and signals. Second, the context of communication has been approached variously as a con-text – in the literal sense of something that is always already discursive – or as the broadly social circumstances of communication, its material and institutional conditions. Not surprisingly, different faculties have defined communication in terms of their specific domain of reality – physical signals (Shannon & Weaver, 1949), discursive codes (Jakobson, 1960), or social practices (Lasswell, 1948). Realizing the complexity of human communication, analysts have introduced metaphors and analogies to link reality domains and Jakobson’s communication model – Chapter 10, p. 206
11
Context
Addresser Message Addressee Contact
Code
Figure 1.1 Constituents of communication
academic faculties. One illustration is Warren Weaver’s classic commentary on Claude E. Shannon’s (1948) information theory. In it, Weaver cautioned that “information must not be confused with meaning” (Shannon & Weaver, 1949: 8), and that technical, semantic, and effectiveness problems of communication should be treated as separate issues. Toward the end of the commentary, nevertheless, he envisioned a general theory of communication that “will surely have to take into account not only the capacity of the channel, but also (even the words are right!) the capacity of the audience” (p. 27). Whether these are the right words is precisely the question.
INFORMATION INTO MEANING Since Warren Weaver’s admonition to communication researchers not to confuse information and meaning, the field has been at work to spell out the relationship between the two concepts. In a sense, the whole of meaning is more than the sum of the items of information. The more analytical question has been how to define and parse the elements of communication. What are the degrees of freedom that apply to the selection and combination of these elements in remarkably flexible, yet distinctively patterned ways? In Figure 1.2 (K. B. Jensen, 1995: 50), I identify four ideal-typical conceptions of meaning. The figure compares different ways of operationalizing what most research traditions consider the messages, contents, or texts of communication. On the one hand, the constituents of meaning may, or may not, be understood as a
the whole of meaning is more than the sum of information
12
Klaus Bruhn Jensen Predefined inventory of units/events +
-
Deterministic
Generative
Stochastic
Indeterministic
+ Predefined structure configuring units/events Figure 1.2 Four models of meaning
products and processes of communication
predefined or fixed inventory. (I refer to the constituents as units and/or events in order to allow for different emphases on either the products or the processes of communication.) On the other hand, the combinatorial structures may, or may not, be assumed to make up a predefined or fixed range of message types – narratives, arguments, and other generic formats. At one end of the spectrum, a deterministic model assumes that the outcome of predefined inventories and structures is a law-like configuration of what can be thought and said by humans. Few researchers will advocate a strong version of this position; communication represents a measure of indetermination in human experience and social interaction. Nevertheless, research traditions, to varying degrees, have noted how biological and technological circumstances precondition communication. At a biological level, physical and mental capacities make up enabling as well as constraining conditions of human cognition and communication (Cappella, 1996). At a technological level, different media extend human capacities, but in biased ways (Innis, 1951), facilitating some forms of expression and experience above others. At the other end of the spectrum that is suggested by Figure 1.2, an indeterministic model implies that there are, in effect, no boundaries to what might be thought
or said. A strong version of the position is found in poststructuralism, which holds that the differential structures of information will forever undermine any closure around particular meanings. Some accounts of interpretive communities (Fish, 1979), similarly, have suggested that texts are essentially empty and open to individual and situated projections of meanings. More moderately, institutional senders (artists, film directors, popular composers, etc.) can be seen to selectively realize cultural tradition, as inflected through their own biography and historical context, just as individual receivers actualize more or less unique meanings in their personal encounters with media. The other two ideal-types of meaning are representative of the two mainstreams of the current field of media and communication research, namely quantitative variants of social science and qualitative forms of humanistic scholarship. The stochastic type, prominent in social-scientific methodologies, is typified by quantitative content analysis: “the objective, systematic, and quantitative description of the manifest content of communication” (Berelson, 1952: 18). The analytical procedure serves to establish the probability distributions of certain communicative vehicles or content units – words, propositions, images, and so on – within a sample of messages. Given, first, a predefined range of content units and, second, a set of analytical categories for coding them, the immediate research question is how this multitude of elements enter into differential and relational structures. The more interesting implication is that such configurations within news articles, feature films, and social-media exchanges carry worldviews: Their constituents are necessarily selective, and their combinations tell certain stories rather than others. A main contribution of the content-analytical poststructuralism – Chapter 2, p. 46 interpretive communities, Chapter 9, p. 190
biases of communication – Chapter 2, p. 27
content analysis – Chapter 13, p. 273
Introduction
deep and surface structures
tradition (Krippendorff, 2018) has been to keep a tab on representations of reality in the media, documenting and questioning the most widely accessible forms of information about public events and issues. The generative model of meaning, finally, grows out of the humanities and is characteristic of qualitative studies of media and other texts and discourses. Literary theory and aesthetics since Russian formalism of the early twentieth century (Erlich, 1955), and linguistics since the rise of transformational grammar (Chomsky, 1965), share the insight that a relatively few ‘deep structures’ generate an immense, even infinite, variety of ‘surface structures’ in the case of both single sentences and stories the length of books or feature films. As predefined matrices, deep structures are at once very general and highly adaptable. Accordingly, they yield many variations, for instance, of bedtime stories or advertisements, whose basic themes and structures might otherwise be considered identical. They keep the attention of children and consumers, not because either group is immature or gullible, but because that is the structure of meaningful information. To sum up, each ideal-type of message or discourse analysis taps certain aspects of information and meaning – they are all important and necessary contributions to a diverse and applicable field of media and communication research. University teachers regularly remind their students that the how of research depends on the what and the why: The appropriate methods of data collection and analysis depend on the given domain and issue of empirical inquiry. It is only by recognizing the full range of potentially meaningful structures of media that research will be in a position to analyze and assess their uses and consequences.
Communication – between transmission and ritual The foundational question of the field has been: “Who/Says What/In Which Channel/
To Whom/With What Effect?” (Lasswell, 1948). The question might have been: Who shares what with whom, in which processes of interaction? The root sense of communication is to share and to make common (Peters, 2008). Implicit in these different formulations are two models of communication that have been treated as antithetical for more than 40 years. The distinction between a transmission model and a ritual model of communication was foregrounded by James W. Carey in a 1975 benchmark article (1989b/1975). According to Carey, the US mainstream of social-scientific media studies had taken as its premise a transmission model emphasizing the transfer of information from senders to receivers within a centralized system of mass communication. The backdrop was the pivotal role of information and communication, and of related research activities, in an emerging social infrastructure that depended on new means of regulation through intensified surveillance and registration of itself and its constituents, what Beniger (1986) referred to as the control society. The functional or dysfunctional impact of media on individuals, their attitudes and behaviors, was placed high on the research agenda: Mass-mediated violence and propaganda were feared; advertising of goods and services, for the most part, favored. One implication of the transmission model seemed to be that the media are mechanisms which are somehow separate from society – means for either positive or negative ends. Media may have effects, or they may not. Carey’s ritual model, in contrast, suggested that media necessarily have effects: Communication is a sharing of meaning and a condition of community. Rituals are never empty. Returning to the tradition of pragmatism, Carey quoted the philosopher John Dewey: “Society exists not only by transmission, by communication, but it may fairly be said to exist in transmission, in communication” (1989b/1975: 13f.). Communication, accordingly, should be
13
transmission model vs. ritual model
the control society
14
media as cultural forum
communicators as openended sources of information
Klaus Bruhn Jensen considered a constitutive ingredient of, and a mediating factor between, human agency and social structure: “a symbolic process whereby reality is produced, maintained, repaired, and transformed” (p. 23). While Carey’s work has been most influential in the United States, his ritual model resonates with much European humanistic media scholarship on texts as the concrete vehicles of broadly social rituals. In a redevelopment of the ritual perspective, Newcomb and Hirsch (1983) suggested a cultural forum model of communication. The most popular and widely accessible media in a culture, represented in their 1980s article by television, could be understood as a forum in the classic sense of an arena for articulating and negotiating common concerns: “in popular culture generally, in television specifically, the raising of questions is as important as the answering of them” (p. 63). (On the internet as a contemporary cultural forum, see K. B. Jensen & Helles, 2011.) Still, an important issue is who gets to deliberate on the answers, and how: Who is in a position to transmit what to whom in the course of the ritual process of the forum? Whereas it is easy, as always, to exaggerate the extent to which new technologies may change old practices of communication, digital media have suggested new perspectives on the concepts of transmission and ritual. Like other media transmitting, they make information accessible to people and people accessible to information providers. In advertising jargon, both television audiences and internet users are attractive to commercial and political interests as ‘eyeballs.’ Unlike earlier media, network media allow a critical mass of people to become senders – to both raise and answer questions in rituals, one on one and collectively, synchronously as well as asynchronously, introducing new forms of interpretation and interaction. On the internet, social actors constitute open-ended sources of information for each other and for the
system that they all speak into. Digital technologies make information available and accessible on a different order of magnitude and in new structures of transmission and ritual. Societies exist by transmission as well as in ritual. Whether pushed by media or pulled by users, information is transmitted; rituals motivate transmissions. One current task of communication theory is to conceptualize the shifting configurations of communicators and messages and their mutual accessibility in digital media systems. Interactivity with media anticipates interactions between people. Communication is a particular constellation of interactivity and interaction.
Performativity and interactivity Performing possible worlds Compared to transmission and ritual, or information and meaning, categories of human and social action have been less central to theory development in the field of media and communication research. Action has, most commonly, been understood as input to or output from a process of communication. On the input side, editorial decisions and legislative frameworks condition what is communicated; on the output side, communication feeds discursive and physical behaviors. In order to relate media and communication to the rest of culture and society, it is useful to specify three aspects of the general relationship between communication and action. First, all human actions can be considered communications in their own right. They may be intentional statements, or incidental behaviors with which others associate meaning, or they may belong to the considerable grey area in between the two. At the intentional end of the scale, the terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001, were, in one sense, acts of communication – the loss of life and the material destruction
action as communication
Introduction
humans cannot not communicate communication as action
communication anticipates action
possible worlds
accomplished a symbolic purpose. Toward the incidental end, we continuously communicate with each other through clothing and other visual appearances, body sounds, and general conduct. Indeed, any object, event, or action in the world might be considered a medium of communication, because humans are forever ascribing meaning to their cultural as well as natural environments (Ruesch & Bateson, 1987/1951: 6). In this sense, humans “cannot not communicate” (Watzlawick, Beavin, & Jackson, 1967: 49). Second, all communication is a form of action; it occurs in a context and for a purpose. Saying something means doing something. This was the central insight of speech-act theory (Austin, 1962; Searle, 1969). Speaking to others about the weather, or mutual acquaintances, or recent events, is a way of maintaining and modifying social relations. This performative conception of language has influenced current human and social sciences profoundly. They stand on the shoulders of the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (1953), who came to understand language not as a mirror image of reality but as a set of language games or discourses that, in Carey’s (1989b/1975: 23) terminology, produce, maintain, repair, and transform reality. Language games are played for real and incessantly, and they are inseparable from the life forms, or social practices, that they serve to constitute. In a classic pragmatist formulation, “if men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences” (Thomas & Thomas, 1928: 572). Third, communication anticipates action. Communication is a self-reflective, recursive form of action: It addresses actions that communicate and communications that enact. Communication explores the relations between what is and what could be – what has been referred to, in several fields of study, as possible worlds. Many different realities are conceivable, as exemplified by science fiction and so-called counterfactual
historiography describing what might have happened if key historical events had taken a different turn (Hawthorn, 1991), say, if Nazi Germany had won World War II. Only some of these realities, however, are possible in either a material or a logical sense, as examined by philosophical logic (Divers, 2002) and literary theory (Ryan, 1991). For communication theory, one particularly interesting account of such multiple realities came from the philosopher and theorist of science, Karl Popper, who counted three worlds. World 1 refers to the domain of physical objects or states; World 2 is the world of consciousness, mental states, or behavioral dispositions to act. Linking such ‘external’ and ‘internal’ worlds, World 3 covers “the world of the objective contents of thought,” whether scientific or poetic (Popper, 1972b: 106). As a communicative coin of exchange, World 3 includes fictional, normative, and other contestable accounts of reality in the full range of media. At the juncture of traditional philosophical logic and modern technologies, the digital computer refocused attention on time as a conditioning factor of what comes to be known in the first place. “Propositional logic can describe only states of being. Adding time to it created algorithms – procedural steps – that could describe processes of becoming,” which means that “anything that can be stated logically can be converted into an algorithm and becomes, hence, computable” (Krippendorff, 2008a: 1156). By adding time to logic, computing has served to produce not just new quantities of information but qualitatively different ways of rendering and engaging reality, for example, within atomic physics and genetics. Current knowledge of subatomic reality and the human genome – and actions on both – would be inconceivable without digital computers. Like an algorithm, human communication is executed over time. Unlike algorithms, communicative interactions are
15
Worlds 1, 2, and 3
logic + time = computing
16
Klaus Bruhn Jensen not generally subject to a central perspective or procedure or a common logic. All the computers on the grid of the internet cannot compute the pros and cons of a possible design for the future of the internet into a conclusion. The possible worlds of communication emerge across space, as well, and through the intervention of distributed social actors – through interactivity. The concept of interactivity helps to clarify the relationship between communication and action, not just in the case of digital media.
Interactivity and/vs. interaction As currently associated with computing, the idea of interactivity derives from the sociological concept of interaction between subjects – face to face but also indirectly at various levels of the social structure. Parliaments and stock exchanges interact. Most basically, an analogy is suggested between human-human and human-machine exchanges.
Originating in the era of batch processing, when technical staff could check the preliminary results of a run on a mainframe computer and then modify it in so-called interactive mode (J. F. Jensen, 1999: 168), interactivity came to refer to the way in which ordinary users operate computers in a sequentially structured manner (for overview, see Kiousis, 2002; McMillan, 2002). As imported into media and communication research, the terminology has been ambiguous: The field has aimed to account both for people’s interactivity with media and for their interaction with each other through media. Communication is that unique form of interaction by which human actors negotiate their common social structure, what it could be and ought to be, depending on the media at their disposal. It is helpful to contextualize interactivity and interaction with two other key concepts of social theory: agency and structure (Giddens, 1984). Figure 1.3 suggests the interdependence of medium,
Agency
DIMENSION 3
Medium
Structure DIMENSION 2
Figure 1.3 Three types of interactivity
DIMENSION 1
17
Introduction agency, and structure: I treat the category of medium on a par with agency and structure, as a constituent of all social interaction, including face-to-face as well as technologically mediated contact, and as part of a three-way configuration. The figure reemphasizes the interdependence of three dimensions of social interaction and the communicative aspect of each: • Dimension 1 is what computer scientists (and, later, ordinary computer users) have referred to as interactivity: clicking on a web link, entering a message into a social media platform, or ‘shooting at the enemy’ in a computer game. Here, interactivity amounts to sustained selectivity from a preprogrammed range of options. It corresponds, in important structural respects, to the turn-taking of an ordinary conversation (Sacks, Schegloff, & Jefferson, 1974). Mass media, as traditionally understood, offered more limited interactivity in this regard: selecting a radio station, turning to the sports section of a newspaper, and checking in advance whodunit on the last page of a crime novel. All media, however, require measures of navigation, attention, and interpretation by their users in order to access the available information. • Dimension 2, next, refers to the relationship between media and other institutions within the social structure. Depending on theoretical perspective, and on the communicative genre in question, media can be said to perform the role of a watchdog or Fourth Estate (Cater, 1959) vis-à-vis the powers that be. In a wider sense, media constitute a cultural forum (Newcomb & Hirsch, 1983) in which alternative social systems and entirely other possible worlds, fictional or future, may agency, structure, and medium – Chapter 10, p. 210
be articulated. From a historical and cross-cultural perspective, a central research question is whether and how the available technologies have been shaped into media with such reflective and empowering potentials. • Dimension 3, finally, addresses the relationship between the social structure and its constituent actors and interests, from the individual citizen to national political establishments and global corporations. The myriad actors that make up society interact at a distance and over time; communication lends orientation and meaning to the process, providing a sense of where single actions might fit into a larger whole. The classic example is citizens’ involvement in political democracy, parties, and popular movements through the media of the public sphere. A more recent example is telemedicine: doctors interacting with, diagnosing, and treating patients in private, virtual consultations. The human body and the body politic both depend on communication to reproduce and modify themselves.
INSTITUTIONS-TO-THINK-WITH As part of an anthropological perspective on how the members of a culture communicate, Claude Lévi-Strauss referred to objects-to-think-with. Especially animals that are part of the cultural diet can become means of classifying and thus coming to terms with reality. It is not so much that they are “good to eat” but that they are “good to think (with)” (Lévi-Strauss, 1991/1962: 89). In a different culture, the same animal or natural object may mean something else; it may be prepared in a different manner; or it may not be considered good to either eat or think with. Also artifacts – from stone tools to oil paintings – serve as more or less programmable tokens of meaningful interchange. In the public sphere, p. 18
objects-tothink-with
18
Klaus Bruhn Jensen
anyone as someone
the publicsphere model
comparison, contemporary media constitute institutions-to-think-with (Douglas, 1987) – highly differentiated and widely distributed material and discursive infrastructures that enable reflection and interaction across space and time. Cultures and societies program their media, which, in turn, program them. Media are a distinctive kind of institution-to-think-with. Compared to other institutions of analysis and reflection – sciences, arts, religions – media are, in a positive sense, the lowest common denominators of culture and society. They do not require specialized skills or talents of a scientific or artistic nature for interaction and deliberation to occur. Nor do they presuppose the existence of transcendent possible worlds to which only certain privileged texts, individuals, or procedures provide access. Media address and involve anyone as someone (Scannell, 2000) in communication about the ends and means of society, increasingly across time and space. Habermas’s public-sphere model (Figure 1.4) continues to offer a valuable
framework in which to examine the relationship between media and other social institutions – as part of a system of interconnected yet relatively autonomous spheres (for review and discussion, see Calhoun, 1992; Mortensen, 1977; Negt & Kluge, 1993/1972). The figure notes, to the right, the state agencies that establish and enforce the material, legal, and other infrastructural conditions of social interaction, ultimately with recourse to their monopoly on the use of physical force. To the left, private economic enterprise unfolds in the social sphere, while the intimate sphere represents the domain of personal and family life. The mediating element of the entire system is the public sphere, comprising the main political and cultural institutions-to-think-with, including the press as a Fourth Estate. Although this is commonly neglected in the secondary literature on Habermas, the public sphere has two components, one political, the other cultural. Habermas showed how the cultural public sphere of literary journals and salons served, in part, as a precursor and a training ground
Society
State
Private sphere
Public sphere
Intimate sphere
Cultural public sphere
Religion, sexuality, emotion, friendship, etc.
Preaching, art, literature, music, etc.
Family
Organizations, clubs
Social sphere
Political public sphere
Object
Private economic activity, production and sale/purchase of commodities, including labor
‘Politics’ and ‘the economy,’ including social issues
Institution
Private enterprises and stores
Parliamentary organs, representing political parties, and the press
Object
Institution
Figure 1.4 The public-sphere model
The (agencies of the) state ensure(s) the material infrastructure; overall economic stability; law enforcement; and regulation of conflicts by economic, coercive, legal, and ideological means
political and cultural public spheres
Introduction for political deliberation and debate in a contemporary sense. In its consolidated form, the public sphere came to address two relatively separate agendas through different genres: crudely, the ‘individual’ issues of culture and arts through fiction and the ‘collective’ issues of politics and economy through factual genres. Historically, the public sphere had a proactive function in asserting the economic and political rights of individuals in their confrontation with a feudal order. Once in place, the public sphere also acquired a reactive function, negotiating the terms of cooperation among citizens and between private citizens and the state. The model, thus, represents a dual construct – an actual as well as an imagined reality of structure and agency. On the one hand, the public-sphere model locates media on a structural map of society with other institutions: Markets, parliaments, and state agencies are all real and effective. The issue, both conceptually and normatively, has been the exact nature of the interrelations between these institutions. On the other hand, the public-sphere model represents a plan of action – it is neither a neutral organizational chart nor a simple instance of false consciousness. Because the public-sphere model informs the interactions of everyday life, it is reproduced, for better or worse, as common sense or hegemony (Gramsci, 1971) – “a sense of absolute because experienced reality beyond which it is very difficult for most members of the society to move, in most areas of their lives” (R. Williams, 1977: 110). The last two centuries have witnessed a tug of war, first, along the horizontal dimension of the private, public, and state spheres of social activity and, more recently, along its vertical dimension as well. Along the horizontal dimension, the classic issue, in different national and cultural contexts, has been the balance between market-driven and publicly administered means of communication: a private press; public-service
broadcasting; and an internet variously anchored in military, scientific, and commercial organizations and interests (Abbate, 1999). Along the vertical dimension of the public-sphere model, networked forms of communicative agency challenge three different boundaries. First, at the juncture of the social sphere (business) and the intimate sphere (personal and family life), new forms of material and immaterial production have been emerging. Benkler (2006: 3), for one, suggested that predominant modes of production have been affected by the combination of a global economy, the wide availability of cheap communication technologies, and proliferating networks of collaboration, as exemplified by microwork: a division of labor into minimal tasks that can be bought and sold on the internet (Irani, 2015). In earlier critiques of Habermas’s model, feminist scholars noted a tendency not just to overlook the de facto exclusion of women from the public sphere from the outset but also to bracket labor being conducted in the home, overwhelmingly by women (Fraser, 1992). Digital media have reopened debates on the definition, organization, and control of human labor. Second, the boundary between the political and cultural public spheres was in question from the outset and appears increasingly porous. As an illustration, users may approach comedy genres such as The Daily Show (www.cc.com/shows/, accessed November 1, 2020) on a par with other sources of news (Feldman, 2007). A comparative content analysis of The Daily Show and US network television news, in fact, found the substance of the two program types concerning the 2004 presidential election campaign to be the same (Fox, Koloen, & Sahin, 2007). In a networked public sphere, such interlinking of topics is accelerated and articulated as part of comparable agendas and modes private and public-service media – Chapter 20, p. 414
19
new forms of material and immaterial production
20
transnational alliances
civil society
Klaus Bruhn Jensen of address. Business corporations seek to strengthen their legitimacy by addressing the general public not merely as customers or clients but as citizens, as well, through corporate social responsibility, ethical accounting, and ecological initiatives. State agencies justify themselves to the public in the vocabulary of customer service. Political parties and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) alike must build and maintain constituencies whose members conceive of themselves in a hybrid of economic, cultural, and ethnic identities. And, at least some audiences, some of the time, act as senders as well as receivers of information about the definition of ‘political’ and ‘cultural’ issues. The third column of the public-sphere model – the (nation-)state – mostly remains firmly in place. The system of nation-states had been inaugurated by the Westphalian peace of 1648 and was variously implemented during the following centuries. A world economic system had begun to take shape already from the sixteenth century, at first centered in Western Europe. However, unlike other such historical systems – for example, in the Middle East and China – this economic infrastructure did not develop into an empire or political entity (Wallerstein, 1974: 348). Nations took shape as delimited geographical units and cultural formations – imagined communities (Anderson, 1991) – as supported by newspapers and novels as well as by maps, museums, and the census. With an intensified globalization of economy and politics in recent decades, nation-states enter into transnational alliances, such as the European Union (EU), and they negotiate their coexistence in assemblies, courts, and agencies inside and outside the United Nations. During the same period, civil society organizations have reasserted themselves as a third sector of political, economic, and cultural activity beyond states and markets (for overview, see Edwards, 2014). A transnational public sphere, however, has yet to emerge (Fraser, 2007).
OUTLINE OF THE HANDBOOK The Handbook is divided into three parts, covering the history of media and communication research in different disciplines and theoretical traditions; a systematics of theoretical and empirical studies addressing the various stages, contexts, and consequences of human communication; and the practice of planning, conducting, and applying research and its findings and insights in (other) social action. Figure 1.5 lays out these elements with reference to the scope and focus of each part, noting a key premise of each section as well. Throughout the volume, methodologies are given special attention, because they encapsulate at once the theoretical justifications and the analytical procedures of various ways of ‘doing’ media and communication research. • Part I – History traces the main sources of science and scholarship that have informed and shaped media and communication research. While noting the roots of the field, from classical rhetoric to modern sociology, the two chapters – examining the humanities and the social sciences, respectively – focus on contemporary conceptions of key ideas such as culture and communication, interpretation and interaction. A convergence, particularly of social-scientific and humanistic perspectives, has been ongoing since the 1980s. While this development, arguably, has strengthened both the academic quality and the social relevance of the field, the contributors to Part I also note some of the challenges and problems of practicing convergence. • Part II – Systematics turns from a diachronic to a synchronic view of different traditions or ‘schools’ of research. From a systematic perspective, they represent distinctive conceptualizations of the various stages, levels, and contexts of communication. Whereas some traditions are clearly incompatible – in their methodologies,
convergence of social- scientific and humanistic perspectives
21
Introduction
Scope
Focus
Premise
History
Systematics
Practice
Theoretical concepts
Empirical approaches to
Practices of
and analytical
the stages and contexts
conducting, justifying,
procedures from:
of communication, as
and applying research
- Humanities
defined by different
- Social sciences
research traditions
Past sources of ideas
Present
Future uses of
on media, culture, and
operationalizations and
research in scientific
communication
findings
and social institutions
Interdisciplinary
Determination in the first
Unification in the final
convergence
instance
instance
Figure 1.5 An anatomy of media and communication research
epistemologies, or policies – they can be examined, from a meta-perspective, as complementary perspectives on similar issues, sometimes overlapping in unrecognized ways. One divisive issue has been the degree to which technological, economic, and other social factors could be said to determine the structure of media and the process of communication. Following Hall (1983), who spoke of determination in the first instance, the chapters, in various ways, review how technological, institutional, and discursive conditions both enable and constrain communication: They negatively determine what cannot be the case, but they cannot positively predict what will be the case. • Part III – Practice presents and illustrates qualitative, quantitative, and multi-method research designs. In addition to separate chapters on the qualitative and the quantitative research process, one chapter explores the relationship between different methodologies – the nature and limits of complementarity. Another chapter
determination in the first instance, p. 4
covers recent contributions to the study of media and communication through distinctively digital forms of data. Addressing various media and communicative practices, three chapters detail and illustrate the steps of a research process through empirical cases – from the articulation and conceptualization of research questions, via data collection and analysis, to interpretations and inferences. As a group, the chapters in Part III begin to suggest how a unification of the field might come about not in the first instance, through a standardization of elementary research procedures, but in the final instance, through an openended application and comparison of multiple methodologies. The final chapter discusses research as a social and communicative practice in its own right, returning to the intellectual backgrounds and political motivations of the field: the classic normative theories of the press, contemporary policy issues, and the instrumental uses of communication research in processes of social planning and change.
unification in the final instance
PART
I
History
SOURCES OF MEDIA AND COMMUNICATION RESEARCH Media and communication research developed from a long heritage of different scientific disciplines to address new conditions of communication in modern societies. The two chapters in Part I present, discuss, and assess the contributions of the humanities and the social sciences, respectively – the two ‘faculties’ or areas of inquiry that have been the main sources of theoretical concepts and analytical procedures in the field. •
•
•
Media and communication. The center of interest during the formation of the field was the mass media. As means of communication, however, media technologies lend themselves to conceptualization and analysis with reference to oral as well as literate forms of communication throughout history. And, because media are commonly studied as part of specific social and cultural contexts, many of the research questions and analytical procedures that have been developed by disciplines such as sociology and anthropology transfer to media studies. The very categories and boundaries of ‘media’ and ‘communication’ are currently in question in view of digital technologies that enable diverse forms of mobile, ubiquitous, and pervasive communication, inviting a reassessment of the disciplinary sources of the field. Humanities and social sciences. The modern humanities can be traced to the early nineteenth century; the social sciences date from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when they were separated institutionally from other ‘human sciences.’ Over the past century, the two areas of inquiry have remained in contact, sometimes in dialogue. It was only after 1945, however, that particular components and concerns of each faculty were joined in an emerging field of media and communication research. Field or discipline? It has remained an open question whether these two mainstreams have, by now, merged sufficiently to constitute not just a ‘field’ but a ‘discipline,’ as defined by an established set of research questions, methodologies, and institutions. Several chapters broach this question, and Chapter 20 elaborates on the interchange between media and communication studies and the societies of which they – like media and communicative practices – are a part.
2
The humanistic sources of media and communication research Klaus Bruhn Jensen
• a classical agenda: the legacy of philosophy for communication theory • medium theory: the implications of modern information and communication technologies for traditional issues of communication and culture • four theoretical traditions in the history of ideas: rhetoric, hermeneutics, phenomenology, semiotics • humanistic disciplines feeding into the interdisciplinary field of media studies: art history, literary criticism, linguistics, film studies • challenges to the humanities, and to media and communication research, from postmodernism, feminism, and cognitivism • current pragmatic and digital turns of the humanities
A CLASSICAL AGENDA Contrary to a common notion, the humanities are not direct descendants of classical Greek thinking (Kristeller, 1961: 3–23). In their recognizably modern form, the humanities date from the early nineteenth century, when universities were taking shape as institutions of research, as pioneered in Germany and associated with the philosopher and linguist Wilhelm von Humboldt (Fallon, 1980; Rudy, 1984). The understanding of knowledge as a product of research had been preceded by two alternative conceptions of knowledge, either as self-awareness (summed up in the Delphi oracle’s admonition to “Know thyself!”) or as traditional learning, administered and passed on by a class of learned people (Kjørup, 2001: 20–22). While the latter two concepts are still encountered in publications and at conferences, it is the development of analytical
procedures and conceptual frameworks for research that has occupied humanistic scholars during the ‘prehistory’ of media and communication research (on the history of the humanities, see Bod, 2013). Much of the agenda for the development of the humanities, to be sure, was inherited from the classics. They continue to be suggestive less about what to think than which issues to think about. Theories of human communication and theories of human knowledge share similar conceptual problems: What we know is, in one sense, what we can communicate about: articulate, represent, and share. This chapter, accordingly, first retraces aspects of the classical legacy, before outlining the main traditions from the history of ideas that entered into the modern humanities – rhetoric, hermeneutics, agenda-setting research, Chapter 8, p. 165
knowledge as a product of research
26
Klaus Bruhn Jensen phenomenology, and semiotics. These traditions, in turn, informed the disciplines – from linguistics and literary studies to art history and film studies – which ultimately fed into the contemporary field of media and communication studies. The chapter, further, notes three challengers to a humanistic mainstream – postmodernism, feminism, and cognitivism – before addressing, in conclusion, two recent turns of the humanities, toward the place of media and communication in everyday life and toward the digital technologies that increasingly carry human communication and culture. A common denominator for the production of meaning in communication and of knowledge in science is intersubjectivity: How, by what means, is a shared understanding of certain phenomena in reality possible? In the fourth century BCE, Aristotle had presented what may be taken as the first communication model:
Aristotle on human communication
Spoken words are the symbols of mental experience and written words are the symbols of spoken words. Just as all men have not the same writing, so all men have not the same speech sounds, but the mental experiences, which these directly symbolize, are the same for all, as also are those things of which our experiences are the images. (Aristotle, 2007: n.p.) Things in the world, mental impressions of things, and people’s oral or written expressions about the things as well as the impressions – those are minimal elements of most theories of either knowledge or communication. It is the status and interrelations of the elements that have continued to trouble philosophy and the range of natural, human, and social sciences. Scholars have debated the existence of a shared reality; the social and cultural variability of the experience of reality; and intersubjectivity as a condition of communication and research – Chapter 16, p. 342
the very nature of reality, subjects, and signs. Both spoken language and other signs enable humans to communicate about that which is not present in immediate space, time, or experience. “In the writings of Aristotle we find explicitly stated for the first time the conception of a sign as an observed event or state of affairs that is evidence for its interpreter for what is at least temporarily absent” (Clarke, 1990: 11). Speech sounds and gestures provide access to diverse possible worlds that can be externalized and shared with others in communication. Present signs allow for absent realities, including the virtual worlds of thought experiments. Writing, print, electronic, and digital media, each in specific ways, have radically extended the capacity of humans to imagine, represent, and communicate about possible as well as actual worlds, also in each other’s absence. Present media allow for absent realities, absent communicators, or both. If symbolic communication in speech, along with abstract thinking and self-awareness, had provided the minimal conditions for humanitas, for civilized coexistence (Megarry, 1995: 48), writing and later technological media introduced a unique set of tools for human agency. They enhanced the potential both for social interaction and for humans’ transformation of their common natural environment. Such a structural or conditioning ‘effect’ of media, for one thing, dwarfs any other effects the media may be shown to have on individuals, groups, or institutions. For another thing, the understanding of such a ‘medium effect’ is one of the central contributions of historical and other humanistic research to media studies.
MEDIUM THEORY In an overview and redevelopment of ‘medium theory,’ Joshua Meyrowitz (1994: 50) summed up its key question: media effects – Chapter 8
humanitas
Humanistic sources of media research
media ecology
the medium is the message
“What are the relatively fixed features of each means of communicating and how do these features make the medium physically, psychologically, and socially different from other media and from faceto-face interaction?” (on the wider tradition of media ecology, see Strate, 2016). The most well-known proponent of a strong position regarding the scope and depth of the media’s impact on consciousness and culture, summed up in his dictum, “the medium is the message,” remains Marshall McLuhan. His most influential book (McLuhan, 1964) examined the media as extensions of the human senses with fundamental and permanent consequences for the awareness of self, others, and history. Among his polemical conclusions was that writing and, not least, print had constrained people within a linear logic of typographic culture, line by line, page after page. In contrast, electronic media, and above all television, was said to signal a release of cultural creativity from “the Gutenberg galaxy” (McLuhan, 1962). This hope for a new epoch of participatory culture anticipated later utopian visions of the internet. Being a literary scholar, McLuhan tended to map changes in the textual and thematic structures of media rather directly onto their social and cultural context. His main source of inspiration, Harold A. Innis, another Canadian but a political economist and historian, stated his arguments in a more traditional scholarly fashion (Innis, 1951, 1972/1950). Applying principles from the study of economic monopolies to information mono polies, he identified some of the ways in which power can be both exercised and subverted via media. Like other medium theorists, he pointed to the historical significance of media in challenging religious authorities, when “the medieval Church’s monopoly over religious information, and thereby over salvation, was broken by the printing press” (Meyrowitz, 1994: 51). More grandly, Innis suggested that the structure of entire cultures and empires
has a ‘bias’ toward either space or time, in the sense that their dominant media will favor either stability over time or extended territories. Examples include stone tablets, whose inscriptions last a long time but do not travel well, as opposed to papyrus and paper, which will support the administration of distant provinces but are vulnerable to destruction and to being appropriated for purposes of social change. Though less familiar in the media field, other researchers departing from historical and anthropological perspectives have substantiated the relevance of medium theory. Like Innis, they have sought to avoid any strong technological determinism, exploring the social and cultural forms in which shifting technologies have been diffused and adapted. From a historical perspective, Havelock (1963) suggested how writing and literacy had paved the way for an entirely new category of society, interpreting Plato’s attack on the poets as announcing the passing of an oral culture: Poets could no longer be trusted in social and practical matters, such as politics, the writing of history, or science, even if their poetry could still be appreciated as personal opinion or myth. Regarding the next categorical transition – from writing to print – Eisenstein (1979) showed how, initially, it was the scribal culture of elites centered in monasteries, not oral or popular culture, that was transformed by the printing press, stimulating Renaissance and Reformation. Mass literacy still lay in the future – in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. From an anthropological perspective, Goody and Watt (1963) questioned relativist views of the cultural consequences of new media and communication systems. One of their arguments was that writing and literacy are not only important social resources but necessary conditions of, for example, political democracy (see also Goody, 1987, 2000). The general point was documented empirically in a major study by Scribner and Cole (1981), who
27
the biases of communication
historical perspective
anthropological perspective
-
c. c. c. c. c. c. c.
40,000 3000 2500 1450 1200 1000 800
1040 1377 1455 1605
cave paintings by prehistoric humans hieroglyphics and cuneiform writing Linear A writing Linear B writing Chinese ideographic writing Phoenician alphabet phonetic alphabet (Greece) printing from movable type (China) metal type for printing (Korea) Gutenberg prints from movable metal type and hand press (Germany) regularly published newspaper (Germany)
1814 flatbed cylinder press 1839 photography 1844 telegraph 1846 double-cylinder rotary press 1867 typewriter 1876 telephone 1888 phonograph for public sale 1895 films shown to public 1895 radio transmission 1911 television transmission 1920 scheduled radio broadcasting 1936 scheduled television broadcasting 1945 programmable electronic computer 1947 transistor 1948 long-playing gramophone record 1956 videotape 1957 satellite (Sputnik) 1962 television transmission via satellite 1963 compact cassette audiotape 1969 ARPANET 1971 microprocessor 1976 VHS video cassette recorder 1976 teletext 1978 telefax (with international standard) 1979 Walkman 1980 Cable News Network (CNN) 1981 Music Television (MTV) 1981 IBM personal computer 1982 audio compact disc 1984 Apple Macintosh computer 1991 World Wide Web 1991 GSM digital mobile phone network 1993 graphic web browser 1994 (we)blogs 1994 Amazon 1997 Netflix 1998 Google search engine 2001 Wikipedia 2001 commercial 3G mobile network 2002 social network sites 2003 LinkedIn 2004 Facebook 2005 YouTube 2006 Twitter 2007 iPhone 2008 App Store 2009 Bitcoin 2010 Instagram
Figure 2.1 A brief chronology of human communication
Humanistic sources of media research further showed that, within one culture, several different literacies, each with distinctive social uses, can be associated with different languages (in their case, English, Arabic, and Vai). In sum, language(s), like media technologies, establish certain outer parameters that make certain communicative practices either possible or impossible in a given historical and cultural setting. As if to prove their point – that ideas are shaped by contemporary media – several of the key studies cited here were published within the span of a few years at a transitional moment of media history (Goody & Watt, 1963; Havelock, 1963; McLuhan, 1964). They appeared at a time of social upheaval when television was contributing to new notions of ‘culture’ and ‘the media’ in both research and public debate. In society at large, television challenged the great divide between high and low cultures (Huyssen, 1986) and blurred the dividing lines between public and private social life, as later studied by Meyrowitz (1985). In the academy, television joined film, radio, and other popular cultural forms as legitimate objects of analysis, even if books were – and are – still widely perceived as the self-evident media of the humanistic heritage. Medium theory offers a fertile framework for studying the historical and cultural variations of media and communication; it also represents a middle ground between the textual focus of the humanities and the institutional focus of the social sciences. Admittedly, it lends itself to hyperbolic formulations of the kind that made McLuhan a personality also in the media, as if each new media technology would determine a new type of culture and society. Applied carefully, however, medium theory supports media studies in a middle range (Merton, 1968: 39), steering empirical research between determination in the first instance, Chapter 1, p. 2
the Scylla of myopic methodologies and the Charybdis of grand theories. In the humanities, the main currents of ideas have themselves been shaped, in part, by their orientation toward specific media and their social uses. The primary example, both historically and as a continued influence on the study of human communication, is the art, science, and practice of rhetoric, which revolves around spoken language and humans as embodied media.
FOUR TRADITIONS IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS Rhetoric The rhetorical tradition is by far the oldest set of ideas informing humanistic research, and it remained centrally influential from Antiquity into the nineteenth century, not just in scholarship but also within education under shifting cultural and institutional circumstances (for overview, see G. A. Hauser, 2008; Kennedy, 1980). Its legacy for contemporary research on communication and culture can be summarized with reference to three sets of concepts. First, the rhetorical tradition refers to five stages in preparing a speech: • inventio (the collection and conception of the subject matter) • dispositio (structuring the speech) • elocutio (its articulation in language) • memoria (memorizing the resulting configuration of form and content) • actio (performing the speech). Of the five stages, particularly inventio recognizes an intimate relationship between knowing something and knowing how to communicate about it. Certain ways of speaking are appropriate in a political arena, others in a courtroom, others again on a festive occasion; each
history of ‘the media’ – Chapter 12, p. 235 middle-range theories – Chapter 14, p. 288
media of the first degree – Chapter 1, p. 5
29
30
Klaus Bruhn Jensen context has its own purpose and subject matter, both of which are given material shape in the speech. Dispositio and especially elocutio, next, supply the concrete procedures shaping the speech. Rhetorical figures of speech and symbolic forms have entered into both the study and practice of much literature and other arts. Second, in addressing the audience through actio, a speaker draws on three means of persuasion:
These focus, respectively, on the (ethical) character of the speaker, the (logical) quality of his/her arguments, and the (more or less pathetic) emotions which the speech is designed to evoke in the listeners. Importantly, the three means are all present in any act of communication, but in different measures and combinations, depending on the purpose and hence the genre of communication. Whereas the three aspects of addressing an audience have their most obvious relevance for such explicitly ‘persuasive’ genres as advertising and political communication, they lend themselves to the study of most types of both face-to-face and technologically mediated communication. Third, the concept of topos, which classical rhetoric considered one part of inventio, is of special interest, because it suggests a figure of thought and discourse that suffuses modern humanities, as well. Topos means ‘place’ and implies that commonplaces are, literally, common places in a known or imagined terrain which speakers share with their audience. This understanding of reality as a text and, conversely, of the text as a spatial and temporal universe that can be searched for traces and clues, has been a persistent metaphor in the humanities up until, and including, theories of the internet and
mobile media. A ‘topical’ form of argument can rely on one or a few concrete examples rather than a great deal of formal evidence, as long as the examples fit into the commonplaces which make up the working assumptions of the individuals communicating. Accordingly, Aristotle noted, rhetoric is the source of a kind of knowledge which is probable and reasonable. In this regard, rhetoric is complementary to logic, which addresses other aspects of reality about which necessary or certain knowledge can be achieved (Clarke, 1990: 13). The close link in classical rhetoric between communication and knowledge was gradually relaxed, as manifested in the development of so many practical manuals on speaking well in public. This shift helps to account for the common pejorative reference to ‘only rhetoric’ – communication as a superficial form and as misrepresentation and manipulation. Furthermore, rhetorical concepts were redeveloped from their oral sources and applied to literate forms of communication, for example, literary fiction and, later, to ‘texts’ in general. Nevertheless, the rhetorical tradition has remained an important source of ideas regarding the nature of human communication. During the twentieth century, rhetoric enjoyed a renaissance, sometimes under the heading of a ‘new rhetoric’ (Perelman, 1979), which, among other things, gave more specific attention to the concrete interaction of communicators with their audiences. A second inspiration came from analytic philosophy and its examination of the structure of informal argument (Toulmin, 2003/1958). Although European scholarship may have been especially instrumental in feeding the rhetorical tradition into contemporary research, a vigorous American substream also has cultivated rhetorical and other humanistic approaches to communication studies (Kennedy, 1980).
genres of communication – Chapter 7, p. 136
logic – Chapter 16, p. 335
• ethos • logos • pathos.
topos
the ‘new rhetoric’
Humanistic sources of media research Among the most important influences has been the work of Kenneth Burke, who developed a view of language as action (Burke, 1950) and of literature as both a social and an aesthetic phenomenon (Burke, 1957). His perspective was subsequently applied to the mass media, for example, in the case of political communication (Duncan, 1968; Edelman, 1971). In media studies, James Carey (1989b) was a central figure advocating a broadly rhetorical as well as historical perspective on the interrelations between modern media and earlier cultural forms. As expressed in his ritual model, also technologically mediated communication serves to create and maintain community – the common root of the two words suggests as much. Saying something amounts to doing something – from everyday promises, excuses, and jokes, to formal ceremonies joining people into partnerships and nations into alliances. Whereas the understanding of communication as a form of action has been particularly pronounced in recent decades, in the longer history of ideas, it is one of the lessons of classical rhetoric for contemporary humanistic disciplines. Like rhetoric, media studies have sought to strike a balance between a focus on the textual structures of messages as products and on messages as resources of action within social processes. This balancing act was also witnessed in the wider humanities over the course of twentieth century in linguistic, communicative, and pragmatic turns. At the same time, a rhetorical conception of communication as action has provided one of the conceptual and methodological bridges between humanistic research on media texts and
the ritual model of communication, Chapter 1, p. 13 communication as action – Chapter 1, p. 14 meaning as product and process – Chapter 1, p. 12 linguistic, communicative, and pragmatic turns, p. 38
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social-scientific research on communicative practices.
Hermeneutics While the point of departure for rhetoric was speech, particularly concerning matters of fact and how to argue about them, hermeneutics developed out of the practice of reading and understanding written texts, not least narratives, including fiction. Its general purpose has been to clarify the nature and preconditions of interpretation, with reference simultaneously to the structure of the text and to the activity of the reader. The texts at issue originally belonged to religion and law. The preferred interpretation of both biblical and legal scriptures could make or break individuals; dissenters were, literally, ex-communicated from the communities in question. Equally, interpretive disputes would pit communities and nations against each other in religious struggles, warfare, or both. Over time, the principles and procedures of hermeneutics came to be applied to the arts and additional kinds of texts, even to human experience as such. Indeed, a common humanistic conception of consciousness, shared across the four traditions that are reviewed here, is as a text that calls for constant interpretation. In a historical overview, Paul Ricoeur (1981: chap. 1), himself a central contributor to modern hermeneutic philosophy, identified a transition in the early nineteenth century from a ‘regional’ to a ‘general’ hermeneutics, which now covered both secular and religious texts. The transition was advanced particularly in the work of the German theologian and philosopher Friedrich Schleiermacher. Hermeneutics thus participated in a long movement within the history of ideas, from a religious cosmology toward a historical and secular understanding of human existence. The medieval secularization – Chapter 11, p. 217
religious and legal texts
consciousness as a text
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Klaus Bruhn Jensen
the Great Chain of Being
the hermeneutic circle
analogy between The Book of Nature and other books, above all, The Good Book, as means of insight into the Great Chain of Being (Lovejoy, 1936), in which everything had its divinely sanctioned place, was breaking down. Texts became a new focus of attention in their own right, as sources of scientific evidence and of aesthetic contemplation, rather than being primarily interfaces with the hereafter. At the inception of the modern humanities, then, the Text was taking center stage, together with the individual human being. Hermeneutics appeared to offer means of resolving interpretive conflicts, beyond matters of faith and aesthetics, in some social affairs, as well. The practical implications of hermeneutics for doing communication research are suggested by the key concept of a hermeneutic circle (Figure 2.2). The most basic insight of hermeneutics is that the meaning of one part of a text can only be understood in relation to the whole of the text. While perhaps commonsensical, this insight contradicts the equally common assumption that the meaning of a message is the sum of its parts, so
Pattern of interpretation
Sub-interpretation WHOLE
PRE-UNDERSTANDING
UNDERSTANDING
PART
Text
Dialogue
Figure 2.2 The hermeneutic circle (Alvesson & Sköldberg, 2009: 104)
that communication might be studied by breaking messages down into their constituent elements. Hermeneutics suggests that the processes of reading and analyzing a text are both creative and incremental – readers gradually work out their categories of understanding in order to arrive at a coherent interpretation. This dialectic at the level of the individual text, however, is only the first step in working out its meanings and implications. Next, the full text must itself be interpreted as a part of larger wholes. For example, a novel may express the mindset of its author, who might be said to articulate the entire worldview of his/her epoch or culture. Such an understanding of the wider nexus of texts and contexts, as an extension of the basic part-whole dialectic, dates from the period when a general hermeneutics, applying to all types of texts, was conceived. It also anticipated the more recent concept of intertextuality. One further development of the hermeneutic circle, during the twentieth century, specifically took into account the role of the reader. The point is suggested by another set of twin concepts – preunderstanding and understanding – which was developed especially in the work of Hans-Georg Gadamer (1975/1960). On the one hand, any understanding requires a preunderstanding – a ‘prejudice’ in a neutral sense. On the other hand, understanding can serve to either reproduce or contest the reader’s preunderstanding. Throughout the activity of reading, people perform minimal or subinterpretations, which may realign their frames of interpretation. In doing so, they enter into a ‘dialogue’ with the text and, by extension, with other minds, past as well as present. Most grandly, they partake of culture – the cultivation and renewal of tradition. The hermeneutic circle can be understood as a model of communication, as it unfolds not just in the here and now between a text and a reader, but down intertextuality – Chapter 10, p. 200
prejudice and preunderstanding
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Humanistic sources of media research
fusion of horizons
hermeneutics of suspicion
through history, between cultures, and across media. In hermeneutic (and phenomenological) terminology, communicative processes involve a fusion of horizons – a meeting and merging of the expectations that all communicators bring with them into an exchange with others. Especially recent contributors to the hermeneutic tradition have pointed to the dangers of such fusion and of an immediate empathy with tradition. Referring to the works of Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud, Ricoeur (1981: 46) identified and redeveloped a hermeneutics of suspicion. Its particular purpose is to discover hidden principles behind what other people as well as social institutions say and do, thus enabling a distinction between surface and ‘reality.’ People do not always say what they mean or mean what they say. Since these principles may equally be hidden to the persons and institutions speaking, working behind their backs, the general social charge of hermeneutics can be understood as that of reading between the lines and feeding such interpretations back to society. Particularly the critical tradition in communication research has taken on this task in studies of media texts as well as of institutions and audiences. Hermeneutics has had a lasting influence on media and communication studies in three different respects. First, it brings home the general point that human communication is a complex process which always calls for interpretation, and sometimes for suspicion. Second, hermeneutics has been a specific source of inspiration, for instance, in theoretical frameworks regarding the reception of media and in methodological approaches to historical sources. Third, and finally, the hermeneutic tradition serves as a constant reminder that research is also a
hermeneutic and doubly hermeneutic (Giddens, 1979) activity, interpreting the interpretations of others as to how and why they communicate.
Phenomenology Interrelated with hermeneutics in the history of ideas and as a methodological orientation to collecting and interpreting evidence, phenomenology emerged as a distinctive school of philosophy around 1900 (for overview, see D. W. Smith, 2009). The date is significant, because phenomenology can be understood as a defensive reaction against the reductionism which was then seen to threaten a traditional humanistic understanding of consciousness as a lived and interpreted whole – whether in the form of positivism or in psychological and social-scientific disciplines then taking shape. In response, the phenomenological tradition insisted on the unique qualities and insights of ordinary human experience. In the social sciences, its influence has, arguably, been at least as strong as in the humanities, providing a philosophical legitimation for interpretive studies of social life, a minority position in the social sciences. In the humanities, phenomenology entered into the mainstream but proposed to redevelop certain key concepts of the humanistic heritage, such as interpretation and subjectivity. Edmund Husserl, the originator of modern phenomenology, was also the author of its ambiguous motto, Zu den Sachen selbst (to the things themselves). These ‘things’ were not material objects but those elements which constitute the core of human experience and existence, what Husserl referred to as the lifeworld. In order to gain a better understanding of one’s lifeworld, one should perform
critical media and communication research – Chapter 20, p. 421 reception studies – Chapter 9, p. 184
double hermeneutics – Chapter 20, p. 411
historiography – Chapter 12, p. 236
positivism – Chapter 16, p. 336
lifeworld
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Klaus Bruhn Jensen
epoché
horizon
‘reductions’ of various types in order to capture its qualitative essence. Far from breaking up experience into minimal units corresponding to, for instance, sense data, a phenomenological reduction involves a ‘bracketing’ (epoché) of experience as a whole from its incidental circumstances. Husserl’s ambition was to reinvent philosophy as a science in the strict sense. Central to this ambition was an attempt to close the subject-object divide, which had been haunting Western philosophy at least since René Descartes’s formulation of cogito, ergo sum (je pense, donc je suis, in Discourse on the Method, 1637) – I think, therefore I am – as the only human certainty. Husserl argued that human consciousness, or intentionality, is always intentionality of something, not a mental state or entity that is forever separated from external entities. In order to explain more concretely how human subjects relate to objects in reality, Husserl introduced the concept of a horizon (as present also in hermeneutics). The concept refers to the configuration of a person’s lifeworld at a given moment, pointing both backward and forward in time. A horizon comprises a set of interpretive categories which any person has available from having been socialized and acculturated. This horizon will change or be modified over time, as the person enters into new contexts, undertakes new projects, and interacts with other people. From this general philosophical and mental category, literary and other humanistic research derived a discursive conception of horizons, defined as historically and culturally specific frameworks of expectations that guide the interpretation of particular texts. A ‘misunderstanding’ of a text can result from an incompatibility between the horizon implicit in the text and the reader’s horizon of expectations; a ‘disagreement’ about the meaning of a text can be the product of conflicting interpretive horizons. horizon of expectations – Chapter 9, p. 190
Phenomenology has had less of a direct influence on media studies than either rhetoric or hermeneutics. This may be, in part, because its abstract conceptual analyses have seemed less applicable to the concrete discursive vehicles and social practices of communication – being a philosophy of consciousness, phenomenology has no evident ‘medium.’ Nevertheless, particularly some film studies have taken their lead from the phenomenological bracketing of experience and have gone on to bracket film texts in order to get at what are supposedly essential experiential qualities that resemble the multimodal lifeworld (Deleuze, 1986, 1989). With reference to broadcasting, Paddy Scannell (1996) has suggested that the phenomenology and radical hermeneutics (Ricoeur, 1981: 45) of Martin Heidegger might serve to capture the distinctive features of a modern existence that is increasingly enabled by and conducted through communication technologies. (For a critical assessment of Heidegger’s legacy for the field, see Fuchs, 2015.)
Semiotics Of the four humanistic traditions, semiotics exercised the most direct influence in the formation of media studies as a field – compared to the other traditions, it addresses all types of media and communicative practices. Defined most famously as a science that studies “the life of signs within society” (Saussure, 1959/1916: 16), semiotics became one of the most influential interdisciplinary approaches to the study of communication and culture from the 1960s onwards. The tradition offers analytical procedures and theoretical models, as well as constituents of a theory of science. In its most ambitious formulations, semiotics has proposed to examine languages, images, psyches, societies, even biology and cosmology as sign processes (Posner, Robering, & Sebeok, 1997–98; Sebeok & Danesi, 2010). More commonly, the semiotic tradition has
the life of signs within society
Humanistic sources of media research
Charles Sanders Peirce
sign, object, interpretant
semiosis
contributed methodological frameworks that lent a new form of systematicity to humanistic research on texts. Semiotics had two founding fathers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries – the American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce and the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure (the two thinkers were unaware of each other’s work). Their disciplinary backgrounds are key to their different conceptions of the study of signs. Recovering an undercurrent in the history of ideas going back to Aristotle, Peirce developed a comprehensive philosophy of signs which he understood as a form of logic that would support inquiry into the nature of both knowledge and being (for key texts, see Peirce, 1992–98). In his definition, any sign has three aspects: A sign, or representamen, is something which stands to somebody for something in some respect or capacity. It addresses somebody, that is, creates in the mind of that person an equivalent sign, or perhaps a more developed sign. That sign which it creates I call the interpretant of the first sign. The sign stands for something, its object. (Peirce, 1931–58: 2.228) Although signs are here said to mediate between objects (material and non-material) in reality and concepts in the mind, Peirce rejected any idealist, nominalist, or skepticist position. Peirce instead attempted to marry a classical Aristotelian realism with the modern Kantian insight that humans necessarily construct their understanding of reality in particular cognitive categories. Signs, then, are not what we know but how we come to know what we can justify saying that we know, in science as in everyday life. Peirce further suggested that human understanding is a continuous process of interpretation – semiosis – not a singular act that internalizes external reality once and for all. From this perspective, semiosis occurs in a sequence of interconnected
perceptual, cognitive, and behavioral sign types that support the mundane coordination of everyday life, as well as extraordinary scientific and aesthetic accomplishments. Figure 2.3 displays the process of semiosis, noting how any given interpretation (interpretant) itself serves as a sign in the next stage of interpretation. Even though Peirce’s outlook was that of a logician and a natural scientist, the model can be taken to refer to the diverse communicative processes by which societies are reproduced and cultures maintained. Saussure (1959/1916), in comparison, focused almost entirely on verbal language. Even though it was he who coined the phrase anticipating a general science of signs (of which linguistics would be a subdivision), in practice, Saussure and his followers took language as their model for the study of other sign types as well. Saussure’s main achievement was to develop a
35
Ferdinand de Saussure
Interpretant 2/ Sign 3
Interpretant 1/ Sign 2
Object 2
Sign 1
Object 1
Figure 2.3 The process of semiosis
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Klaus Bruhn Jensen
philology
langue and parole
syntagms and paradigms
metaphor and metonymy
framework for modern linguistics which, to a degree, proved applicable to other social and cultural phenomena. In contrast to the long tradition of studying language change from a diachronic perspective – philology (Turner, 2014) – Saussure wanted to examine language as a system from a synchronic perspective. Language as an abstract system (langue) could be distinguished, at least for analytical purposes, from its actual uses (parole), and this system could further be analyzed in two dimensions. Along the syntagmatic axis, letters, words, phrases, and so forth are the units that combine to make up meaningful wholes; each of these units has been chosen as one of several possibilities along a paradigmatic axis, for example, the verb ‘choose’ instead of ‘select.’ The resulting combinatorial system accounts for the remarkable flexibility of language as a medium of social interaction. In addition, the interrelation between the paradigmatic and syntagmatic axes gives rise to two specific forms of expression and representation – metaphor and metonymy – which have been especially important in the analysis of media as textual messages. Metaphor can be understood as the outcome of an unexpected paradigmatic choice that affects the message as a whole (the syntagm) and thus activates additional frames of interpretation. For example, in the 1980s, the American politician and civil rights activist, Jesse Jackson, became the spokesperson for a ‘rainbow coalition’ that sought to join various ethnic and disempowered groups into a new political force. This term is significantly different from the traditional reference to the US population as entering into a ‘melting pot.’ Whereas the melting pot eliminates variety, the rainbow derives its essential quality and beauty from difference and contrast. Speeches and other communications would activate this sense for a particular political purpose. Metonymy, in turn, is the process by which a single sign evokes the full syntagm to which it belongs.
When ‘the White House’ was said to comment on the ‘rainbow coalition,’ the reference to the building would evoke both the American presidency and the vested interests associated with it (Drotner, Jensen, Poulsen, & Schrøder, 1996: 195). One further contribution by Saussure was his account of the arbitrariness of the linguistic sign. The sign is said to have two sides: a signified (conceptual content) and a signifier (the acoustic image or physical token associated with it). The relation between the two is arbitrary, as suggested by the wealth of terms in different languages for the same phenomenon. Saussure has sometimes been taken to imply that speakers of the same language are also paradoxically free to choose their own meanings, so that they might be destined to remain divorced from any consensual reality, or they might be in a position, individually or as subcultures, to reject prevailing conceptions of social reality. The point is rather that the linguistic system as a whole is arbitrary in principle but fixed by social practices into conventions. A great deal of later research has extended the principle of arbitrariness to other social and cultural forms, for example, artworks, myths, and subcultures, all of which may be understood as ‘languages’ in the broadest sense. The structural anthropology of Claude Lévi-Strauss (1963/1958) became highly influential of such studies of culture as more or less arbitrary systems of signification. A related perspective was developed within critical theories of social power (Althusser, 1977/1965; Foucault, 1972/1969) and of the unconscious as a ‘language’ (Lacan, 1977). Housed in the broader tradition of structuralism, a common argument in these works has been that the current organization of society, and of the human psyche, is historically contingent and hence open to challenge and change.
structuralism – p. 42
arbitrariness of sign relations
signified (signifié) and signifier (signifiant)
Humanistic sources of media research
semiology
To be precise, Saussure referred to the science of signs not as semiotics but as semiology. The two terminologies point to the fact that Peirce and Saussure, while contemporary, developed their ideas independently of each other. During its consolidation from the 1960s onwards, semiotics became the agreed-upon term, as symbolized by the formation in 1969 of the International Association for Semiotic Studies. It was also during this period that the program for studying the life of signs in society, unfulfilled in Saussure’s own work, began to be implemented in systemic, Saussurean approaches to culture and society. In recent decades, the Peircean framework has been gaining ground in a more processual approach to social semiotics, combining semiotic methodology with other social and communication theory (Hodge & Kress, 1988; Jensen, 1995, 2010). Roland Barthes’s widely influential model of two levels of signification (Figure 2.4) suggested one interface between Saussurean and Peircean semiotics and a common agenda for the semiotic tradition: the analysis of concrete sign vehicles – texts and images – as the carriers of culture, ideology, or myth. Barthes (1973/1957) showed how the combination of a signifier and a signified (expressive form and conceptual content) into one sign (e.g., a magazine cover with a picture of a black man in a French uniform saluting the flag) can become the expressive form of
a further ideological content (e.g., that French imperialism was not a discriminatory system). The two levels of meaning are normally referred to as denotation and connotation, building on the linguistics of Louis Hjelmslev (1963/1943). Barthes’s critical point was that this two-layered semiotic mechanism serves to naturalize particular worldviews while silencing others and should be deconstructed analytically. (Despite the predominantly critical orientation of semiotics, it has also been recruited for commercial purposes, for example, in ‘marketing semiotics’ [Umiker-Sebeok, 1987].) It is only a relatively short step to the model of semiosis (Figure 2.4). This Peircean model refers to a potentially infinite process but recognizes that the process is always, in practice, arrested. Sooner or later, individual sign users must arrive at interpretations and act in their social contexts. These questions concerning meaning as process and as product and concerning the relationship between communication and action continued to occupy the humanities throughout the twentieth century and became one of the key issues for the field of media and communication research.
LINGUISTIC AND COMMUNICATIVE TURNS In one sense, the humanities have always been preoccupied with language – as a
III SIGN Myth I SIGNIFIER 3. Sign
II SIGNIFIED
Language 1. Signifier
2. Signified
Figure 2.4 Two levels of signification (adapted from Barthes, 1973/1957: 115)
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denotation and connotation
38
the linguistic turn
Klaus Bruhn Jensen means of persuasion, as testimony of the past, and as a model for other kinds of communication. Heim (1987: 42) referred to the “Logos tradition,” arising from classical Greek philosophy, as a longlived worldview that has given priority to verbal language by assuming a “transcendental intimacy of thought, words, and reality.” Whether directly or indirectly, rhetoric, hermeneutics, phenomenology, and semiotics all recognize language as a precondition of human knowledge and social interaction. The twentieth century, however, witnessed an explicit turn to the study of language and other signs and symbols in a number of disciplines, first and most programmatically in philosophy. A common ambition was to make the procedures for analyzing texts, artifacts, and reality as such more systematic and transparent. In philosophy, the linguistic turn (Rorty, 1967) denotes the effort, particularly among Anglo-American analytic philosophers since the early 1900s, to examine the structures and functions of language as a primary way of knowing the fundamental structures and processes of reality – as well as the conditions and limitations of such knowledge. Much ancient and premodern philosophy had had an ontological focus (asking ‘What does the world consist of?’); from the eighteenth century, philosophy came to address epistemological questions (‘What can we know about the world?’). It was such questions which the twentieth century came to examine in linguistic terms (‘What do we mean by “know” and “world”?’). The linguistic turn, in effect, signaled a somewhat technical and reductionist conception of language as a modularized interface with reality. The turn to the concrete and formal vehicles of knowledge presented potentials as well as problems. On the one hand, the close analysis of language promised a new degree of precision and intersubjectivity, also in other humanistic disciplines. On the other hand, language
might end up being treated as a formalist universe unto itself, akin to mathematics. Such an approach would be alien to the traditional cultural, historical, and aesthetic explorations of the humanities. On top of this, an overemphasis on verbal language would not do justice to the specific qualities of either nonverbal fine arts or popular audiovisual media. This dilemma continues to affect media and communication studies today. The pivot of twentieth-century philosophy was Ludwig Wittgenstein, who emphatically changed his mind and initiated not one but two separate turns. In Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1972/1921), the early Wittgenstein held that all knowledge must be founded on elementary propositions about minimal features of reality. The ideal of both philosophy and science, accordingly, would be to establish a correspondence between the structures of reality and the linguistic, logical, and other discursive structures expressing our understanding of it. In this way, Wittgenstein prepared the arguments that informed the linguistic turn and which were extended and applied to the study of both nature and culture by logical positivism of the 1920–30s. The later Wittgenstein himself rejected such a formalist and reductionist view of language. Instead, he came to define language as a complex set of discursive activities – language games – that are inseparable from the life forms or practices which they serve to constitute. His dictum, that “meaning is use” (Wittgenstein, 1953: 20), summed up the beginning of a wider shift within a range of disciplines and interdisciplinary fields. Meaning inheres neither in the form of language, nor in its correspondence with reality, but in the ordinary as well as extraordinary uses to which language (and other signs and symbols) are put by people in communication. Wittgenstein thus can be seen to have inspired logical positivism – Chapter 16, p. 336
language games
meaning is use
Humanistic sources of media research a communicative turn
an additional communicative turn in the understanding of human knowledge: What we know is what we can communicate about. A shift of focus has been noticeable from language as a medium for representing objects (material and immaterial), toward language as a medium of interaction between subjects in the context of culture and society. The communicative turn may be said to entail or anticipate a further pragmatic turn. Linguistic and communicative turns have made the humanities ‘harder’ in methodological terms; the understanding of communication as a form of social action in its own right as well as a constituent of other action has drawn the humanities closer to the social sciences. In certain respects, the social sciences, for their part, have grown ‘softer’ in what is sometimes referred to as a ‘cultural turn’ (Ray & Sayer, 1999), reemphasizing the communicative dimensions of both everyday life and diverse institutional practices. In order to assess the current state and future prospects of this interdisciplinary convergence from the perspective of the humanities, this chapter next considers some key contributions of humanistic disciplines to media and communication research.
In many respects, the media have taken over the social functions of traditional religious as well as secular fine arts – visual arts (painting, sculpture, architecture), music, and literature (including theater). The arts had acquired their modern shape as specific institutions of aesthetic practice from the eighteenth century, separate both from matters of state and market and from more mundane cultural practices. The arts could be understood as
the site and source of extraordinary and privileged insights or, in Immanuel Kant’s (2004a/1790: n.p.) words in the Critique of Judgment, “disinterested delight.” Artworks might be appreciated on their own terms and without purpose. However, with democratization and secularization, the very idea of universal, even eternal, insights into the human condition became increasingly contested. For one thing, it was evident that only some social classes were in a position to engage in such contemplation of the beautiful and its implications for the true and the good. For another thing, fine arts also have structural origins and consequences, as witnessed by their shifting funders: churches, states, and commercial markets. Habermas (1989/1962) described how the arts enter into a cultural public sphere that is different from, but which nevertheless feeds into, the political public sphere that debates and adjudicates issues of power and privilege (see Figure 1.5). The understanding of the arts as a world unto itself was challenged, throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, both from within and from without (for key texts, see Harrison & Wood, 1992). Internally, Romantic as well as avantgarde movements questioned the autonomous and consensual status of artworks. Also, artists wanted to change the world. Externally, the society-wide diffusion of a whole sequence of technologies, from print to broadcast to digital media, gradually undermined any notion of art and culture as a realm apart and one devoid of conflict. Technologically mediated communication became a constitutive element of most other social institutions and of the daily lives of all classes. The production of culture was now manifestly a business – a source of economic capital. The consumption of culture, similarly, is a means of generating and renewing cultural capital: Media use and museum visits are ways of positioning oneself in society and of
a pragmatic turn – p. 50
the cultural public sphere – Chapter 1, p. 18
FOUR DISCIPLINES IN HUMANISTIC RESEARCH Art history
fine arts: visual arts, music, literature
39
economic and cultural capital
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Klaus Bruhn Jensen
museums
‘texts’
acquiring what the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu (1984/1979) described as distinction vis-à-vis others. Museums emerged, alongside libraries and the press, as institutions of record but also of diversion for the general public (e.g., Bennett, 1995). All the while, traditional forms of stage entertainment remained central carriers of the cultural heritage (e.g., Levine, 1988). Nevertheless, the modern media afforded a categorically new form of cultural infrastructure – a continuous presence in everyday life and a common arena in which to articulate alternatives and conflicts. Over time, this common infrastructure served to blur some of the distinctions between high and low cultural forms. From a research perspective, this meant that any cultural expression or artifact could be studied for its inherent meaning – as ‘texts.’ It further meant that theories and approaches from one cultural prototype might be transferred to account for the forms and practices of another. Both art history and other humanistic disciplines have performed a fruitful application of ‘high’ theory to ‘low’ culture (MacCabe, 1986). One immediate point of contact was that between painting (and other visual arts) and photography (and other still and moving images). Analytical models and methods, as derived, in part, from the psychology of perception and applied to different historical art forms (Arnheim, 1974; Gombrich, 1960), have provided essential tools for examining form, perspective, color, and iconographic conventions also in film and television. Semiotics and structuralism were especially influential, in studies of both visual arts and popular media, in applying linguistic models to visual phenomena. Building on Erwin Panofsky’s iconology, Roland Barthes (1984/1964) contributed one of the mostcited accounts of how image and text may be seen to combine in different genres and media. Either the words ‘anchor’ or delimit the meanings of the image, or the reader’s attention wanders back and forth
between image and words in a process of ‘relay.’ It should be added that humanistic studies of visual forms of expression, by and large, have remained focused on the ‘texts,’ whether artworks or mass-produced entertainments. (Even more so, research on music has been narrowly centered on works and notations [Jensen, 2006]). In line with Marshall McLuhan’s dictum, the implication has been that visual media also carry formal ‘messages’ that frame particular perspectives on the world. Not only do images address and attract viewers, so that they spend their time and money, but users might be said to invest their subjectivity and identity in the discursive universes on offer. The further argument in much humanistic research since the 1960s has been that the media thus serve to incorporate citizens, and to reinforce a dominant view of society, by textual means (for overview, see Coward & Ellis, 1977). Despite the abiding work- or textcentrism of mainstream art history, media studies have taken inspiration from research exploring the junctures between artworks, artists, and their social contexts with reference to additional forms of empirical evidence. Arnold Hauser (1951), for one, proposed to rewrite the history of Western art, including new art forms such as cinema, from a materialist and psychoanalytic position. In one early exemplary study across the high-low cultural divide, John Berger (1972) identified the many analogies between traditional oil paintings of the wealthy and powerful and advertising which depicts role models that consumers are invited to identify with. David Summers (2003) outlined a comprehensive framework for the study of art simultaneously as a material and a social practice. Still, most studies with roots in art history have stopped short of empirically examining the social origins and uses of visual texts. In a future perspective, the crossfertilization of elite arts and popular
anchorage and relay
music
41
Humanistic sources of media research media – as creative practices and as objects of study – is set to continue. Both traditional art histories (Davies et al., 2015) and media-oriented overviews (Pelfrey, 1985; Walker, 2001) have recognized the interconnections – from the ‘readymades’ or everyday objects elevated as art by the Dada movement, through pop art, to interactive installations. Beyond debates over postmodernism, which have foregrounded high-low hybrids, the larger theoretical and ideological issue remains, though: How to develop analytical frameworks that will recognize fine arts and popular media as equal but different forms of human communication that are both native to contemporary culture?
Literary criticism Of the fine arts, literature has commonly held a special position. It enables readers to imagine full-fledged and sometimes radically different realities in a narrative form (as extended to film and television in the twentieth century). Upon reflection concerning such realities, people return to an everyday reality of practical concerns, having been entertained and, perhaps, enlightened and empowered. This process of reflexivity has traditionally been undertaken within a standard repertoire of genres and themes. While authors might thus be expected to serve as special keepers of the cultural heritage, a distinctive ambition of modern high culture has been to constantly transcend and reinvent tradition. From the Romantic era, a new degree of autonomy was assigned to the individual author. The genius that found expression in literature could be understood, in the words of the British poet William Wordsworth, as the “spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings” (Abrams, 1962: 103). With modernism, authors were expected, more specifically, to provide their readers with striking new insights, not least by linguistic and other postmodernism, p. 45
formal means. As a social institution, modern literature was called upon to ‘make it new’ by presenting reality to the reading public in new formats (Berman, 1982; Huyssen, 1986). Literature only emerged gradually as a field of research in its own right, having been examined as one component of historical and philological research. More over, literary research was, for a long time, founded on biographical studies of major authors and on the place of their works in a genealogy of forms and styles (for overview, see Eagleton, 1983; Wimsatt & Brooks, 1957). The term, ‘literary criticism’ further suggests that a central purpose was the appreciation of a particular canon and a continuous evaluation of new artworks by this standard. It was the rise of various formalist approaches during the twentieth century that promoted a more descriptive study of literature and subsequently a sustained comparison with popular media and genres. The first internationally influential formalist ‘school’ was the New Criticism. From the 1940s, a group of scholars in the United States and the United Kingdom advocated studying literature as an objective, self-contained structure of textual paradoxes and ambivalences. Any interest in authorial intention or affective impact was rejected as intentional and affective fallacies (Wimsatt, 1954). Although this position tended to isolate literature from its social circumstances, it helped to professionalize the analysis of literature and to gain academic legitimacy for the discipline. By performing close readings of ‘the texts themselves,’ while bracketing readers, writers, and the literary institution, the New Criticism participated in a linguistic turn toward an immanent analysis of texts. Russian formalism, as developed from World War I and into the 1930s (for overview, see Erlich, 1955), prepared the main ingredients of structuralism, which gradually became a dominant position in literary theory from the 1960s. Compared
historical- biographical approaches
the New Criticism
Russian formalism
42
defamiliarization structuralism
Klaus Bruhn Jensen to the modernists, who wanted to make reality new, the formalists noted that literature and other arts already have a distinctive capacity to defamiliarize reality, or to make it ‘strange.’ An important ambition of structuralism was to account for such general features of literature and, indeed, of all texts, genres, and media. Behind structuralism lies a generative conception of language and meaning. The key idea is that any message amounts to a variation on a structural matrix of the same constants. The term ‘generative’ is frequently associated with the transformational-generative grammar of Noam Chomsky (1965), who described a ‘deep’ structure that produces the many variable ‘surface’ structures of concrete sentences. However, the scope of the idea is much wider. A generative model is implicit, for example, in the sociological concept of social roles, which can be filled, at least in principle, by anyone (e.g., Merton, 1968). In textual studies, particular narratives amount to variations on a relatively few elements. The most famous account of the modular structure of narratives was the analysis by Vladimir Propp (1958/1928) of the constituents of Russian folktales and their recombination in any given tale. The model has been widely applied, for example, by Umberto Eco (1987a/1965) in an analysis of the James Bond stories. The concept of intertextuality is another central contribution of structuralism to media and communication research. The many interconnections across individual texts, series, and genres in media suggest the special importance of examining texts or contents not as singular works but as instances of a general ‘textuality.’ The idea was coined, again, by Russian linguists and literary scholars during the interwar years (Bakhtin, 1981; generative model of meaning – Chapter 1, p. 12
Volosinov, 1973) and has been extended and reworked to apply to technologically mediated communication. The concept has prepared the ground for more focused analyses both of such classic issues as the relationship between ‘text’ and ‘context’ and of hypertextuality in computer-mediated communication.
Linguistics If literary criticism and art history have emphasized the ‘content’ of culture and communication, linguistics has focused on ‘form.’ As such, it is a particular variety of language study that differs markedly from philology, which had studied languages diachronically – over time and in the context of history and culture (Turner, 2014). In contrast, linguistics examines language synchronically – as a system of expression and communication. This focus bears witness, on the one hand, to the association of linguistics with the semiotic tradition and, on the other hand, to its application as part of the linguistic turn of philosophy and other disciplines. For a long period, then, linguistics, following Saussure, gave priority to the formal study of three main dimensions of language – grammar, semantics, and phonetics – typically with reference to single, abstracted sentences. This approach also made linguistics useful in language teaching: Students would learn a language as both form and norm. From the 1970s, however, there was a noticeable shift, first, toward more descriptive research on the actual uses of language in social settings and, second, toward a critical interest in language as a constituent of interaction and conflict. In linguistic terminology, the shift involved a fourth dimension of language study – pragmatics. From an interdisciplinary perspective, linguistics thus came to provide the basic ingredients for discourse analysis in social and cultural
narratology – Chapter 7, p. 143
hypertextuality – Chapter 10, p. 202
intertextuality – Chapter 10, p. 200
Saussure’s semiology, p. 35
from diachronic philology to synchronic linguistics
pragmatics
43
Humanistic sources of media research research. It was in this shape that linguistic concepts and procedures exercised most of their influence on media and communication research. It should be noted that, compared to linguistics, literary criticism (and film studies) were relatively more influential in the formation of humanistic media studies. This is likely explained, in part, by an understanding of media as sources of mass communication: one-way vehicles of narratives and other representations, rather than resources in everyday interaction. In the last few decades, linguistics has been approaching an equal standing, as explained by developments both in research and in the media themselves. Classic mass media have increasingly featured ordinary people and their informal conversations in talkshows (e.g., Livingstone & Lunt, 1994) and various reality genres. Social media, further, have become habitual forms of interaction, both in their own right as personal media and as genres employed by established media organizations. In research, scholars have been seeking to conceptualize and examine this reconfiguration of the media environment, to some degree rediscovering the importance of interpersonal communication both in and around mass media (Gumpert & Cathcart, 1986; Scannell, 1991). One final relevance of linguistics is as a research instrument in collecting and examining evidence about media and communication – language is both an object and a tool of analysis. This is especially the case for qualitative methodologies – interviewing, observation, and document studies – which produce large amounts of linguistic data that require systematic documentation and analysis. In addition, language is integral to the qualitative research process – from interaction
with informants to theory development. In the widest sense, qualitative and quantitative research projects alike rely extensively on language for conceptualization, operationalization, data collection, data analysis, and the reporting of conclusions to both expert and lay publics.
Film studies Film emerged as the first non-alphabetic form of communication with a mass audience around 1900. It might have been studied as one more medium of communication which, like books and broadcasting, lends itself to both high and low forms of culture. Instead, academic research from the outset defined film primarily as an art form, seeking to assert its cultural legitimacy amid a predominance of popular narratives, genres, and stars. Accordingly, film studies are best understood as a source, rather than a variant, of media and communication research. Growing out of literary criticism in several national contexts, film studies have remained comparatively segregated, also after the development of a dedicated field of media studies from the mid-twentieth century. This is witnessed in journals and conferences and in separate film and media departments within the same university. In general, humanistic traditions and approaches account for the mainstream of film studies, whereas the mainstream of international media research has been social-scientific, despite increasing input from the humanities. Film scholarship is characterized, in summary, by its aesthetic research questions, its ‘textual’ analyses, and its grand theory (for overview, see Bordwell, Thompson, & Smith, 2016) (for key texts, see Braudy & Cohen, 2016). Before the 1960s, film theory is normally distinguished into two traditions – realism and formalism – as identified by
discourse analysis – Chapter 6, p. 118 reality genres – Chapter 18, p. 377 personal media – Chapter 17, p. 350
linguistic analysis of research discourses – Chapter 14, p. 301
film as art form
44
Klaus Bruhn Jensen
the formalist tradition
montage
Siegfried Kracauer (1960). The formalist or constructivist tradition emphasized the extent to which films literally produce and present one possible world for its spectators. The selection and combination of elements, first, within the single shot and, next, through the montage juxtaposing these elements, amounts to what much humanistic as well as social-scientific theory has referred to as the social construction of reality (P. L. Berger & Luckmann, 1966). The activity of construction can be said to involve the spectators, who are invited to rediscover not only the world, but themselves, in the process of viewing. Amid varied conceptions of film as ‘art’ or ‘language,’ and different interpretations of its psychological and political implications, key figures such as Sergei Eisenstein, Béla Balázs, and Rudolf Arnheim all centered on the productive moment of the montage. For Eisenstein, both a filmmaker and a theorist, the constructivist position further entailed a special responsibility on the part of the individual artist and a specific politics of film: the filmmaker must lead [the spectator to a confrontation with the theme] with his eyes open, exposing to the spectator his means, his mechanism, not merely because this style is preferable to the illusionary realism which is the hallmark of Hollywood but because the film derives its energy from the conscious mental leaps of the spectator. (Andrew, 1976: 63)
Verfremdung
This normative understanding of communication as insight through disruption is familiar from several modern philosophies of art: the modernist aesthetics of ‘making it new,’ the defamiliarization preferred by Russian formalism, Bertolt Brecht’s dramaturgical strategy of Verfremdung (alienation), as well as poststructuralist notions of narrative. poststructuralism – p. 46
Realism was the second main tradition of classic film theory and much filmmaking. Together with André Bazin (1967–71), it was Siegfried Kracauer himself who defined filmic realism. Whereas formalism especially seemed to characterize early and silent films, realism, with its longshots and longer-lasting shots, as well as its moving camera and unedited scenes, appeared dominant in many later works. As suggested by the subtitle of Kracauer’s 1960 volume, “the redemption of physical reality,” realism in the shape of a photographic offprint of reality might be the nature of film, manifesting itself after the medium had matured. Up to this point, most film studies are best described as ‘criticism,’ as a parallel to literary criticism, presenting aesthetic and conceptual analyses of single (and singular) works as a basis of theory development and evaluation, frequently in an essayistic form. From the 1960s onwards, film semiotics developed a much more systematic set of analytical procedures and conceptual frameworks. Reacting against widespread and loose talk about the ‘language’ of film, the central figure of film semiotics, Christian Metz (1974), set out to dismantle this mystifying metaphor. Metz concluded that although film, like television and other visual communication, shares certain categories with other sign systems, film is not a language system (langue) in Saussure’s sense, consisting of minimal visual units with distinctive features that could be recombined as in speech (parole). Instead, Metz went on to apply selected semiotic concepts to various aspects of the film medium, particularly the different types of syntagms (complex sequences of meaning) that can be seen to structure a given film. In some of his later work, Metz (1982) linked up with psychoanalytic currents in film theory, which became central to the discipline during the 1970s, as represented by the influential journal Screen. Taking its lead from Jacques Lacan’s
the realist tradition
film semiotics
Humanistic sources of media research
psychosemiotics: the gaze
reinterpretation of Freud (e.g., Lacan, 1977), a basic assumption of this research was that film is in a special position to reactivate infantile forms of experience and identification in the spectator because of its apparent immediacy and sensuousness. An early and widely influential text by Laura Mulvey (1992/1975) elaborated on the gendered nature of the spectator’s gaze, particularly the male scopophilia (pleasure of looking), which seemed to be inherent in the narrative structure and mode of address of the classical Hollywood film. In such psychosemiotic work as in the great majority of other film studies, the main methodology has been structuralist and other close analyses of films as ‘texts.’ On this basis, researchers have made inferences, sometimes quite far-reaching, about the impact of films on spectators and about their wider political and cultural implications. Film history, by and large, still consists of the sum of scholarly interpretations of main genres and masterpieces, despite the inclusion of cross-cultural and technological perspectives (K. Thompson & Bordwell, 2018). In comparison, research on film production and reception, on institutional frameworks, or on cross-media comparisons has remained a minority interest. Among noteworthy exceptions have been Herbert Gans’s (1957) study of how filmmakers’ views of their audience feed into their films, Bordwell, Staiger, and Thompson’s (1985) comprehensive analysis of the interrelated organizational and textual structures of Hollywood cinema, and a movement advocating the writing of film history as a social history of cultural practices (Maltby, Biltereyst, & Meers, 2011; Stokes & Maltby, 1999, 2004). In recent decades, cognitivism with a biological orientation has been one of the challengers not just to the bulk of previous film studies but to the longer and wider humanistic mainstream. This challenge cognitivism, p. 48
45
concerns the classic humanistic focus on humans as, first and foremost, beings with a consciousness, culture, and history – but humans also have bodies. A related challenge, raised by feminism, has to do with the very definition of ‘humans’ as one species but two genders. A final challenge centers on modernity as a common project of the human species, which might be facilitated by communication. Postmodernism has suggested that communication, after all, cannot sustain that project – and that this might be a good thing.
INTERDISCIPLINARY CHALLENGERS Postmodernism In order to consider the implications of postmodernism, it is important to distinguish three different senses of the general idea (for key texts, see Foster, 1985). First, the term was introduced to refer to an anti-modernist style in various arts. While the style can be found in literary experiments, for instance, by Richard Brautigan and Thomas Pynchon, it was originally associated specifically with architecture. In an influential volume, Robert Venturi and his coauthors suggested that architects should take their inspiration from popular culture, as epitomized by Las Vegas, in order to construct more imaginative buildings and environments around people’s lives (Venturi, Brown, & Izenour, 1972). Precisely the questioning of highlow distinctions has been central to much postmodernist thinking. Second, postmodernist forms of expression in arts and media have been taken by some theorists as indicators of a new historical epoch of postmodernity. In more or less radical versions, commentators have claimed that modernity – specifically the Enlightenment project of achieving general social progress through rationalist science and representative democracy – has ended, or is ending. Such projects have been labeled ‘grand’ narratives, which
postmodernism as an aesthetic style
postmodernity as a historical epoch
46
poststructuralism as a theoretical position
deconstructionism
Klaus Bruhn Jensen could and should be replaced, according to Jean-Francois Lyotard (1984/1979), by ‘little’ narratives. These latter narratives amount to open-ended language games which would, ideally, enable an unending dialogue between equal participants in communication but without guarantees of mutual understanding. Fredric Jameson (1991) went on to argue that postmodern culture has a concrete emancipatory potential and, indeed, that postmodernism represents “the cultural logic of late capitalism.” One of the most extreme views of postmodernity was advanced by Jean Baudrillard (1988), who suggested that the distinction between signs and reality has broken down and that this calls for celebration of a resulting culture of ‘hyperreality.’ Third, poststructuralism amounts to a theoretical articulation of postmodernism. (Another term, deconstructionism, associated especially with US variants of the position, may have become the preferred term but derives from the same seminal texts, such as Derrida [1976/1967].) Their common analytical strategy is to expose internal contradictions in texts and to undermine their stated or apparent intentions. The theoretical premise is that no textual meaning is stable and that genuine insight into either oneself or others is out of the question. Compared to most earlier philosophical and theoretical positions, the poststructuralist agenda is one of radical skepticism and relativism. The aim is not merely to show that knowledge is uncertain or to argue, in positive terms, that it should be obtained by different means – human knowledge as traditionally understood is said to be literally impossible. And yet, poststructuralism has tended to conceive of itself as a progressive position, taking inspiration from critical social theory (Foucault, 1972) and psychoanalysis (Lacan, 1977). A key argument is that any fixation of meaning or knowledge can be seen as a way of exercising definitional power, even committing violence
against the worldviews of others. In many ways, then, poststructuralism reiterates the ideology critique of the 1960–70s, which sought to unmask texts as the carriers of bourgeois ideology (e.g., Barthes, 1973/1957; Negt, 1973; Williamson, 1978). By ‘deconstructing’ dominant discourses, studies might hope to produce resistance and alternatives. As an analytical practice, however, poststructuralism has remained centrally focused on the scholarly interpretation of texts. In media and communication research, poststructuralist studies have examined especially film, television, and other visual texts (for an overview, see Bignell, 2000). A widespread assumption is that images are relatively open to deconstruction and reinterpretation, even though they may tend to fixate audiences in particular subject positions, as also held by the psychosemiotic tradition. In addition, poststructuralism has lent itself, for example, to the study of emerging and experimental genres such as the music video (e.g., Kinder, 1984) and of media formats which are under commercial pressures to innovate, such as advertising and television series (e.g., Caldwell, 1995). More recently, digital media have given rise to debates on whether ‘cyberspace’ might house the kind of decentered discourses and identities that poststructuralism has sought to identify and promote. It should be added that references to postmodernism in cultural theory and media studies have been subject to criticism, especially as a general and underdefined sense of living in contingent ‘postmodern times.’ Particularly with reference to the assumption that we have entered a historical epoch of postmodernity, David Harvey (1989), among others, has argued that ‘postmodern’ culture is more appropriately examined as a specific set of styles and practices which typify a period or stage of modernity. These styles and practices – for example, an cyberspace – Chapter 1, p. 2
ideology critique
47
Humanistic sources of media research aestheticization of politics and a growing pervasiveness of media in everyday life – are perhaps best understood as the outcome of an intensifying but continuous process of modernization.
Feminism
first-wave, second-wave, third-wave, and fourthwave feminism
gender: variable or constituent?
References to ‘man’ as the object of humanistic scholarship became untenable during the same period as media and communication research was taking shape. Humans are distinguished by gender, in addition to ethnicity, class, and cultural practices. Recognizing that biological sex has variable and contestable meanings, anthropology and other social sciences have examined gender as a social and cultural category over the last century (Reinharz, 1992). Since the 1960s, gender studies have been given an explicitly critical inflection, fueled by the women’s liberation movement. It was during these decades that feminism became integral to the humanities (for key texts, see Marks & de Courtivron, 1981; Nicholson, 1997). Feminist media studies emerged as part of this ‘second wave’ of research and activism. (The ‘first’ wave covered the securing of formal gender equality in terms of voting and other human rights.) For second-wave studies, an influential notion of difference feminism (Nicholson, 1997: 3) suggested that gender is not merely a characteristic of individuals (a variable) but a constitutive factor in all social interactions and institutions. In the slogan of the second wave, the personal is political. Feminism has also served as one reminder that the research institution is shaped, in part, by its historical and ideological circumstances and by the lives that scholars live outside the academy. More recent work has referred both to a thirdwave feminism, criticizing a tendency to treat women as one homogeneous group and emphasizing intersecting aspects of race, class, and sexual orientation (Gillis, Howie, & Munford, 2005), and to a fourth-wave feminism enabled by new
forms of expression and interaction on the internet (Munro, 2013). Three varieties of feminist media studies can be identified (for overviews, see Carter, Steiner, & McLaughlin, 2014; Kearney, 2010). The earliest studies focused on images of women, particularly stereotypical representations and their likely effect in socializing both female and male audiences (e.g., Tuchman, Daniels, & Benet, 1978). Such studies tended to take equality between men and women as a neutral norm and as an ideal that might be enforced by legal and professional standards. As such, early studies built on first-wave and liberal feminism emphasizing equal political and economic rights and extended these formal criteria to the domain of media and communication. At issue was the representation of women, not only in the political but in the cultural sense of maintaining a proportional and legitimate presence of women in media and the public sphere as such. Also other humanistic disciplines pursued such a politics of representation (Clifford & Marcus, 1986). In literary studies, one feminist concern was to make visible, or recover, female authors from the past, on the assumption that they would provide alternative images of women, also for the future (Moi, 2002: 41–48). In media studies, the industrial organization of image production appeared to largely cancel gender and other differences between media professionals so that, for instance, more women journalists do not result in different news values (Hanitzsch & Hanusch, 2012). The second type of studies sought to broaden the perspective on why, in the end, images of women and men in the media turn out as they do. According to difference feminism, as noted, gender is a pervasive condition of all individual and social being, affecting the thinking and actions of both women and men. Feminism joins cultural studies in assum cultural studies, p. 51
images of women
politics of representation
difference feminism
48
Klaus Bruhn Jensen ing that culture is a site of struggle in its own right and across social domains: Gender resides in media production, in media texts, as well as in the social uses of media. Certain conceptions of gender, while contestable and contested, are likely to exercise hegemony (Gramsci, 1971), because they are ingrained in predominant media representations and communicative practices. It is this hegemony, accordingly, which has been targeted for critical analysis by much feminist media research. Studies range from examinations of the gendered gaze in visual communication (Mulvey, 1992/1975), to ideology critiques of popular fiction (McRobbie, 1991), to empirical studies of the secret or ambivalent pleasures of women enjoying popular culture (Ang, 1985; Radway, 1984). A third variety of feminism, in comparison, has tended to posit a fundamental difference between women, men, and their characteristic ways of communicating and, indeed, of knowing things in the first place. Drawing on poststructuralism and psychoanalysis, the position has suggested that certain kinds of knowledge are available to women only – a kind of gendered ‘private language’ (Wittgenstein, 1953). Additional arguments have been made to the effect that such unique capacities originate from the specific psychology and/or physiology of the female sex. In an influential work with a deliberately ambiguous title, “This Sex Which Is Not One,” Luce Irigaray (1997/1977) suggested several points – that biological sex and cultural gender have no necessary interrelation, that no woman (or man) has a unified gender, and that the dual shape of the female genitals can be retraced in feminine forms of culture and communication. Women’s modes of interaction, accordingly, might be said to privilege process, dialogue, inclusion, and care. Whereas the latter argument is familiar from other psychological work hegemony, p. 51
(e.g., Gilligan, 1982) and empirically supported in studies of, for instance, internet communication (e.g., Herring, 1999/1996), the grander position might be said to engage at once in biological and epistemological essentialism. Essentializing feminism has been influential in other humanistic work that proposes to produce new insights by blurring the lines between scholarly and poetic forms of expression; philosophical support has been forthcoming in this regard from, among others, Richard Rorty (1991), who aimed to redefine philosophy as story-telling rather than any search for truth. In the field of media and communication studies, the influence of this aspect of feminism has been more limited, even if some accounts of digital media have envisioned new liberating potentials in the form of cyborgs (Haraway, 1991) and a posthuman condition (Hayles, 1999). In debates over methodology and theory of science, the field has witnessed so-called standpoint epistemology, which holds that it is possible, even necessary, to conduct research from gendered and other ‘interested’ standpoints. Feminist theorists, such as Gayatri Spivak, thus have advocated a “strategic essentialism” (Nicholson, 1997: 318) as a historically justified position from which to counter male forms of social oppression that, arguably, follow from masculine epistemologies.
Cognitivism A third challenge to the humanities has come from cognitivism and, more broadly, from natural-scientific conceptions of human communication. Compared to the discursive and historical focus of both feminism and postmodernism, cognitivism draws its theoretical inspiration from ‘hard’ sciences – neurophysiology, cognitive psychology, medicine, and computer science. From the 1950s onwards, these disciplines joined forces standpoint epistemology – Chapter 20, p. 426
essentialism: biological and epistemological
Humanistic sources of media research
cognitive science
natural evolution
in the interdisciplinary field of cognitive science, in part around hopes of developing a general form of artificial intelligence (for overview, see Gardner, 1985). It was particularly from the 1980s that this influence was felt, in both media studies and the wider humanities, in part via the unlikely intervention of film studies. Natural-scientific, biological, and evolutionary perspectives on human communication, including its continuities with (other) animal communication, have long been a niche interest in media studies (for overview, see Cappella, 1996). Also studies of visual arts have been influenced by cognitive science (Solso, 1994). During the 1980–90s, however, film scholars played a special role in reintroducing cognitive theory to the study of visual media, partly overlapping with experimental studies of the psychology of media entertainment (for overview, see Zillmann & Vorderer, 2000). A particularly influential volume was David Bordwell’s Narration in the Fiction Film (Bordwell, 1985), which integrated an information-processing perspective with a structuralist approach to texts and their interpretation. Redeveloping aspects of literary theory, specifically Russian formalism, Bordwell sought to account in detail for the relationship between the discursive structures of film and the viewer’s cognitive activity. In relation to earlier film theory, the cognitivist position was summed up in the title of a stock-taking volume, coedited by Bordwell with Noël Carroll: Post-Theory (Bordwell & Carroll, 1996). The introduction noted that the title was not intended to signal “the end of film theory” as such but to question Theory, defined as “that aggregate of doctrines derived from Lacanian psychoanalysis, Structuralist semiotics, Post-Structuralist literary theory, and variants of Althusserian Marxism” (p. xiii), which had hardened into an orthodoxy of ‘grand’ film theory. The
stated aim of the editors was to promote pluralism in the choice of both theoretical frameworks and analytical procedures. Moreover, the contributors advocated a return to middle-range and empirical work informed by concrete research questions, including economic and historical studies. In effect, the volume denounced the contemporary psychoanalytic mainstream and sought to advance cognitivism, which was said to allow for several articulations – by polemical contrast to a monolithic psychoanalysis (p. xvi). Complementing early cognitivist approaches to feature film viewing as a form of puzzle-solving, later studies have gone on to examine other genres, such as documentary (Plantinga, 1997), and to develop typologies of the basic human emotions associated with visual communication (Grodal, 1997, 2009). Situated within film studies, however, this work has mostly remained divorced from thematically related forms of audience research, for example, on readers’ and viewers’ recall of information as presented in both print and audiovisual media. More importantly, the analytical focus has remained squarely on the film text and its appeals to the spectator. It is perhaps ironic that an approach which derives legitimacy from an emphatically experimental tradition of science should still be practiced mostly by solitary scholars scrutinizing texts. The ‘findings’ – or rather readings – have mostly been the outcome of a methodological business-asusual, relying on narratological and hermeneutic procedures resembling those of semiotics before the advent of empirical reception studies. The far-reaching inferences that some cognitivist studies have made regarding the nature and impact of media experience are explained, in part, by the claim of cognitive science to account for universal aspects of human consciousness
Russian formalism, p. 41
studies of media recall – Chapter 8, p. 163
film studies, p. 43
empirical reception studies – Chapter 10
49
50
Klaus Bruhn Jensen across individuals, cultures, and historical periods. Within the history of film studies, cognitivist theory can be understood as a case of the pendulum swinging from a subjectivist to an objectivist pole. In a future perspective, one challenge is how to integrate insights concerning the evolutionary and biological preconditions of human communication into the broader field of media and communication research. To one side, cognitivism interfaces with semiotics (e.g., Buckland, 2000) – the understanding of human cognition and social interaction as necessarily mediated in signs. To the other side, cognitivist film studies overlap, as indicated, with a cumulative body of experimental work on media uses and effects from psychological and social-scientific perspectives (e.g., Bryant & Oliver, 2009; Messaris, 1994; Nabi & Oliver, 2009; Reeves & Nass, 1996). Digital media invite further consideration of the potentials of such integration. Computers – originally of the non-networked variety – provided the key metaphor for a general cognitive science about humans as well as other communicating entities. Humans are unique media, even as they extend themselves in other degrees of media. At the same time, computer-mediated communication calls for different analytical strategies than the matching of single films and other media works with general cognitive frames or schemata in either textual or experimental studies. The interfaces of communication have become more distributed and differentiated; so must research methodologies. Cognitivism, nevertheless, has reminded research that human consciousness and communication are embodied – they occur in the flesh (Lakoff & Johnson, 1999). As suggested by one of the sources of cognitive science – phenomenology – bodies
are not only something that humans have but something we are (Merleau-Ponty, 1962/1945: 174). Natural conditions, like technological infrastructures, circumscribe culture and society; they determine communication in the first instance. So far, however, cognitivist communication studies have tended to give priority to the way in which humans carry “the body in the mind” (Johnson, 1987) – metaphors and concepts that arise from our bodily orientation in time and space – above the ways in which we, simultaneously, carry society and history in the mind. In media and communication research, cognitivism represents a third academic culture of natural science (Brockman, 1995) in addition to the two main sources of humanities and social sciences. In a longer historical perspective, C. P. Snow (1964) had identified an intellectual divide between ‘hard’ sciences and ‘soft’ arts within the academy. This divide reproduced itself in media studies in debates between hard social sciences and soft humanities. Cognitivism, while reiterating issues from those debates, has helped to reintroduce research questions concerning the material conditions of human communication – bodies, technologies, and their interrelations. Humans communicate for a meaningful existence, and for their lives. Communication is constitutive of both humanity and society.
media of the first degree – Chapter 1, p. 5 frames and schemata – Chapter 8, p. 169
determination in the first instance – Chapter 1, p. 2
phenomenology, p. 33
two cultures of research – Chapter 20, p. 417
PRAGMATIC AND DIGITAL TURNS Following previous linguistic and communicative turns, the humanities have undertaken both a pragmatic turn, in response to changing institutional circumstances, and a digital turn, in response to the digitalization of communication as well as scholarship. The infrastructural position of the humanities in society and the academy has been changing – over the course
51
Humanistic sources of media research
cultural studies
of two centuries and in the post-1945 period. During the formation of the field of media and communication research, the humanities, to a degree, have been reworking themselves – from the preservation and dissemination of cultural tradition, and the training of its keepers for employment in schools, museums, and archives, toward a remediation of tradition and the education of practitioners for an expanded range of cultural and communicative professions. While the wider institutional shift is still ongoing, its theoretical and methodological implications can be summarized with reference to the cultural-studies tradition. A hybrid of humanistic and socialscientific perspectives, cultural studies has contributed, not least, to a humanistic inflection of research questions and analytical approaches in media and communication research (for overview, see During, 2007; Grossberg, Nelson, & Treichler, 1992; Hartley & Pearson, 2000; P. Smith, 2011). Although researchers in different cultural settings, predictably, have had varying focal points, the British type of cultural studies, as associated with the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (closed 2002), has been particularly influential (e.g., S. Hall, Hobson, Lowe, & Willis, 1980). From the 1970s, it established itself as an identifiable ‘school,’ consolidating itself in the United States, Australia, Europe, and elsewhere, and may even be considered the humanistic substream within international media studies. The distinctive profile of cultural studies as a tradition that draws at once on critical theories and interpretive methodologies was captured in an overview article by Stuart Hall (1980), himself a seminal figure in the school (Morley & Chen, 1996). Hall noted that two paradigms came together in cultural studies (suggesting that paradigms, as intro-
duced by Kuhn [1970], may not be as incommensurable as some commentators have assumed). On the one hand, structuralism emphasizes the relative determination of consciousness and communication by economic, political, and other social frameworks. Hall traced this emphasis particularly to Althusser (1977/1965) and Lévi-Strauss (1963/1958), in addition to the legacy of Karl Marx. On the other hand, culturalism insists that culture is a practice with a considerable degree of autonomy and a site of important social struggles in both public and personal contexts. In this regard, the inspiration for cultural studies came, not least, from UK historians and literary scholars (Hoggart, 1957; E. P. Thompson, 1963; Williams, 1975/1958), who help to account for the special British connection in international cultural studies. For Hall and others, the two paradigms were joined in the work of Antonio Gramsci (1971), whose concept of hegemony – a dominant range of worldviews that serve to legitimate and reinforce the status quo – could accommodate both structure and agency: social determination and cultural autonomy. One critique of cultural studies has addressed its methodologies, specifically the overwhelming majority of qualitative studies. While drawing its primary inspiration from semiotics and hermeneutics, the tradition would seem to invite further use of quantitative methodologies, especially if it is to live up to its critical aims of facilitating social change (Lewis, 1997). A second, related point has to do with the outcome of empirical research: What are the actual findings of cultural studies and their practical relevance? Meaghan Morris (1990), for one, worried about a banality of cultural studies – that study after exploratory study might seem to reaffirm the insight that cultural practices are complex and diverse, to such an extent that their consequences for issues
remediation – Chapter 10, p. 195 paradigms – Chapter 16, p. 330
structuralism – p. 42
culturalism
hegemony
52
Klaus Bruhn Jensen of power, pleasure, or pain cannot be predicted or explained in any concrete fashion. A third debate has considered a tendency for research to focus on Western practices and problems, calling for an internationalization of cultural studies (Abbas & Erni, 2005). Compared to central conceptual and normative tenets of the longer humanistic tradition, however, cultural studies has signaled a significant reorientation – from fine arts to multiple cultures and from texts and other artifacts to practices and processes through which media make a difference in the lives of individuals and societies. The reorientation suggests the understanding that media are not merely, or even primarily, means of representation and sources of evidence about the past; media are resources, at once material and discursive, that enter into the shaping of both present and future. The communicative turn entailed a shift from an understanding of language (and other media) as formal structures to a focus on their uses in social interaction; the pragmatic turn, further, implies that communication is itself a form of action, one that anticipates other forms of action, from the micro to the macro levels of society. This position has been given a name in speech-act theory (Austin, 1962; Searle, 1969): In speaking, individuals and, by extension, collectives act through the institutions and practices of communication that they invent and refashion. In sum, cultural studies can be seen to subscribe to three premises concerning media, communication, and culture, which are shared, to varying degrees, by other contemporary humanistic scholarship:
individual consciousness as well as social institutions and practices as texts. • A secular notion of culture. Culture is now commonly said to refer to both products and processes of meaning: any vehicle or practice of meaningful expression and interaction, as recognized by participants themselves. As such, culture has become doubly secular, having no divine origin or purpose and abiding by no absolute or timeless standard. • A performative concept of communication. As testified by humanistic traditions since classical rhetoric, communication is a distinctive form of action that allows humans to engage in doubt and delay concerning what to do next. Modern information and communication technologies have enhanced the capacity of individuals and collectives to interact and to act at a distance. Since around 2000, a reorientation of the humanities has been stimulated further by the broad and deep digitalization of scientific and other social infrastructures, as captured in a terminology of digital humanities (for overview, see Berry, 2012; Berry & Fagerjord, 2017). For one thing, computational methods have provided new means of analyzing and visualizing linguistic, literary, and historical materials (e.g., Leetaru, 2011; Michel et al., 2010). For another thing, with the computer as a generic medium of representation and interaction, classic dividing lines between print and audiovisual media and genres are also called into question for purposes of theory development. Increasingly, the texts at the center of the humanities lend themselves to conceptualization and examination as information and data.
• A general category of texts. Beyond artworks and historical sources, the humanities have come to address, on the one hand, popular and audiovisual media and, on the other hand,
definitions of culture – Chapter 11, p. 214
speech-act theory – Chapter 1, p. 15
the digital computer as meta-medium – Chapter 1, p. 8
digital humanities
Humanistic sources of media research Digitalization calls for renewed reflection on the distinction between found and made data (Jensen, 2012b). Whereas the humanities have traditionally relied on found data – sources, writings, artifacts – the social sciences, to a significant extent, make the data they require through interviewing, observation, and other instruments of data collection. In digital systems, such differences are shifted and reconfigured. On the one hand, when analog evidence is digitized, the texture and form of the objects of analysis, historical and contemporary, are altered. On the other hand, born-digital materials, such as social-media interactions, exhibit many aspects commonly associated with interviewing and observation but lend themselves to hermeneutic, semiotic, and other humanistic forms of analysis. Once again, a medium – or meta-medium – conditions and frames the activity of research interpreting the human condition. The idea of digital humanities is still in the process of being articulated and assessed (Gold & Klein, 2018). For some
found and made data – Chapter 16, p. 334
scholars, it offers one more analytical repertoire and a specialization within the longer and broader domain of the humanities. For others, digital humanities represents a new normal, addressing a different cultural infrastructure and acknowledging change of a scale and scope that may be comparable to the coming of literate culture in classical Greece (Havelock, 1963) and of print culture from the Renaissance and into modernity (Eisenstein, 1979). Across such positions, the technologies and institutions of digitalization present an opportunity for renewed dialogue about the humanities as one of the sources media and communication research. All the media of humanity are media of the humanities. The pragmatic and digital turns of the humanities have brought its disciplines into closer contact with anthropology, sociology, and other social sciences, as witnessed in the field of media and communication research. The contribution of the social sciences to the field is the subject of Chapter 3.
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The social-scientific sources of media and communication research Michael Meyen
• the emergence of social sciences as such • social-scientific disciplines feeding into the field of media and communication research • the cross-Atlantic roots of the field and the US wartime propaganda research effort as its single most important catalyst • the shift to an empirical social-scientific discipline in response to legitimacy crises • the current configuration of a US-centered academic field
AN AMERICANIZED FIELD WITH EUROPEAN AND POLICY ROOTS Media and communication research is both a latecomer to the social sciences and a product of political and economic necessities (Meyen, 2015). In the first half of the twentieth century, other social science disciplines such as sociology, economics, anthropology, psychology, and political science were born, but not communication studies (Abbott, 2001). The formation of the discipline as a fast-growing and US-centered academic enterprise took, first, World War II with its interdisciplinary work on propaganda, which was clearly conditioned by Rockefeller Foundation support and by military, CIA, and State Department funding (Pooley, 2008), and, next, the search for effective propaganda designs in the early Cold War sponsored by the very same agents (Simpson, 1994; Glander, 2000). In addition, there was a growing interest both within the media industry and among students so
that “communication research began to be recognized as a distinct academic field” (Craig, 2008: 676). In the case of German Publizistikwissenschaft, legitimacy crises were solved by a shift from a humanistic to an empirical social science pleading for the use of quantitative social-scientific methods (Löblich, 2007). Furthermore, the development of the field has been inseparably linked to the history of US universities. First, the strong emphasis on quantitative research, including statistical methods and sophisticated data analysis, was invented precisely there. Second, communication research made in the United States was exported worldwide. To put it differently, notably in US-affiliated countries like Germany, Scandinavia, the Netherlands, Israel, South Korea, Australia, Canada, and Singapore, national communication fields became Americanized, especially via International Communication Association Fellows serving as role models for how to gain scientific capital (Wiedemann & Meyen, 2016).
Social-scientific sources However, the social-scientific roots of communication studies extend all the way back to the formation of the contemporary social order in the late 19th century, including large business corporations, nation-states, governments struggling to secure public support, huge military operations, and modern mass media (Murdock, 2002). Looking back at those times and early twentieth-century research, this chapter shows, in a first step, that the media and communication field is much older than the academic discipline we know today and is by no means an invention which comes out of the United States only. Quite to the contrary, there were European forerunners. To name just two, Karl Bücher (1847–1930) founded the discipline’s very first socialscientific university department in Germany (Wiedemann, Meyen, & Lacasa-Mas, 2018), and the Austrian Paul Felix Lazarsfeld (1901–1978) conducted administrative radio listener surveys in Vienna in the early 1930s (Jeřábek, 2017: 31; Morrison, 2008) and then became one of the figures who could be called ‘founding fathers’ of social-scientific communication research made in the United States after he had to flee from the Nazis (Pooley, 2008: 46; Rogers, 1994; Schramm, 1980). Before the institutionalization of communication as an academic discipline in the United States from the 1960s onwards, on both sides of the Atlantic, media and communication research was a very interdisciplinary area. Therefore, its social-scientific sources can be traced by looking at the origins of the social sciences as such and the histories of neighboring disciplines like economy, sociology, psychology, political science, and even natural and biological sciences (WahlJorgensen, 2004: 551; see also Abbott, 2001; Sproule, 2008). For example, Lazarsfeld was a trained mathematician who brought his statistical know-how to psychology, pedagogy, market, and rather field and/or discipline – Chapter 20, p. 417
politically motivated research, first while living in Vienna and then, in combining these experiences and talents, to the emerging field of communication in the United States (Eid, 2004). Karl Bücher, to take a purely European figure, was already a world-famous economist using social-scientific and elaborated statistical methods when he decided to go for an academic education and training program in journalism at the University of Leipzig after his official retirement from the very same university. It constitutes an amazing parallel with the flourishing of media and communication research in the United States after Germany’s invasion of Poland in 1939 and, later on, in the early stages of the Cold War (Pooley, 2008), that Bücher could become a successful founder because he convinced political decision-makers by stating an alleged failure of the German press during World War I (Wiedemann et al., 2018). After World War II, quite the same linkage between political interests and the development of media and communication research could be observed in other European countries (Averbeck, 2016; Wiedemann et al., 2018). In Belgium, for example, where the Belgian Press Union had already pushed for the formation of communication studies in Flanders during the 1920s, the concern for the social impact of the press and the urge to understand the use of media for propaganda purposes were the main arguments advanced by Nabor Devolder in order to justify the launch of a discipline that would have the public function of journalism and ethical premises at its core (Van den Bulck & Van den Bulck, 2016: 99). In Eastern Europe, similarly, before the Berlin Wall came down, the close relationship between politics, academic media, and communication research as well as journalism training was obvious (Meyen & Wiedemann, 2017). As the title of this chapter suggests, both the name and the status of the field are contested. All over the world, media
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Michael Meyen and communication research remains torn between social sciences and humanities and is highly diverse in methods, theories, and objects of study (Averbeck, 2008; Craig, 2008). Furthermore, even some of the most prominent figures of the field, such as Byron Reeves from Stanford University, view communication “very much as a subject and not as a discipline like psychology or biology” to this very day (Reeves, 2012: 1781). For all these reasons, the question continues to be key today whether media and communication research is already (or still) a discipline rather than “one of the great crossroads where many pass but few tarry” – as Wilbur Schramm (1959: 8) put it in response to Bernard Berelson’s early pronouncement of the death of the field in a famous Public Opinion Quarterly debate some 60 years ago, when this academic enterprise had just been born (Wahl-Jorgensen, 2004). Indications of the legitimation and identity problems of the field include the notions of an “academic Taiwan” (claiming all of China as its own [Peters, 1986]), or, in similarly unfavorable terms, of a stepchild that is tolerated by university administrators only because media and communication research helps pay the bill for the departments they really care about (Meyen, 2012). However, as this chapter shows in its third step, after looking in a second step at the emergence of the field from the late 1930s to the early 1960s, for social-scientific media and communication scholars, the United States and the (still) US-dominated International Communication Association remain the most important points of reference today (Wiedemann & Meyen, 2016). To sum up the three main elements of the chapter’s reasoning: First, the field has roots, partly intertwined, on both sides of the Atlantic. Second, in each setting, communication research was shaped, to a considerable degree, by supervening social necessities. Third, also in each setting, the field has struggled for, and gained, academic legitimacy, thus partly freeing
itself of immediate social necessities and engaging in internal struggles over the meaning of communication research itself. The chapter starts with a section on Karl Bücher, who, like no other European scholar, embodies the foundational history of the field and its ongoing adaptation to an academic logic. Focusing on the other side of the Atlantic, the following section reveals parallels and entanglements and, in doing so, the reasons Paul Felix Lazarsfeld could become such a symbolic instance of communication research in both Europe and the United States.
KARL BÜCHER AND THE DISCIPLINE’S SOCIAL-SCIENTIFIC ORIENTATION The invention of the social sciences In Europe as well as in the United States, the social sciences emerged as a product of both capitalist modes of production and the work of social reformers who were seeking to understand and improve a rapidly changing society (Clary, 2008: 987; Ross, 1991). Against the backdrop of the social problems caused by the conflict of labor and capital, the rejection of the methods of fact-free ‘speculation’ and endless deductive reasoning is part of the history of this new type of academic inquiry (Young, 2009: 94). Knowing about the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science in Britain (founded in 1857 [Goldman, 2002]) and statistical methods of investigation, a group of Boston-based social reformers launched the American Social Science Association in 1865. The agendas of both organizations were quite similar and targeted public health, education, jurisprudence, pauperism, and political economy in general (Clary, 2008: 987). In Germany, to take a third example, the Verein für Socialpolitik (Association for Social Policy), established in 1873, started modernization – Chapter 11, p. 216
Social-scientific sources
Max Weber
newspaper science
empirical data
collecting surveys on working and living conditions which, as early as the late nineteenth century, included questions concerning newspaper reading (Kutsch, 1998). Addressing the very first meeting of the German Sociological Association in 1910, Max Weber, who was involved in a Verein für Socialpolitik study on farm workers in 1892 and then quickly became one of the leading German sociologists, suggested a large-scale research program covering the interplay of modern mass media and society (Hardt, 1979: 174–182; Murdock, 2002: 49). Unfortunately, Weber’s program existed only on paper and was never fully converted into fieldwork. In addition, like American sociologists, his German contemporaries and their successors abandoned mass communication research (Kutsch, 1988; Pooley & Katz, 2008). Due to these particular circumstances, Karl Bücher could become the institutional founder of Zeitungswissenschaft (newspaper science, the early German term for the discipline of media and communication research). During the first decade of the twentieth century, Bücher was recognized as one of the leading protagonists in the field of economics, both in the German Reich and abroad (Wiedemann et al., 2018). His reputation as a world-famous scholar attracted numerous students from all over the world, including the later socialist politicians Friedrich Stampfer and Hermann Duncker, as well as the later ministers of foreign affairs Gustav Stresemann and Michail Iwanowitsch Tereschtschenko. As an economist, Karl Bücher belonged to the so-called Historical School. To understand his work on press and journalism, and to see the parallels to the early social science associations in Britain and the United States, three points seem to be important in this context. First of all, if one follows the reasoning of the Historical School that every development depends on time and space, statements about reality need to be rooted in empirical data coming out
of either historical research or one’s own surveying of contemporary developments. Within this school, economics was seen as a social science which should establish general laws via in-depth studies. Second, the German Historical School, with its focus on community, was normative. This orientation included both public criticism and advice offered to political and economic actors. Third, and closely linked to the second point, state and government played important roles in the school’s conception of economy and society. To put it differently: the well-being of the community cannot be guaranteed by the market. All these points can be found in Karl Bücher’s thinking on newspapers and public opinion, as well as in his conception of the University of Leipzig department of Zeitungskunde (‘newspaper education’ and not yet ‘newspaper science’). From the beginning of his academic career, press and journalism were part of his writing and teaching. In Basel, Switzerland, as early as 1884, he started regular lectures on this topic, which he continued at the various places his subsequent career took him. At the very same time, Bücher developed a press statistics paradigm which inspired major follow-up studies (Kutsch, 2002: 17). In addition, he was a pioneer of profession-oriented academic education and training. Already in his Rektoratsrede (directorate speech) to the University of Leipzig on 31 October 1903, he named journalism as one of the socially highly relevant fields which should be added to the canon of academic disciplines. In this speech, in line with the social reformers who began social-scientific research in Britain and the United States, Bücher exhorted students to serve the common good rather than mammon (Kutsch, 2002: 24–25).
The first German communication department in Leipzig When Bücher finally proposed the foundation of the Leipzig Zeitungskunde
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normative orientation
profession- oriented education
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Michael Meyen department in 1915, he was almost 70 and ready to retire. These conditions lowered the resistance of established academic disciplines against the new field of research and teaching. Karl Bücher did not want a professorship but an old man’s toy. He had a donor (the Leipzig publisher Edgar Herfurth, an admirer of Joseph Pulitzer) and new patriotic arguments drawn from the war experience. According to Bücher, the German press had failed during the first battle years of World War I. He criticized the sensational rather than factual coverage and claimed to be sure that this was the major reason for the animosity toward Germany in the neutral countries. In his submission to the Saxon ministry of education and cultural affairs, Bücher proposed academic education and training of journalists as a way out of the current low level of the press. Karl Bücher’s curriculum included disciplinary studies in the affiliated field of coverage (for economic editors, for example, economy, statistics, administration, law, and technology), lectures on press and journalism based on his own model of scholarship, and practical training done by practitioners (Wiedemann et al., 2018). Therefore, at least at the level of teaching and supervising, Bücher’s department was very interdisciplinary. Beginning in 1916 with Gerhard Muser’s German press statistic, Karl Bücher supervised all together 24 dissertations in Zeitungskunde within ten years. Due to the war and the subsequent economic crisis, including inflation that did not end until November 1923, the majority of these pieces were not printed and got lost for citation. Nevertheless, for two reasons, that early research about press and journalism is interesting. First, only 13 of the 24 doctoral students became journalists. Therefore, with regard to the 5,000 journalists working in Germany at the time, the stated aim of improvement via academic education proved impossible to achieve. Instead of raising the quality of journalism, secondly and more
importantly, Karl Bücher’s doctoral students created a first European model of media and communication research. As was to be expected given the academic work of their supervisor, all dissertations were based on social-scientific methods (mostly surveys and statistics but also content analyses), historical sources, or combinations of the two approaches. It is not surprising, then, that many of these works contain reform proposals and policy recommendations (Wiedemann et al., 2018). Although there is no conclusive evidence that Karl Bücher wanted to found a new discipline, his performance at the Leipzig department was not only about enhancing professional knowledge. In light of the skepticism of the established disciplines toward a new practice-oriented field of research and teaching in the area of press and journalism, Bücher tried to increase the reputation of Zeitungs kunde by following an academic logic. This included, among other things, his successful struggle for the right to award doctorates and his supervising two dozen empirical dissertations using the social-scientific research methods and designs available at the time. In these key respects, Bücher predefined the focus of the later discipline. In other words, the legacy of Bücher as a pioneer in European media and communication research is his role as an institution-builder. The structural model he created in Leipzig was mimicked around the continent after World War II and therefore can be considered a kind of hidden substrate of the organizational form of the field which is still influential today (Wiedemann et al., 2018: 23–25).
EUROPEAN SUCCESSORS Most notably, Bücher’s model included arguing for the societal need for an academic discipline that deals with matters of communication and public opinion (in light of war propaganda,
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Social-scientific sources
intellectual emancipation via social- scientific approaches
West Germany
UNESCO
social movements, changing political systems, or developments in the media landscape). However, due to the strain on resources, the emphasis on practical training, and the threat of co-optation by commercial interests, the status of the field in the struggle for scientific capital at universities remained contested all over Europe (Wiedemann et al., 2018: 24). Therefore, in most European countries, media and communication research finally followed the way of intellectual emancipation via social-scientific approaches – a process during which the university transformed the invader discipline in its own image over time. The career of the journalist Walter Hagemann (1900–1964) at the University of Münster in post-World War II West Germany is testament to this. As was already the case in Karl Bücher’s Leipzig Zeitungskunde department, when he started out right after the war, Hagemann had political tailwind. Filled by the zeal to equip the next generation with the necessary intellectual and professional knowledge, Hagemann pleaded for the education of journalists at universities, since the “desperate situation of public life” needed “young people standing up for a better, real democratic, and ambitious journalism” (Hagemann, 1947: 1). His commitment to preparing his students for future professions in the public sphere had a strong ally: UNESCO’s Clearing House within the Department of Mass Communication, which intervened in the debate on the media’s moral significance in industrial societies. In 1956, UNESCO organized an international expert meeting in Paris where the promotion of press and mass media research was recommended, referring also to the role of universities as providers of facilities for journalism education and training (Meyen, 2016; Wiedemann et al., 2018). Although Walter Hagemann at Münster did not give up traditional humanistic approaches and historical perspectives (in particular on the press and public-opinion steering during
the Third Reich), his performance was, above all, marked by an effort to increase the academic and societal reputation of the discipline. Therefore, Hagemann’s research program was aimed to reconnect the Publizistikwissenschaft (the German post-war follow-up to Zeitungswissenschaft) to neighboring social sciences (in fact, in particular, sociological perspectives got lost during the Third Reich [Averbeck, 2001]) and to demonstrate the social relevance of the discipline. Ten years before Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann finally converted West German media and communication research into a social-scientific discipline beginning in the 1960s (Löblich, 2007), Hagemann already led a number of empirical studies, mostly structural and content analyses of the daily and magazine press, surveys of journalists and audiences, and a press statistic whose results entailed a very critical assessment of concentration processes (Wiedemann, 2016). To put it differently, during the institutionalization of the European field after World War II, only a shift to strategies of academic legitimation, including social-scientific quality criteria, was adequate for getting recognition as a distinct disciplinary field. The exceptions include journalism study in Eastern Europe rooted in Marxist-Leninist traditions (Meyen & Wiedemann, 2017), British cultural studies with its focus on power (Lodge, 2016), the post-semiotic or semio-pragmatic design of the discipline in France (Averbeck, 2013), and the Southern European conception of media and communication research as primarily a technical, skills- or service-oriented discipline (Fernández-Quijida & Masip, 2013). UNESCO could claim to be the driving force behind the founding of the International Association for Mass Communication Research (IAMCR) in 1957 – the first international organization of the field cultural studies – Chapter 2, p. 51
IAMCR
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Michael Meyen
United Kingdom
France
aiming to cross East-West and NorthSouth divides, which at its outset was strongly dominated by European scholars from both sides of the Iron Curtain and remained shaped by political interests until the end of the Cold War (Meyen, 2014). However, the further institutional development and growth of European communication study had to wait one more decade, until the wide diffusion of mass media triggered needs for applied knowledge and well-trained students on behalf of the media industry and for public debate on the societal consequences of commercial media products (Wiedemann et al., 2018). In the United Kingdom, media and communication research was not rooted in newspaper studies but shaped by diverging disciplinary backgrounds. In fact, besides the University of Birmingham’s Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies founded by Richard Hoggart in 1964, the establishment of the Centre for Mass Communication Research at Leicester by James Halloran in 1966 and Jay Blumler’s launch of the Centre for Television Research at Leeds in 1968 were closely linked to broadcasting institutions. Nevertheless, early researchers shared a “concern with the social change taking place in Britain in the 1960s and 1970s,” focusing particularly on what effect “the media or more broadly popular culture had on society” (Noonan & Lohmeier, 2016: 36; see also Blumler, 2012). As for France, the Sciences de l’information et de la communication (SIC) were finally accepted as an academic discipline in 1975, a key factor of its institutionalization being the political target of modernizing French universities for the so-called ‘information society.’ More specifically, in light of the huge modernization processes after 1968 and the growing media sector, the SIC were put in charge of implementing educational programs oriented toward the communication professions and therefore had to fulfill a practical aim for society (Averbeck, 2008).
UNITED STATES: INTERDISCIPLINARY AND WAR-DRIVEN WORK ON PROPAGANDA Roots and intellectual sources Looking back at the 1920s and 1930s, as in the case of Germany’s very first academic journalism training department at the University of Leipzig, media and communication research was a field of interdisciplinary approaches and collaboration internationally, too. In the rich and growing body of literature on the field’s origins, the University of Chicago has pride of place. It was precisely here that, for example, Robert E. Park (1864–1944), a former journalist and leading figure of the Chicago School of Sociology; the political scientist Harold D. Lasswell (1902– 1978); and the librarian Douglas Waples (1893–1978) started studying public opinion and communication. European influences included, among others, Karl Bücher, his mentor Albert Schäffle (1831– 1903), French psychologists Gabriel Tarde (1843–1904) and Gustave Le Bon (1841–1931), British historian James Bryce (1838–1922), and his compatriot Graham Wallas (1858–1932), who was a social reformer (Hardt, 1979; Pooley & Katz, 2008: 767–768; Wahl-Jorgensen, 2004: 550–551). As Pooley and Katz (2008: 768) put it, all of these scholars “were struggling, often in response to one another, to make sense of the new mass press and its barons, the apparent suggestibility of the Crowds, and the consequences of all this for social control.” Looking at the United States only, Jesse G. Delia (1987: 22–23) mentioned three major sources of influence on the development of social-scientific media and communication research. According to Delia, first, this field of inquiry “has largely (though not exclusively) been identified with the study of the media of mass communication” such as newspapers and magazines, silent motion pictures, radio broadcasting, talking movies,
the Chicago School
Social-scientific sources
sociology
and television. Much of that research would have reflected “commercial or regulatory interests.” Closely connected to this is Delia’s second point, “the concern with the role of public communication in social and political life,” which was intensified during public controversies on new media developments. Last but not least, third, “issues of professional status and authority in disciplines and within groups of research clients have shaped research styles and agendas.” As part of “the evolution of professional practices within and across the social science disciplines,” in the United States beginning as early as the 1920s, “reform-focused research has declined” and “has been brought progressively under the control of disciplinary canons of research practice.” Delia’s prime example of this was academic sociology, which, by the end of the 1920s, was a discipline committed to empirical social science. Moreover, the discipline was rapidly evolving in the direction of canons of science that placed a premium on standard methods (a limited set of research designs, random sampling, standardized measurement procedures, quantification, and statistical analysis). (Delia, 1987: 34)
speech communication
Interestingly enough, English departments at US universities, to name just one more discipline that fed into the interdisciplinary field of early social-scientific media and communication research, also were on their way toward quantitative techniques. This development “stimulated many speech professors to pursue quantitative analysis of various rhetorical devices and stylistic features of speeches” (Delia, 1987: 27).
Paul Felix Lazarsfeld and the transAtlantic connections At about the same time, on the other side of the Atlantic, from the early 1920s
onwards, Paul Felix Lazarsfeld started to develop the capabilities and talents which made him the social scientist who, besides the already-mentioned Harold Lasswell and the psychologists Kurt Lewin and Carl Hovland, would become part of the four ‘founding fathers’ myth that populated the disciplinary memory of communication research in the United States for quite a long time (Pooley, 2008: 45–46). In post-World War I Vienna, as a Jewish Marxist, Lazarsfeld was an outsider. Back then, even the Austrian social democrats practiced a kind of implicit numerus clausus which excluded Jews from leadership positions (Fleck, 2007). To put it simply, in order to build a career, Lazarsfeld had to create the field where he could be successful later. It is easy to recognize the parallels between his engagement in the socialist youth and student’s movement and the later social scientist. Looking back on those days, Lazarsfeld wrote that he was already interested in psychological research on the impact of propaganda. In addition, he worked as an educator in youth camps and promoted parents’ media literacy. In his memoirs, Lazarsfeld identified a link between these experiences and both an early research agenda including the living conditions of young workers and social issues and the structure and organization of the research institutes which he later headed (Lazarsfeld, 1969). The study Die Arbeitslosen von Marienthal (The Unemployed of Marienthal), which was rooted in interdisciplinary research as well as in voluntary team work, and which made him known to social scientists for the first time, can still be seen as a milestone in the history of the social sciences (Jahoda, Lazarsfeld, & Zeisel, 2002 [1933]; see Fleck, 2015: 637–638). However, Lazarsfeld’s rise into the hall of fame of US media and communication research is based on four other pillars. First, still in Vienna, Lazarsfeld said goodbye to Marxism (Fleck, 1990: 65–67). In exile and far away from his milieu of origin, then, it was an easy task not to go on
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Michael Meyen with the revolutionary struggle. Second, Lazarsfeld came to the United States as a skilled and trained market researcher with state-of-the-art statistical know-how. Here, his publications on questionnaires, for example, were much more successful than his attempts to continue with the Marienthal research model, which had combined approaches from different disciplines and various modes of data collection (Fleck, 2015: 638). One aspect of the market researcher Lazarsfeld leaving Europe was, third, his management experience. He was used to motivating young, ambitious (often female) researchers and to searching for commercial and public contracts that fitted his abilities best. So, he could become one of the pioneers of applied research at US universities. Last but not least, one of his references was a radio listener survey conducted in Vienna in 1931/32 but not published until 1996 (Mark, 1996). For this study on the eve of the invention of representative sampling techniques by George Gallup in the mid-1930s, 36,000 returned questionnaires were evaluated in terms of listening habits, program preferences, and class differences. Paul Felix Lazarsfeld was not the only European who experimented with media usage surveys before World War II. In Germany alone, at about the same time, several similar attempts were made in a more academic environment. Emilie Altenloh’s dissertation on the sociology of cinema from 1914, for example, was based on over a thousand questionnaires completed by moviegoers (Altenloh, 2001). Altenloh combined this source with personal observations and what we would call guideline interviews today (Murdock, 2002: 50). At the University of Berlin, to name a second study, around 100,000 young people all over Germany were asked about their reading and listening habits by Hans Amandus Münster (1932). However, the head of the study was not really satisfied. representative sampling – Chapter 13, p. 256
He knew that even with an enormous number of respondents, no statement can be made as to the general nature of the results (Münster, 1932: 58).
World War II and its consequences for the shape of the field Nonetheless, while Münster, as an early member of the National Socialist (NS) party, was promoted to full professorship at the University of Leipzig by the NS regime and could improve his empirical approach during this time, from the mid1930s onwards, the heart of social-scientific media and communication research was beating in the United States, and Paul Felix Lazarsfeld became one of its most important pacesetters. This Handbook entry does not seem to be the right place to retell the whole story of how, for example, John Marshall and the Rockefeller Foundation got interested first in educational broadcasting research in the late 1920s and, after funding Lazarsfeld’s Office of Radio Research (later the Bureau of Applied Social Research at Columbia University) in 1936, in the government propaganda campaigns of the war (Buxton, 1994; Pooley, 2008: 49–54; Sproule, 2008). As Jefferson Pooley detailed, “with the rapid Nazi conquest of continental Europe as backdrop,” Marshall in 1939 organized a “Communications Seminar” that would decisively shape the future development of the field. First of all, right at the moment when the United States needed to distinguish between good and bad forms of persuasion, the “communications” label itself was “put forward as a deliberate alternative” to the propaganda analysis tradition. Second, many of the seminar participants, including Lazarsfeld and Lasswell, “would go on to leading roles in the government’s wartime propaganda activities.” Third, the seminar defined “the study of mass communications in largely quantitative terms, and identified the question of media effects as its driving problem” (Pooley, 2008: 51–52).
Rockefeller Foundation
Bureau of Applied Social Research
Social-scientific sources As Karin Wahl-Jorgensen (2004: 551) put it: The wartime research effort was the single most important catalyst for the new field of mass communication research. World War II legitimized work on mass communication research by guaranteeing funding and support, as well as bringing together scholars from around the country interested in studying media and persuasion. To get an idea of how many people were involved in this research effort, one should know that “the federal government’s sprawling propaganda bureaucracy” mobilized “hundreds of social scientists across dozens of civilian and military agencies” (Pooley, 2011: 1449; see also Gary, 1996), to give just one number. To go on with Wahl-Jorgensen (2004: 551), “The war – and the mobilization of research energies that surrounded it – created a paradigm for communication research that was also to focus the field in the subsequent era toward the demands of the Cold War.” Besides the “marriage of media research and polling technique” and its “roots in attitude psychology, market research, and the refinement of sampling methods” (Pooley & Katz, 2008: 769), the new paradigm’s concept of media and, closely connected to it, its notion of science are of particular interest to a history of the social-scientific sources of media and communication research. To cite extensively one of Lazarsfeld’s seminal articles from the time: Behind the idea of such research is the notion that modern media of communication are tools handled by people or agencies for given purposes. The purpose may be to sell goods, or to raise the intellectual standards of the population, or to secure an understanding of governmental policies. But in all cases, to someone who uses a medium for something, it is the task of research
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to make the tool better known, and thus to facilitate its use. (1941: 2–3) The newly formed “opinion field,” as Pooley and Katz (2008: 770) call it, “had a number of unusual features,” including “its intellectual fixation on method and technique to the effective exclusion of any overriding substantive concerns,” the absence of a “stable disciplinary base,” and the dependence on “corporate contracts, in-kind aid from market researchers and pollsters, the Rockefeller grants and, once the war began, federal government largesse.” By and large, this field could survive the end of the war for a decade and a half since it was remobilized by the US government very soon for Cold War and “national security state” purposes (Pooley, 2011: 1449). In addition, communication research was funded and fueled by the Ford Foundation’s behavioral sciences program (1951–1957) and the growing interest in Third World issues that led to modernization theory with its focus on media as a tool to overcome poverty and backwardness (Lerner, 1958). Realizing the field’s link to “the patronage system of social sciences,” Jefferson Pooley (2011: 1450), not surprisingly, remarked that changes in that very system broke up the “interdisciplinary nexus of Cold War communication research.” Federal agencies such as the National Science Foundation would have emphasized disciplines and peer review.
THE SHIFT TO AN EMPIRICAL SOCIAL-SCIENTIFIC DISCIPLINE All over the world, well-rounded communication-related doctoral programs were not established until after World War II (Meyen, 2015: 280). Whether implemented in former journalism schools or speech departments, the newborn US graduate programs emphasized modernization theory – Chapter 11, p. 223
Ford Foundation
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Green-Eyeshades vs. Chi-Squares
Michigan State University
Michael Meyen quantitative empirical work. Rogers (1994) described the not just epistemological conflict between the non-scientific “Green-Eyeshades” (“oriented to the profession of journalism rather than to the new science of communication”) and the “Chi-Squares,” who prevailed in the end because their scholarly approach fit the norms of research universities. In addition to a media industry that became engaged in polling and market research (Rogers, 1994; Löblich, 2007), students experienced a kind of epiphany that matched the habitus of social climbers who focused on the idea of contributing socially. At least in the 1950s and 1960s, young journalists as well as young debaters went out into the world to make a difference. Involved in scientific research projects, the future communication research professors became convinced that the answers derived from Hollerith machines and supported by statistical techniques would influence journalists and others (Meyen, 2012). As a journalism major at Wisconsin, Jack McLeod (born in 1930), to cite just one example, took a course in methods from Malcolm MacLean (1920–1974). “I had no problem following the abstract research concepts. I decided to stay on for a master’s degree and it involved research.” More than just that, “MacLean was convinced that there were essentially new methodological and statistical techniques whose answers would influence journalists and others” (McLeod, 2012: 1741). Not far from Wisconsin, Michigan State University played a special role in the shift from a humanistic and practical to an empirical social-scientific discipline. That shift is especially linked to the name of David Berlo (1929–1996), who was one of the first individuals to receive a PhD in the new field of communication (at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign). Berlo founded the department at Michigan State and continued as chair for the first 14 years (1957–1971), starting out not even 30 years old. According to
Everett Rogers (2001: 239), Berlo saw “that training large numbers of doctoral students was the route to implementing a social science conception of communication.” To Gordon Whiting, who had a speech and rhetoric training, Berlo would say, “we are making a scientist out of you” (Rogers, 2001: 239–240). Berlo’s closest allies, Gerald Miller (University of Iowa), Hideya Kumata, and Erwin Bettinghaus (both at Illinois), had been trained at schools which, like the Institute of Communications Research at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, had been founded by Wilbur Schramm. For Rogers, who came “from an established department at Ohio State (in sociology),” at Michigan State “the close-knit nature of faculty relationships” was kind of new. That as well as the quantitative orientation he later traced back to “the high degree of uncertainty about the new field of communication study.” As chair, Berlo would perceive his department to be at risk and would “convince his faculty to pull together against a hostile environment.” In Rogers’s memoir, there is also a brief glance at Berlo’s appearance: a body weight of over 270 pounds, hidden in “well-tailored dark suits” and so pretending establishment (Rogers, 2001: 239). There could be no doubt that the Michigan State habitus began to rule the field very quickly. Its constituents were the strong emphasis on quantitative research, including statistical methods and sophisticated data analysis, the “high degree of male bonding,” the notion that communication research was an academic underdog, and the feeling that the resultant methodological orientation was superior to any other approaches. That habitus promised “a defence against the possible suspicion by higher levels of academic review that communication was not rigorous enough,” as well as personal security for the newcomers at university, and is around to this very day. One who doesn’t like that habitus – Chapter 8, p. 175
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Social-scientific sources framing can just switch to another part of the Michigan State habitus: dedication to the field of communication (Meyen, 2012: 2389). However, the path to more recognition, mapped along the lines set by the natural sciences at the power pole of the academic field, has been challenged again and again. In addition to the already mentioned British Cultural Studies with its emphasis on power, media content, and media usage, there are other supporters of qualitative methods as well as theoreticians available. To give but one example, Hanno Hardt (1979, 2001) called for a paradigm shift to critical communication research. In lamenting the crisis of US-based quantitative approaches, Hardt pointed to the European tradition of analyzing the relationship between mass media and society and edited communication-related works by famous German sociologists and economists such as Karl Marx, Max Weber, Karl Knies, Albert Schäffle, and Ferdinand Tönnies, as well as early American contributions by Albion W. Small, Edward A. Ross, and William G. Sumner.
MEDIA AND COMMUNICATION RESEARCH ON THE EAST-WEST BATTLEFIELD
ICA
It is not just the roots of the field in propaganda research during World War II and the post-war era up to the 1960s that account for the considerable political influence on research problems, theories, methods, and even appointments. A glance at the two leading international academic associations of communication studies today shows how long the journey to more autonomy took. Until the mid1970s, the International Communication Association (ICA, more than 4,000 members in over 80 countries today) had members from government, from business, and teachers who did not want to do scholarship (Meyen, 2012). Unlike ICA, the International Association for Media and Communication
Research (around 1,500 members from some 100 countries today) could not really extract itself from the grip of politicians or practitioners. IAMCR is a child of the post-war area. Founded with UNESCO support in 1957 “on ecumenical soil crossing both East-West and North-South divides” and in its beginnings dominated “by Europeans, particularly the French” (Nordenstreng, 2008: 229), those origins dominated the association at least until the end of the Cold War. From the mid1960s until the fall of the Berlin Wall, the conferences of the association were not just venues for academic results but also (and maybe even more) ideological battlefields. The Eastern European countries tried to influence both the conference program, including the resulting publications, and recruitment to leadership positions. In essence, three objectives can be distinguished. First of all, the communist countries wanted to promote their own concept of scientific work on journalism and mass media effects. This concept included formulas, precepts, and doctrines of Marxism-Leninism. Second, closely linked to the first aim, the East Europeans wished to win colleagues from the developing countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America for the socialist idea of how to educate journalists and other mass media practitioners. This objective was part of the worldwide struggle of two systems for supremacy back then. And third, along with professors and doctoral students from the Third World, so-called progressive Western academics were also an important target group. Scientists working with materialist or other classic left theories and ideas should be encouraged and helped to present the results of their work to an international audience. Therefore, it was more than a battle of ideologies. Focusing on clearly academic issues such as theory and methodology, the definition of ‘good science’ was at stake (Meyen, 2016). The driving force of all those efforts was the German Democratic Republic (GDR).
IAMCR
the Cold War
German Democratic Republic
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Michael Meyen For the communists in East Berlin, international organizations such as IAMCR were a tool in their fight for international recognition. Therefore, they helped to kick-start IAMCR. Formerly known as a rather small association with a permanent lack of money, IAMCR had a major conference in Leipzig in 1974 with about 250 participants from all over the world and two-volume proceedings. Emil Dusiska (1914–2002), a leading professor in the communist journalism training center at the University of Leipzig, became IAMCR secretary general and did most of the association’s paperwork from 1972 to 1978. In return, IAMCR policy was discussed in the communist party’s inner circle in East Berlin. The support of the East Berlin communists for IAMCR and their advertising for the well-equipped journalism department in Leipzig perfectly matched the general situation of media and communication research. Looking back at the late 1960s and early 1970s, we find a small discipline fighting for its existence. ICA “was more like a family affair” back then. Klaus Krippendorff described the association in its beginnings: The scholars who gathered at annual conventions knew each other, and the program was printed on one page folded three ways. For me, one of the most interesting conferences was in Phoenix, Arizona, in 1971. ICA rented a motel with rooms around a swimming pool, and there were few parallel sessions. The climate was completely different. (2012: 1704) However, beginning in the early 1970s, in the field of media and communication research the social-scientific academic logic began to triumph over the political one. Apart from the GDR’s declining interest in IAMCR after joining the UN in 1973, that is the second significant reason for the decreasing influence of
Eastern European representatives on the association’s agenda. In 1974, Western scholars rejected a plan to launch an official IAMCR journal supported by Eastern European money with academic arguments. In the very same year, interestingly enough, George Gerbner reinvented the Journal of Communication, which had originally been set up in 1951. Within a short period of time, that ICA publication became the flagship journal of the field. Like a magnifying glass, the competition between two globally oriented disciplinary associations of media and communication research reveals the roots of the field in history and its path toward social-scientific designs and methods. By contrast with sociology or political science, the organization of the field, funded partly under the auspices of UNESCO, did not become a mirror just reflecting “the hierarchy of the world-system” for media and communication research, where “the United States found itself in a dominant position that ensured the hegemony of its theoretical and organizational models” after World War II (Heilbron, Guilhot, & Jeanpierre, 2008: 152, 156). Quite the opposite, IAMCR took a different path. In addition to the age, size, and position of the discipline within the larger scientific field, which led to a strong social-scientific orientation, its object of study is an important subsidiary reason for this development. To come straight to the point: In the Cold War years following the founding of international disciplinary associations by UNESCO, there simply was no international debate involving sociologists or political scientist from all three major global camps of the time. In the case of journalism education and media policy, quite the opposite was true. Mass media effects and the free flow of information were central to the socialist countries in Eastern Europe as well as to the nascent Non-Aligned Movement. Therefore, these the New World Information and Communication Order – Chapter 11, p. 226
Journal of Communication
two camps challenged Western Europe and North America in the area of international media and communication research associations, too (Meyen, 2016).
THE CURRENT GEOGRAPHY OF THE FIELD
public research universities
US land-grant universities
Today, the academic discipline of media and communication research is (still) a US-centered enterprise with strong pillars at the Big Ten universities and on the West coast (Meyen, 2015: 279). There are no communication research or media studies programs at most Ivy League schools and other top-tier US universities. Stanford and the two Annenberg Schools for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania and at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles (USC) are three exceptions to the rule that the heart of the field beats not at private US schools but at the large public research universities such as Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan State, Ohio State, Penn State, Purdue, Texas, and Wisconsin. Contrastingly, “the golden era at Stanford” seems to be over. According to eyewitness Everett Rogers (1994: 458), it is not so long ago (“from roughly 1955 to 1970”) that this university “dominated the field” and everybody would have wanted to hire one of Stanford’s PhDs in communication. Not much remains of this today. Today, Stanford has a rather tiny number of people in human-computer interaction and mass media studies only (Reeves, 2012). The dominant historical narrative that explains the geography of the field is quite similar both in the journalismand speech-derived traditions (Rogers, 1994; Cohen, 1994; Pooley, 2008). Looking at those histories, the development of the field is inseparably linked to the history of US universities. The so-called land-grant schools were established to help develop the new territories of the United States. In these universities, practical skills such as speech, rhetoric, and journalism were respected. The focus on
Social-scientific sources
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practical activities and the idea of instrumental tasking attracted a certain type of students: kids of social climbers and, in particular, of European immigrants. Conversely, the US elite universities repositioned themselves along the lines of science in the early 1900s (Meyen, 2012). This narrative fits into Klaus Krippendorff’s reconstruction of the early days of communication research at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. Krippendorff (2012: 1702), who became an assistant professor in 1964 at Penn, noted:
the Annenberg Schools for Communication
Walter Annenberg was the owner of The Philadelphia Inquirer and wanted to pay for a school that would create professionals that could work in his newspaper. The University of Pennsylvania didn’t want to have a narrow professional focus but liked the idea of a communication school. Consequently, the Annenberg School focused almost exclusively on social-scientific research. The strong position of the Annenberg Schools at Penn and USC within the communication research field is not just a heritage of the long-term dean at Penn, George Gerbner (1919–2005, in charge from 1964 to 1989) or a function of the commercial context in which the two were settled. “One of our strengths was financial,” said Klaus Krippendorff (2012: 1702). “Walter Annenberg provided ample resources.” In the case of Stanford, it was more about reputation than just dollars. Everett Rogers (1994: 477) first listed the eight US schools with the highest prestige (they “tend to be private, old, and resistant to radical educational innovations”) and then celebrated, logically from his point of view, “Schramm’s move to Stanford University in 1955 and the founding of the doctoral program there” as “the key event in gaining acceptance of communication study in American universities.” However, more than half a century later, Byron Reeves (2012: 1781), Schramm’s
Stanford University
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Michael Meyen successor’s successor, still had to fight for the reputation of the discipline: “Everybody is always asking what communication is and why they don’t have it at Harvard, Princeton, and Yale, or most of the other top ten or top 20 universities. That’s where the peers for all the other departments are.” Thus, both the geography of the field and its roots in more practical skills such as journalism and speech have implications for the position of communication studies in the larger academic field. Concentrating on the beginnings of the field in the United States does not in any way imply a devaluation of other world regions. However, it is not just the common roots in practical training and administrative research that justify a certain focus on the United States. First, the strong emphasis on quantitative research, including statistical methods and sophisticated data analysis, that had already been sowed, planted, and watered by the propaganda research programs during both the hot and the Cold War, and which became one of the key identity elements of the discipline from the late 1950s on, was invented precisely there. Second, closely linked to the shift from training offerings to academic, mainly social-scientific approaches, media and communication research made in the United States was exported worldwide. To put it another way: Many of the founding mothers and fathers of national scientific communities were not just heavily influenced by the North American research tradition but rather part and parcel of it. It is easy to see that the dominance of US-originated social-scientific approaches to media and communication research is a function both of the power of English as the global language and, probably even more importantly, of the level of commercialization of mass media systems. Media markets create needs for applied administrative and/vs. critical research – Chapter 20, p. 421
knowledge, well-trained students, and a public debate on the individual and societal consequences of commercial media products. That is why it is no accident and not only a simple result of US hegemony in the world arena that US universities exported not just theories and methods but also scholars that became leading figures in other national academic environments (Wiedemann & Meyen, 2016). To start with English-speaking countries, the native American Jay Blumler (United Kingdom) graduated from Antioch College. Later, in addition to his position at Leeds, where he became one of the most prominent researchers in the field of political communication, Blumler was professor at the University of Maryland. Elihu Katz (Israel) was born in New York; Akiba Cohen (a second Israeli) in Detroit; Cindy Gallois (Australia) in Washington; and Janet Bavelas (Canada) in Portland, Oregon. James Taylor, who inspired the famous Montreal School of organizational communication research, worked as a lecturer at the Annenberg School in Philadelphia in the 1960s. All five of them got their PhDs at communication or, in Katz’s case, sociology schools in the United States. Youichi Ito (Japan), who is renowned for his information society concept, did a master’s degree at Boston University and had a fellowship at Tufts University in the 1970s. Osmo Wiio (Finland) attended an American seminar in Salzburg, Austria, in the late 1950s. From then on, Wiio developed strong contacts with US universities. The very same is true for Kaarle Nordenstreng, the second famous Finn in the international community. In the late 1960s, Nordenstreng had a fellowship at Southern Illinois University, mainly working for his doctorate. He got to know communication research by traveling the United States and interviewing American colleagues (Nordenstreng, 1968). Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann (Germany), to give one last example, received a scholarship at Missouri’s School of Journalism
the US export of scholars
Germany
Social-scientific sources in 1937/38 and was a visiting professor at the University of Chicago on a regular basis between 1978 and 1991. Appointed as professor at the University of Mainz in 1965, she became the driving force of the implementation of quantitative socialscientific methods in the West German communication field (Löblich, 2007). In addition, Noelle-Neumann and her followers were, besides societal influences, one reason that the tradition of critical theory in German media and communication research has no home at German universities today (Löblich & Scheu, 2011). One of Noelle-Neumann’s students, to give a final example of the Americanization of the field, is Wolfgang Donsbach, who served as a World Association for Public Opinion Research (WAPOR) president in 1995/96 and as an ICA president in 2004/5, and who edited Wiley’s 12-volume International Encyclopaedia of Communication (Donsbach, 2008).
FUTURE PERSPECTIVES The field of media and communication research does not have the same aura as established academic disciplines such as history, literary studies, linguistics, psychology, or sociology. It is comparatively young, rather small, and at the same time very broad. Moreover, in many places, it is still easy to think of media and communication as primarily a technical-, skills-, or service-oriented discipline, not a social science. Citation patterns are an indicator for the position of the field at large. More established subjects do not do a good job of searching literature from media and communication research. A typical political scientist might study the impact of the internet on political processes without ever reading a communication journal (Meyen, 2012). In contrast to Sisyphus, there is hope for the field. All over the world, communication studies have been growing vastly. There is a tremendous demand
for undergraduate places. As a result, the discipline gets the best students and therefore probably the best future faculty on the market. There is a second market force working for communication: a fast-growing societal interest in media and communication issues and, linked with that interest, growing funding from outside universities. The access to external money is changing the field right now and is going to shape its future structures, too. A prime example of the ongoing changes is the rise of health communication, but there are other winners, as well – organizational communication, new media, and research on children and media. Even a very short prospect for the future of the field has to mention the internet, social media, the ongoing communication revolution, and daunting challenges facing humankind, which affect not only traditional research areas like political communication, journalism, the public sphere, or even language and interpersonal communication, but also the relations between governments and the governed and society as a whole. Considering the dependence of communication research on society and its close relationships with ruling powers, as well as the legitimizing function it has played and still plays for its donors in government and business, even cautious forecasts should include three trends. First, investments in communication research will increase considerably in the future. Second, the field will face an intensified battle between administrative and critical research camps. And third, citing Larry Gross (2012: 1634), linked to these two trends as well as to “the very transformative moment of communication” we all are part of, “the Internet revolution is opening all the closed books” written in the TV era. “Everything that we claimed we knew has to be re-examined.” That transformation might even affect the construction of the history of the field.
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PART
II
Systematics
PROCESSES OF COMMUNICATION An implicit model of communication The bulk of media studies have been premised on an implicit model of communication that centers attention on senders, messages, and recipients. This is in spite of the fact that most current research recognizes problems of segregating the various stages of the process of communication and of divorcing media and communicative practices from their social and cultural contexts. Part II employs this sequential model of communication as a structuring device that facilitates a review of earlier empirical as well as theoretical contributions. The chapters, however, also consider how various conceptions of, and evidence about, one stage of communication may reflect on the process as a whole. In particular, Chapter 10 explores the interrelated stages and levels of mass and interpersonal and online as well as offline communication, whereas Chapters 11 and 12 cover research on the relationship between media and their cultural and historical contexts, respectively. Media organizations The two chapters on media organizations examine the complex process of producing media content – on the one hand, news; on the other hand, fiction and other entertainments. Reviewing classic studies and illustrating research on concrete production practices, the presentations draw attention, among other things, to the differences between media types – print, broadcast, and networked – and between national and international levels of media organization. •
•
Entertainment production (Chapter 4). The first chapter reviews the several interrelated levels of production and organization that shape entertainment media products, including the international economy, national media systems, technological developments, and professional work routines. The importance of these levels is exemplified with reference to cable television production and the process of buying advertising on US television networks. News production (Chapter 5). The second chapter considers news production as a field of intersecting social forces, subject to professional, commercial, and technological influences. Such influences take effect in and through the daily routines of news workers, the organization of newsrooms and news beats, and the formats and genres of news. With the internet, audiences have become even more central to news production as contributors to the news and as data points motivating particular forms of coverage.
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Systematics
Media texts The messages of communication have been studied by different theoretical and methodological traditions as both ‘texts’ to be interpreted and ‘contents’ to be counted. Fiction has commonly been examined through qualitative approaches, as derived from the study of literature and other arts. Factual genres, in their turn, have lent themselves to a mixture of quantitative and qualitative methodologies. In addition, digital media have posed new research questions concerning the language, images, and narratives that are the concrete vehicles of communication in websites, computer games, social media, and other genres, and which enter into intertextual networks. •
•
Media fact (Chapter 6). Having compared and contrasted quantitative content analysis and qualitative discourse analysis of media texts, this chapter elaborates on the development of critical discourse studies and the recent inclusion of multimodal aspects of media discourse. An extended case study examines the coverage of Brexit in text and image by two Turkish news sites, exploring the cultural specificity of how national media articulate and recontextualize transnational issues. Media fiction (Chapter 7). The next chapter addresses different traditional and technologically mediated modes of fiction and illustrates the analysis of fiction as both content and form, including narrative, genre, and style. The relationship between fiction and reality is emphasized throughout the chapter in discussions of the representation of crime and of violence as a potential effect of the reception of fiction.
Media audiences From the beginnings of the field, audiences have been a central concern and object of analysis and have been studied most often by quantitative social-scientific methodologies: surveys and experiments. In recent decades, more research relying on qualitative interviewing and participating observation has come to examine audiences empirically. The resulting convergence of various approaches to ‘effects’ and ‘reception,’ respectively, holds additional potential for studies of digital media and communicative practices. •
•
Media effects (Chapter 8). After a brief history of the notion of ‘effects,’ this chapter summarizes the multiple forms of inquiry that have developed since the 1930s. The contributions are presented in a systematic that integrates different stages of communication and influence and short-term as well as long-term effects. Media reception (Chapter 9). The following chapter begins by complementing recognized ‘milestones’ of the effects tradition with important contributions to qualitative reception studies. Next, the chapter reviews the main varieties of reception analysis and considers the potentials and pitfalls of ‘ethnography’ as practiced in media studies.
Media contexts Three chapters address the relationship between media and their social, cultural, and historical contexts, emphasizing the communication component of media and communication studies. Processes of digitalization as well as globalization have reconfigured key
Part II
constituents and conditions of communication: media, texts, and contexts; senders and receivers; and the social organization of communication in space and time. •
•
•
Social contexts (Chapter 10). The first of the three chapters on contexts addresses some of the fundamental issues that digital and mobile media present for communication research, revisiting the mass-interpersonal and online-offline divides of the field. Media are constituents of diverse contexts of social interaction; media also serve to configure such contexts across space and time. Cultural contexts (Chapter 11). The next chapter takes up the embedding of media in cultural contexts and practices at various levels of social organization – from the local to the global level. Raising issues of identity as well as power, this domain of research has witnessed a number of theoretically as well as politically charged controversies. Historical contexts (Chapter 12). The last chapter on contexts traces the place of media technologies in the long history of human communication. Reviewing relevant sources, methods, and theoretical frameworks, the chapter presents distinctive approaches to studying contemporary media in historical perspective.
Determination in the first instance Each chapter in this part of the Handbook identifies a number of factors that shape and affect processes of communication, within media organizations, through media discourses, and in diverse contexts of communication. A central premise is that each factor – whether technological, economic, political, or cultural – may exercise a determination in the first instance (Hall, 1983) but not a determination in the final instance. Neither the products nor the practices of communication are the outcome of any simple causality. Different traditions of research have identified, and have tried to interpret and explain, empirical variations of how media operate and communicative practices unfold. Here, the traditions are compared and contrasted as part of a systematics of media and communication studies.
determination in the first instance – Chapter 1, p. 2
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Media organizations
4
The production of entertainment media Amanda D. Lotz and Horace Newcomb
•
an outline of the main levels of analysis in production research – from political economy to professional routines • a review, with examples of previous studies at each level of analysis • a description of the diverse sources of evidence and of relevant methods of analysis • two illustrations: the production of a cable television series and the process of buying advertising on US television networks
Throughout the last two decades, an earlier bias of media studies toward textual or audience analysis has been righted somewhat by rapid expansion in research focused on the structures that affect, and the institutions that create, media and their content. Such studies are commonly classified as ‘production studies’ or ‘media industry studies.’ This chapter focuses on methods for examining the production of entertainment media in particular. Whether addressing a particular show, the negotiations between a studio and a distributor, an industrial practice such as dubbing, or a sector of a national media industry, studies of entertainment industries and production practices explore the ways in which various creative personnel work within determined and structured systems that, nevertheless, allow for variations within routines. The points of tension between standardization and differentiation are of equal significance and equally instructive in exploring the significance of media entertainment. It is
necessary, then, to provide a more thorough and detailed analysis of production practices than the usual generalizations about ‘media factories’ that are presumed to churn out endless reiterations of mindless fare. One approach is outlined in Bordwell’s concept of ‘historical poetics’ (Bordwell, 1989a). Under that category, he suggests that it is important to explore options open to media makers at given points in time and in specific social contexts, attending to industrial, economic, and regulatory factors. While Bordwell tends to focus on those options generating the standardized elements found in much mass-mediated material, we believe it is possible to discover important manipulations of production processes that indicate the relative autonomy or circumscribed agency of individuals, groups, and even organizations within media industries. What this suggests, most importantly, is that any study of the production of media entertainment must recognize multiple
relative autonomy circumscribed agency
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Amanda D. Lotz and Horace Newcomb types of influence. Factors ranging from policy formation to the application of new technologies may affect the production of any particular instance of media entertainment. Research taking account of multiple causal elements usually provides stronger explanations of industrial behavior. These factors and the relations among them can be described as ‘levels of analysis.’ We emphasize that this term should not imply a universally effective hierarchy of influence or determination, rather that this taxonomy identifies general to more specific sites and applications. The most effective industry research will indicate an awareness of the multiple levels and seek to identify the interdependence of influences, even if focusing upon particular cases, settings, and systems. The arrival of internet distribution as a new mechanism for distributing media and the adoption of digital technologies through which to experience media have significantly disrupted established media industry norms and have also provided many fruitful sites of industry analysis. Notably, many different forces simultaneously pressure change despite being simply attributed to the digital technology of ‘the internet.’ For example, although many regard the rise of the global video distribution service Netflix as a technological development, it also uses a specific business model – subscriber funding. Subscriber-funded media are not new, nor tied to internet-distribution technology, but have become a more prevalent mechanism for funding successful internetdistributed video services. Shifting the underlying business model of an industry, away from advertiser funding or public funds in the case of television, can bring as significant an adjustment to industry norms, operations, and the texts produced as can technological change. This chapter focuses on different ‘levels’ of analysis, which might also be understood as sites of investigation. No one level is more relevant than another; rather, the required adjustments of breadth and
depth allow each level to provide a different scale of insight. Many methods can be used at different levels, and these are highlighted in the discussion of each level subsequently. Recent books focused on particular industrial methods have helped demystify the process of this research (Paterson, 2016; Freeman, 2016).
LEVELS OF ANALYSIS National and international political economy and policy The production of particular media artifacts within specific industrial systems obviously takes place within more general contexts. Among the most influential works at this level are those exploring differences between commercial broadcasting or film industries and media reliant on various forms of state support (e.g., Blumler, 1992; Katz & Wedell, 1977; Schiller, 1969). Although analyses of production practices generally acknowledge such differences, broad assumptions rather than detailed analysis commonly guide the study of the relations between policy and production. Individual productions are enabled as well as constrained by general conditions such as dominant business models, regulatory structures, and available technology. Varied responses to those conditions illuminate the complexity of the larger structures, reminding us that while media production is indeed a modern, factory-style product, the differences among the products are as telling as their similarities. Nevertheless, a number of policy works provide useful contextual information for production research. Among them, Alexander, Owers, Carveth, Hollifield, and Greco (2003); Picard (2011); and Doyle (2013) offer extensive overviews of contemporary media industry policies that can be applied analytically. Although media industries have been considerably affected by the arrival of internet distribution, policy makers have struggled to keep up with this technological change
commercial and state-supported media
The production of entertainment media
on-demand and flow services
and to identify how policy for existing distribution technologies might warrant adjustment. A good illustration of this are debates about imposing quotas mandating the inclusion of local content on video streaming services. Such regulations attempt to even the playing field by applying the rules for previous distribution technologies to new entrants, but such an approach does not take into consideration that these latter services make content available as an on-demand library rather than as a schedule of programming. Some studies do bring together the macro levels of policy and economic structure with analyses of cases. They include explorations of the ways in which media products are affected by social problems, such as ‘censorship’ or ‘violence.’ Doherty (1999) and Gardner (1987) provide examples of the first topic, showing how particular American films were produced before and during periods of heavy social control. Cowan (1979) focuses on engagements with policy by individuals (e.g., Norman Lear) and institutions (e.g., The Writers Guild of America) with regard to sex and violence on television, and shows how production strategies were affected by congressional actions mandating a ‘family hour’ for commercial television. As these publications suggest, a major approach to studying the relationship between policy and production has been historical. Boddy (1990), for example, explores relations among television executives, the US Congress, and television critics in the 1950s. He carefully establishes how, in the struggle among these groups, industry executives managed to secure their economic interests through legislative and judicial decision-making. The outcome of these battles led to major industry developments, such as the shift from ‘live’ television production in New York to filmed programming from Hollywood, resulting in fundamental changes
in aesthetics, altered production practices, and ultimately the distinctive place of television fiction in US culture. Or, consider more recent work that connects changes in the norms of media production with macro-level industrial adjustments. McMurria’s (2003) study of shifts in long-form television production showed how changing competitive norms, globalization, and international trade policy have affected the content and reduced the quantity of long-form television. Focusing more on the policy side, Holt (2003, 2011) examined the consequences of US deregulation, specifically the phase-out of the Financial Interest and Syndication rules. The elimination of these rules, which prevented US networks from owning much of the content that they distributed, led to self-dealing and other production and distribution practices that advantaged media conglomerates. Doyle’s (2016, 2018) research on the consequences of policies for British television that required the inclusion of independent productions, and more recent research on how streaming services have led to changes in distribution strategies and their impact on television production (Lotz, 2018, 2019), offer additional examples in this area. Methodologically, all these works have depended on the analysis of archival data. While public policy records are usually freely available, corporate papers have sometimes been deposited in reference archives, making access for researchers relatively simple. In other cases, such materials may be proprietary and access severely restricted. These records are essential for production research, because the documents contain evidence both of conflicting points of view and of concrete decision-making related to particular media artifacts. Additionally, research at this level relies on social theory for its method. In such cases, socio-economic theories derived from Karl Marx have
historical studies of media – Chapter 12
archival data – Chapter 12, p. 240
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Amanda D. Lotz and Horace Newcomb been used to explain the operation of media industries as based on securing and maintaining the interests of those in power.
Specific industrial contexts and practices Historical approaches have also been prominent in research examining the institutional configuration of media industries, but this level of analysis focuses more precisely on specific industrial practices. Among the strongest examples is The Classical Hollywood Cinema (Bordwell et al., 1985), which examined the development of the Hollywood film industry and the resulting reliance on a particular narrative style, as indicated in the title. The study tracks the establishment of regularized industrial strategies, consequent divisions of labor, instrumental applications of new technologies, and other features of the Hollywood film factories. It suggests that, after a period of experimentation, the US film industry narrowed into certain industrial operations that were developed in the service of particular narrative conventions. The analysis also demonstrates how this general pattern of regularization was realized in particular films. The central argument points to the reduction of preferred narrative strategies and, ultimately, of the styles, genres, and meanings within an industry that was increasingly successful on its own terms. The ideological result was the establishment of a particular cultural meaning of ‘cinema’ to the exclusion or marginalization of alternative forms. Here again, researchers rely heavily on primary historical records – although often including the records of particular organizations such as contracts, inter-office memoranda, extant interviews, handbooks, production manuals, instructional pamphlets, variously revised scripts, and story conference memoranda that record decision-making processes. These are explored in order to describe, analyze, and
contextualize the actual production practices involved in film, television, and other media making. Because sustained archival research is needed to uncover more evidence, and because the study of media entertainment, in particular, is of relatively recent development, new histories continue to refine our knowledge of much needed background and circumstances. Hilmes (1990), for example, provided new information regarding the shifting arrangements among media industries, including the radio industry, which have altered the cultural definition of ‘film’ and ‘television’ in the United States. Such work need not be historical, however, and in recent years, many scholars have turned to studying contemporary media industries and their practices. Though now a historical account, Gitlin’s (1994/1983) Inside Prime Time provides a classic example. Gitlin researched television network practices in the early 1980s to offer a detailed account of the multitude of negotiations that are part of the creative process. The narrower focus of industry-level studies begins to allow somewhat different sources than feasible at the level of national or international political economy and policy. Researchers of contemporary conditions generally have much less access to the types of archival documentation that historical researchers might secure, but interviews and observation may be available. The content and slant of the interviews can also be checked and compared by reference to contemporary trade press accounts and attendance at meetings of industry professionals. Gitlin’s study captures the operation of an entire industry sector – the US broadcast television industry – at a particular moment in time. In a different case, still at the industry level, Havens (2008) qualitative interviewing and participating observation – Chapter 14, p. 293 trade press, p. 85 professional meetings, p. 85
The production of entertainment media
interest groups
addresses international television distribution. His research seeks to understand the complexities of distribution and its implications for what media industries produce by examining how and why concrete television entertainment texts circulate around the globe as they do. Havens combines interviews with distributors and buyers with fieldwork at major distribution markets such as NATPE and MIPCOM to inform his study. Caldwell’s (2008) research on belowthe-line (craft and technical) production workers offers another case of research at the industry level. Caldwell endeavored to explain how the introduction of new production tools has affected traditional models of work and relations among crew members. In addition to interviews with production workers and observations of the process of production, Caldwell analyzed demo tapes to explore how they teach others in the industry about new videographic techniques and thus function in the establishment of new aesthetic norms. A final example illustrates how industry-level analysis can take research beyond more generalized descriptions. Montgomery (1989) focused on the different ways in which interest groups engage television networks in order to gain more favorable representation. Using interview and ethnographic methods, as well as analysis of records and contracts, she also examined individual television texts to show how these groups variously succeeded or failed in their attempts to alter detailed television production practices. Interest groups have used strategies, such as boycotts or threats of boycotts, which recognize the role played by political economy and government policies in media production. Aphra Kerr’s (2016) book Global Games offers another rich example of an industry-level study of the production of entertainment media. Kerr relies on a range of methods from macro-level data about corporate or national revenues to interviews with game developers in order to build a multifaceted argument
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explaining the industrial causes for the considerable adjustments in the digital game industry in the early twenty-first century.
Particular organizations: studios, production companies, networks Studies of institutional relations often rely on the next more specific level of analysis, exploring the connection between a media organization and the industrial configuration in which it operates. The incorporation of textual analysis of individual works or collections of films and television programs is much more prominent at this level, frequently with an emphasis on genre and format as indicative of an organizational ‘style.’ Tino Balio’s books on film studios such as United Artists (2009a, 2009b) and MGM (2018) illustrate such organizational-level analysis. Although detailed studies of particular organizations, such research also offers broader knowledge about how film studios operate. For tele vision, a primary example is Feuer, Kerr, and Vahamagi’s (1984) study of the MTM production company, which argues for the existence of a ‘signature style’ associated with a number of its productions. The identification of that style enabled the authors to describe variations within the general structures of both genre (the situation/domestic/workplace comedy) and the US television industry as such. Cunningham (1988) provides a similar example of house style from Australian television. Such studies must rely heavily on company histories and production case studies in order to support the textual analyses that identify particular elements as a distinctive ‘style.’ In addition, they may make use of interviews and observations when access to individuals and ongoing productions can be arranged. Studies at this level might not attend so much to questions about texts and style, textual analysis – Chapters 6 and 7
house style in television – see also Ellis (1982)
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Amanda D. Lotz and Horace Newcomb however, and instead address how the culture of a media organization can lead to certain textual qualities in its output. For example, Perren (2012) examined how the independent film studio Miramax developed niche marketing and low-budget production strategies that revised Hollywood aesthetics, economics, and structure during the 1990s. In a public-service context, Born (2005) used sociological and anthropological methods to examine the operation of the vast broadcast institution of the British Broadcasting Corporation. She relied on access to meetings and as many as 220 interviews with those working in and contracting for the BBC over eight years to develop a richly informed examination of the internal workings of the BBC and the organizational politics that contributed to various programming strategies and initiatives.
Individual productions
‘the making of ’
A yet more specific level of analysis focuses on the creation of individual artifacts – films, television programs or series, computer games, and so on. Here, for example, we would include works exploring ‘the making of’ particular films and other media products, such as Carringer’s The Making of Citizen Kane (1996). Often, such works are designed to be more popular in appeal, providing behind-the-scenes information for fans or interested observers. Their popularity, however, does not necessarily diminish their usefulness for more complex research, and they may be cited as evidence in any of the other types of analysis described previously. And, when such cases are examined within a more generalized theoretical framework, they can result in production studies of great analytical power. Indeed, scholarly works often offer similar information, making them informative for general readers as well as for researchers. Part of the case study – Chapter 14, p. 291
strength of Gitlin’s work, addressed previously, was his comparisons of specific productions in order to show both variation and similarity within the production process and in the resulting product. Relying on interview and observation methods, combined with close analysis of both production techniques and narrative strategies, Gitlin used his cases to support more far-reaching inferences regarding the role of television in American culture. One of the most significant examples of work focused on an individual television production is D’Acci’s Defining Women: The Case of Cagney and Lacey (1994). In this book, D’Acci traces the development of the program, explaining the roles of individual writer-producers, actors, studio executives, network heads, programmers, publicity teams, and other participants. She also examines the responses of critics, viewers, and organized interest groups, showing how their commentary contributed to keeping the series on the air, in addition to continuing the debate on television portrayals of women. By combining this wealth of background material with her own detailed textual analysis, D’Acci presents one of the most complete pictures of the production of a fictional television program to date. Levine (2001) offers another useful set of categories of analysis to aid researchers studying a particular production. In some ways, her categories mirror the levels of analysis offered here, although her focus is clearly the individual production. She recommends five ‘categories of analysis’ (production constraints, production environment, production routines and practices, production of characters and stories, and the audience in production). Her article illustrates how to examine these categories through a case study of the US daytime soap opera General Hospital. Her rubric reminds us of the need to acknowledge factors that we place at the level of national/international political economy and industry levels when analyzing an individual production.
social roles in production units
The production of entertainment media The scope of individual production studies has been expanded in recent years as transmedia storytelling – narratives spread across various media – has become increasingly popular both for fans and as an industrial strategy. Jenkins (2007) argues that “transmedia storytelling represents a process where integral elements of a fiction get dispersed systematically across multiple delivery channels for the purpose of creating a unified and coordinated entertainment experience.” Indeed, just as internet distribution has made boundaries among media increasingly porous – as it enables us to experience much media content outside of the platform for which it was initially created – so too has it necessitated that the study of a particular production attend to all of its storytelling extensions. Thus, Lost is not only a television series, but also a novel, a variety of websites, and an alternate reality game, to name just a few of the other media that extend its storytelling. Little scholarship has yet considered transmedia storytelling through an industrial lens. Meehan’s (1991) examination of the political economy of Batman provides one illustration of how this has been considered in the past, while more recent work from Johnson (2011) focuses broadly on the transmedia storytelling of media franchises, with considerable insight into many of the levels of analysis suggested here. Nevertheless, we can imagine the contours of other studies. Perhaps the key questions are how media industries create transmedia possibilities and how such industrial norms then affect storytelling properties. Clearly, decision-making at the corporate level, where executives recognize or are persuaded of the potential of these kinds of extensions, would be central to the analysis. Existing corporate practices, such as transforming a particular narrative into a theme park ride, offer examples of how financial transmedia storytelling and intertextuality – Chapter 10, p. 199
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interests lie at the heart of such large-scale decision-making. Given the breadth of transmedia entities, a case study approach is likely appropriate. Studies of transmedia storytelling, more than some other, more conventional studies, would involve comparisons and connections among the levels of analysis. How might policies regulating several different media come into play? Already, for example, contractual negotiations between distributors and the various professional organizations of writers, actors, and technicians have faced thorny discussions of how the new media versions of their work are to affect pay scales. How might industrial organization be altered in light of the need to transfer a text across platforms? What conceptions of audiences would drive decision-making at the corporate, studio, or distribution levels? Certainly, such a study would also require examination of the next level of analysis to be discussed subsequently: the effort of creative individuals or teams whose work, from concept to completion, can be altered in the new digital environment.
Individual agents Closely related to case studies of individual productions are projects focusing on the ‘makers’ of entertainment content, on their enactment as well as manipulation of all these structural factors. Many works at this level, among them most studies dependent on ‘auteurist’ theories of creative control, grant extraordinary freedom to individuals and their ‘genius’ (e.g., Bogdanovich, 1967; Sarris, 1968). Equally significant, however, are contributions critiquing such notions. One of the most influential studies of the television industry, for example, is Cantor (1988/1971). Using surveys and interviews in which producers remain anonymous, her work highlights the systemic constraints on ‘true’ notions of creativity as it might have been exercised by producers. In Cantor’s analysis, the fundamental structure
auteur theory
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individual creativity and systemic constraints
Amanda D. Lotz and Horace Newcomb of American media industries – rooted in capitalism, supported by advertising, organized as oligopoly, and structured as factory labor – prevents its creative potential from being realized. Other approaches have worked from a different assumption: that personnel involved in creating media fiction are in fact aware, to varying degrees, of the constraints and opportunities implied in the levels of influence, as reviewed here, which affect their work. The final emergence of any media product is seen as the result of intensely collaborative processes – something frequently acknowledged within the industries as well as in theory. Thus, the work of individuals is viewed as tightly woven into such collaboration, which, further, is embedded in the more general levels of influence. In another study of American television producers, for example, Newcomb and Alley (1983) emphasized the potential for awareness and creative manipulation of the very same systemic constraints cited by Cantor. Their analysis also depended on interviews with producers self-reporting their decision-making processes and was amplified with textual analyses designed to check those reports. Studies of the individuals making entertainment programming for social media services such as YouTube, Instagram, and Twitch use methods of industry analysis, including interviews with media makers, examination of industrial practices, analysis of industry data, accounts of trade publications, and the media texts produced to explore social media industries. Craig and Cunningham (2019) explore ‘YouTube Stars’ as creators in a book that seeks to understand the dynamics of open access, internet-distributed services that have become a site of a new kind of audiovisual entertainment. Lacking the production budgets of scripted television and the requirements of gatekeeper approval, at least in its first decade and a half, YouTube creators have been engaged in an industrialized pursuit but one quite different
than that characteristic of established media industries that strategically fund or license content and build businesses based on managing the circulation of intellectual property. Christian (2018) also examines video entertainment distributed using YouTube but focuses on scripted series and the opportunities for different stories and storytelling voices made possible by the independence of producing outside the television or film industries. Primary data for studying the work of individuals need not always be gathered by interview or survey, however. For example, the University of Texas at Austin library lists 85 works related to Alfred Hitchcock, and while many, perhaps most, of these are textual analyses of aspects of Hitchcock’s films, a number provide original commentary on the production process. Gottlieb (1995) collected, in the director’s own words, explanations, theories, and accounts regarding the production of ‘his’ works. In a related cross-reference, Behlmer (1981) offered the producer’s perspective by gathering David O. Selznick’s memos relating to numerous productions, including some projects Hitchcock directed. A complete analysis of the specific projects on which they collaborated, and of their respective individual contributions, can be developed only in the production contexts where their sometimes-conflicted relationship is fully evidenced. It is worth noting, however, that few studies of individual agents in media production have been able to provide generalized findings useful beyond the case at hand. Too often, research at this level succumbs to simplistic ‘great man’ or ‘creative genius’ assertions, which our attention to the multiple levels of analysis is meant to deconstruct. Media production requires hundreds of hands and minds, and although a single voice may be featured on a DVD commentary or highlighted as auteur, it would be a mistake to discount the collaborative nature of media-making.
directors and/ vs. producers
The production of entertainment media A corrective to this problem can be found in research aimed at studying individuals in order to build deeper understanding of the different roles that are part of entertainment production. Importantly, directors and producers are far from the only significant roles in media production. For example, Roussel (2017) examines the tasks and duties of talent representation, Banks (2016) investigates the role of writers, and Warner (2015) explores the job of television casting agents and how common practices related to ‘colorblind’ casting defeat the practice’s goals of expanding representational diversity.
The production of entertainment in a digital era The substantial changes to media industries resulting from digital production and distribution have been a focus of research in recent years. Digital production technologies have made professional-level video production accessible to many more than in an era of analog media, while digital distribution technologies have opened bottlenecks and created sub-industries that do not have the same gatekeepers and barriers to entry previously characteristic of media industries. In combination, digital technologies have created new entertainment industry sectors as social media services such as YouTube have enabled global sharing of self-funded video entertainment. In many cases, services distributing video via internet connections can be understood using the same frameworks long used for media entertainment. A service such as Netflix has become a part of the legacy media industry rather than a separate sector. There is much work currently developing that seeks to understand how internet-distributed services create different production environments for creatives and storytelling. At this point, the differences in the texts produced appear to result from the use of full subscriber funding, which was previously uncommon,
and include features that result from allowing subscribers access to a library of programming instead of a linear schedule. Rather than attempting to attract the attention of the most viewers – the measure of success for advertiser-funded television – subscriber-funded services are compelled to create programs so valuable that viewers will pay to receive them. To do so, services such as Netflix and HBO develop programming that targets far more narrow taste cultures, which has led to a greater range of storytelling than characteristic of ad-supported television, at least in the United States. The ability to make this programming available in a library frees the service from having to construct a schedule that aims to please wide-ranging tastes. Instead, subscribers with different preferences or interests can be simultaneously served. Many of the key concerns and considerations of industry study, such as how gatekeepers, business strategies, and power circulate among industry players, thus remain relevant in a digital media environment. The production and distribution entities have shifted somewhat, but many of the core relations among stakeholders in the sector and their characteristic concerns persist.
SOURCES AND METHODS It is necessary to apply a wide range of analytical approaches to an equal range of sources in order to develop an adequately complex study of media production. Research on current entertainment production may usefully begin by describing the historical development of the contemporary situation. As already indicated, newer histories continue to provide substantial additional detail and build more precise understandings of how media industries came to their current status. A project may next require a description of the general regulatory and economic context at the level of the media system (commercial, public service, mixed, etc.).
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Amanda D. Lotz and Horace Newcomb legislative sources
national statistics
corporate records
In addition to legislative sources concerning such industrial formations, macrolevel information is usually available in national statistical abstracts. These latter sources provide details of import and export, viewer ratings and other statistics for television, gross numbers of completed productions for various media industries, distribution and attendance figures for films, the contribution of specific industries to the gross domestic product, and so on. The significance of this information is often best recognized in comparative studies, as in Sinclair, Jacka, and Cunningham (1996), where shifts in national policies and support systems are linked to changes in production practices. Comparative data can also be found in publications of organizations such as the European Audiovisual Observatory or the European Broadcasting Union. For the study of individual corporations or production companies, some limited information can be found in public corporate records, annual reports, and similar documents. Such documents – especially those aimed at investors in the case of publicly traded media – can be helpful for better understanding the priorities of corporations. More general information such as the size of companies, principal officers, location and address, and recent projects is provided in sources such as the annually published International Television and Video Almanac and the International Motion Picture Almanac. It is far more difficult to obtain access to current corporate records concerning specific projects or corporate strategies. As alternatives, or complements, both original interviews and trade press reportage are valuable for accessing this type of insight, but researchers must be aware that much of the information may be designed for public relations purposes. Information related to the costs and other financial arrangements of particular productions is even more difficult to obtain. Still, generalized budgets are widely acknowledged and are dependent
on the genre. Similarly, high film budgets, such as those reported for Avatar, or low expenditures, such as those for The Purge, are discussed in the trade and general press as directly related to aesthetic choices, creative decision-making, and resulting works. Guidelines for basic rates of pay can also be obtained through guilds and unions. Although much of the detailed economic information that would often be most helpful to production studies remains proprietary and next to impossible to obtain, one of the rare opportunities to see the true accounting of a media production occurs when lawsuits or legal filings are made, as often occurs in disputes over royalty payments and compensation. Such occasions may be unusual, but the depth and precision of legal filings that become part of the public record can reveal hidden practices and arrangements that undergird the economic practices of media production. But financial matters are only part of the complex negotiations leading to media production. It is more difficult still to account for the exercise of power that is involved in bringing a film to the screen or a television program to distribution, because the process involves complicated interactions involving many complex organizations. It is perhaps for this reason that historical production studies, with some benefit of hindsight, have been among the most informative. Works such as Schatz (1988) are based on archival records which, at times, include surprisingly detailed accounts of some of the most complicated, acrimonious, and revealing exchanges in the production of particular films. The accounts of struggles within the creative process are extremely instructive, so long as one remembers that each case is likely to include variations on standard industry practices. Comparable contemporary ‘behind the scenes’ information, while often among the most important sources in these matters, may be the least available. Most of
production budgets
legal filings
The production of entertainment media trade press
trade literature
field research
it must be gathered from the trade press, publications targeted to those who work in particular media industries, which are now often primarily distributed online. Trade publications provide extensive coverage of the financial arrangements within the film, television, cable, new media, music, and legitimate (stage) theater industries. These publications further present detailed information about individual productions, publish running records of box office receipts, provide extensive coverage of countries other than the United States, and frequently offer interpretive analysis of industry changes. Trade sources including Variety, Broadcasting & Cable, Advertising Age, and Hollywood Reporter, for instance, are all helpful for examining the television industry. Other media industries feature publications that attend to their particularity. What might be classified as trade literature is also helpful in developing an understanding of the operation of media industries. These include books by industry journalists about the industry and even biographies and autobiographies of significant figures. Although such works are often more descriptive than expected of academic media research, their detail and authors’ access to decision makers can provide valuable secondary source material. Researchers can also find unexpected material by sleuthing web-based archives. Increasingly, talks delivered at trade shows and other events in which the members of these industries talk among themselves can be found in YouTube archives or slide-sharing sites. Ultimately, in order to develop a broad understanding of any media production, it is necessary to augment such background information with field research. This entails observation of production practices and interviewing of the personnel involved and is frequently supplemented by published interviews and other library sources. Perhaps surprisingly, it is often rather easy for academic researchers to gain access to media production sites,
where creative personnel working on a project are likely to be open regarding the choices they make, though less likely to provide details related to individual power struggles. In other cases, it can be quite difficult, especially when examining the levels of analysis at which creative enterprises operate much more as conventional ‘businesses.’ When access to the day-today functioning of media institutions is impossible, researchers can look for events and opportunities where the media conduct their business in more public locations. For example, Havens’s (2008) research on distribution, already noted, takes advantage of the fact that distribution markets are open to almost anyone able to pay the admittance fees. Similarly, Lotz’s research on US broadcast networks’ ‘Upfront Presentations’ to advertisers (2007) and the television critics’ tour (2005) took advantage of the more liminal spaces of these events. Although she still needed to gain permission for admittance, the semi-public nature of these marketing events made access easier. Additionally, many industries hold regular conferences and meetings, typically organized by trade associations, which similarly provide opportunities to observe aspects of industrial practices or hear key industry practitioners speaking to each other. Some organizations even feature specific programs for and outreach to researchers. Preparations addressing the various contextual levels should precede the analysis of a specific set of creative practices. Even if the research question at hand specifies a study at the level of the individual production, a researcher must first develop an appreciation for where that production fits within larger organizations, industries, and political-economic contexts before entering the field. The more thorough the preparation, the more precise and efficient the observations and interviews conducted in the case study. Demonstrating full preparation also makes it more likely that access
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professional meetings
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Amanda D. Lotz and Horace Newcomb to the production site will be granted by self-conscious professionals. To illustrate these points, and to elaborate the various
levels of analysis in production research, Analysis Box 4.1 identifies key procedures for embarking on fieldwork.
ANALYSIS BOX 4.1 STUDYING MEDIA INDUSTRIES IN THE FIELD Here we reflect on two examples: •
•
the processes used in field visits to a particular production – the original cable television series Any Day Now – produced for the Lifetime cable channel (Lotz, 2004); research investigating the process of buying advertising on US television networks that was carried out at a media buying/planning firm (Lotz, 2007).
Although the information is often quite specific and the research now slightly dated, the tips easily transfer into other contexts and remain relevant. PREPARING THE FIELD VISIT
personal contact as gatekeeper permission of access
Securing access is a crucial first step – and must be achieved even before making extensive plans for the research project. Often this can be done by first contacting the site by letter or email and then following up with a telephone call. A first challenge is figuring out who has the power to grant access. Some sort of personal contact can be quite helpful – consider whether alumni of your university can help make an introduction, or contact a professional organization. Linked In can also be helpful to identify contacts and alumni and to develop a sense of different duties within corporate settings. In Lotz’s research on media buying, she identified the media-buying agency she wanted to study based on seeing one of its executives make presentations at a number of industry conferences. She learned he was involved in the trade organization and asked the trade organization to help facilitate the field visit and introduce her to the executive. Public-facing organizations such as trade groups or labor guilds thus can be helpful in making initial contact. It is helpful to the researcher to plan visits far in advance, even if the day-to-day schedules of media workers may shift at the last minute. It is normally best to secure access months in advance, learn the best time for a visit, and then fine-tune the specifics of the trip a week or two before the planned visit. A key component of the first visit and any early correspondence is establishing a personal relationship with whomever will facilitate the visit. To obtain permission for the visit, the researcher should provide information regarding the purpose of the research, the general topics of study, lists of individuals who might be involved in interviews, and details of an official university affiliation. Such requests are common and natural, and researchers should be prepared to respond in detail. The information is best provided in a succinct letter, two pages at most, that describes the research in general terms and explains the significance of the fieldwork for the larger project. The researcher should also explain how the information will be used and where it might be published. The initial letter or email should outline what the researcher seeks to observe. In the case of the research on the production of Any Day Now, this included being present at writers’ meetings; observing production in progress; and interviewing writers, producers, cont.
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The production of entertainment media
and actors. At this stage, no interviews may be firmly scheduled, especially if there is a component of general observation involved. It is often difficult to pre-plan which aspects of the process will be most beneficial for the larger project or which appointments might have to be canceled later. Because the production of media is affected by anything from an actor’s illness to bad weather, researchers must be prepared to respond quickly to changes in schedules and to seize occasions for gathering information in unexpected and unplanned ways. Frequently, having a few days of observation in advance of interviews helps the researcher to ask more informed and specific questions. LOGISTICS
Once the agreements are confirmed and the visit scheduled, the practical arrangements can be completed through several emails or telephone calls over the next few months. Remember to be formal and professional in all correspondence. The last call before the visit should secure logistical information such as what is needed to get past the security reception common at many production sites and executive buildings. In production research, the daily schedule is often quite unpredictable. In the US television industry, writers tend to work fairly stable eight-hour days from about 10:00 AM to 6:00 PM, but individual writers are also variously involved in general production meetings, depending on whether their script is currently in production or if they are writing an upcoming episode. A production crew works 12-hour days, with each morning’s call time dependent on when work was finished the previous night. Typically, shooting concludes between nine and ten in the evening, and production resumes the next day around noon, although many members of the crew are on hand and preparing earlier. Securing this information early on makes some aspects of production at least partially predictable but hardly controllable. Upon first entry to the site, whoever arranged for the visit will often provide a basic tour of the site and introduce the researcher and the general purpose of the visit. There is no standard length for an observation. In the case of the Any Day Now research, Lotz spent three and a half days visiting the series, a duration largely dictated by the time available to Lotz for this portion of her project. In the case of the media-buying study, she spent two work weeks that largely coincided with the yearly ‘upfront’ buying process. The ‘upfronts’ are a brief period of time in early summer during which 70 to 90 percent of annual advertising budgets are committed to the full year of programming. Despite the relatively brief length of the visits, it was sufficient for the purpose of the inquiries, and because such visits are granted out of professional courtesy, it is unlikely that a longer stay could be arranged except under exceptional circumstances. A few researchers, such as Born (2005), have been able to conduct research on an ongoing basis over a period of years. During a visit, it is frequently the case that many events and meetings are scheduled, canceled, and rescheduled in just a few days, which makes it difficult to plan ahead for every event. What actually takes place during a short visit often must be left to chance. However, even if the visit is thus completed without securing some important interviews, researchers are commonly able to establish a relationship in that time which ensures that additional or follow-up interviews can easily be arranged at a later date or that questions can be answered by phone or email.
follow-up interviews cont.
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Amanda D. Lotz and Horace Newcomb
ON THE SET
the production set
the actors
the production crew
the director
the executive producer
the writers
the writing process
network executives
pilot season
assistants to executive producers
On the set of Any Day Now (and in the media-buying office), Lotz was largely free to do as she wished. If the writers were meeting, she generally sat with them, and when they were out or working independently, she visited the set. Here, the observations were, in part, determined by the concrete production process in film and television, which is very slow going, indeed quite tedious. Production of Any Day Now followed standard television industry practices and protocols. For each scene, the actors come on the set first, rehearse their lines and the ‘blocking,’ the process in which they learn their ‘marks,’ their positions and movements during the scene. Next, the actors move out, and the ‘second team’ comes on: doubles for the actors take their places while the production crew sets the lighting, camera, and audio equipment. The full process may take as much as an hour for a scene of less than five minutes. Once the stage is set, the actors return and perform the scene, which is repeated until the director is satisfied with the ‘take.’ Being present on the set afforded particular opportunities to observe the dynamics among the writer, director, and actors but ultimately far less insight than one might expect. For this particular project, however, observing the writing process and the roles of the executive producers was more important. In their meetings, the central decisions regarding the series concept, the contribution of individual episodes to that concept, and the general social agenda of the executive producers became increasingly clear. During the visit, the writers were working on scripts for the final episodes of the season, planned to air about six episodes after the one in production. The writers used the office of Executive Producer Nancy Miller, a comfortable space lined with overstuffed couches and chairs and decorated with memorabilia from Any Day Now and Miller’s other series. Here, it was possible to observe meetings on each step of the writing process, which followed a well-known and relatively routine procedure. The process began with outlining script ideas and proceeded to the presentation of ideas to Miller, followed by Miller’s discussion of the ideas with the Lifetime executives assigned to work with the show. After securing approval from Miller and Lifetime, the writers would continue to develop the story, and the individual writer assigned to an episode would spend a few days writing alone. In the meetings, Lotz was able to watch the group dynamic of developing and polishing scripts that were in the later draft stages. In other meetings, writers brainstormed ideas for many other possible episodes and discussed the future trajectory of the series with Miller. Not all series use writers’ rooms. In such cases, interviews with writers would be more valuable. One fortunate aspect of this visit was that it occurred during ‘pilot season,’ when the company was in the process of presenting (‘pitching’) ideas for new series to various networks. The environment was constantly chaotic, and it was actually being present within this activity that allowed the best understanding of the overall production process. A significant amount of research time was spent merely sitting in the production company office observing the assistants to each of the executive producers. Lotz developed a relationship with the assistants and gained a great deal of information about the series through talking with them. Their tasks provided additional insight into the ways in which the series was being developed. They also agreed to maintain contact after the visit, making themselves available for inquiries about developments and ratings information and for addressing questions that would inevitably arise during the analysis and writing related to the series. During the visit, it also became clear that there was much to be learned by looking around, listening, and asking simple questions. For example, on the wall in the writers’ cont.
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office was a list of criteria – a reminder to the writers – of the vision the executive producers were aiming for in each episode. Similarly, by being present in the office during the daily telephone calls between the studio and Lifetime, it was possible to develop an understanding of the intricate relationship between the producers and the network airing the series. Because of developments in production, interviews with the executive producers were repeatedly postponed. In some ways, this was beneficial, for as the week progressed, other personnel answered some questions, while new questions arose. It was necessary to be flexible but also persistent in order to get some of the important interviews, for example, finally being granted ‘a few minutes’ during a cigarette break – that ended almost an hour later. Although only some interviews were taped, the recorder was also valuable for reviewing each day’s events during the hour-long commute back to the city. While it would probably have been possible to record the entire writers’ meetings, these were often long, rambling discussions about characters and current events which went on for hours and which might have been inhibited by recording. Instead, it was possible to create notes about specific discussions and to gather information important to the larger study. Staying close to Miller during the week led to attendance at some meetings discussing topics not previously defined in the production research literature. For example, a ‘tone meeting’ was held as part of planning the production of the next episode. Here, the writer, director, and first assistant director met with Miller and went through the script to make sure all the participants agreed on how the episode should be acted and shot in terms of tone and attitude. While the term, ‘tone meeting,’ may be specific to this production company, it is likely that others engage in similar activities but may not have been observed in the process. In another instance, by sheer chance, a promotions meeting was held during the visit and proved an excellent opportunity for gaining information on competing visions of the show held by various participants in the production process. The meeting included representatives from two promotions companies, one hired by Lifetime Television, one hired by Miller and Randall (two of the three executive producers), co-star Annie Potts’s publicist (by telephone), and (also by telephone) a representative from Spelling Entertainment, the parent production company. Much of the information gathered during this field visit confirmed earlier conceptions and ideas related to the program and to the topics of feminism and racism embedded within it (Lifetime is a network that targets women, and the series was about a life-long cross-racial friendship). But other information amplified and refined those ideas and provided details that would not otherwise have been available. The observations and interviews further enabled later stages of the analysis to draw on the multiple perspectives of those involved in the creative and production process. IN THE OFFICE
In the case of observing the upfront buying process at a company that purchases television advertising for major national advertisers, meetings again provided some of the most insightful observations. Media buyers often work around the clock during the upfront period as different firms compete to secure the best deal with each network. Being present during this important time aided Lotz because she could ask about particular note-taking and/vs. recording – Chapter 14, p. 296 cont.
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situations and issues within the client and network negotiations she was observing to build an understanding of this relatively unknown process. Gaining access to these ‘business’ practices is often quite difficult. In the case of the media buyer, the firm had to get the approval of all of its clients to have an observer present. Lotz credits the approval of her project from the top – from the executive who worked with the trade organization, as mentioned – with making this research opportunity feasible. In another similar research opportunity, Lotz needed to sign various non-disclosure agreements. Often researchers are only seeking access to general practices and care little about specific clients so that such legal documents do little to curtail the research project. Researchers should review non-disclosure agreements carefully to make sure they understand what they can and cannot report in their publications before beginning their research. In most cases, the long delay to publication and the circulation of ideas among the small academic community aids the researcher in gaining access to sensitive business environments. In an age of social media and other informal information economies, however, it is increasingly crucial and often more specified in agreements that researchers be sensitive to the privacy requests of those they study and maintain confidences appropriately. Researchers should also follow protocols regarding working with human subjects as required at their specific home institutions or intended publishers that safeguard proper and ethical research behavior.
CONCLUSION Far more examples of media research examining various aspects of industrial organizations, productions, and practices can now be found, so much so as to suggest a burgeoning sub-discipline (Holt & Perren, 2009; Havens & Lotz, 2016). Accordingly, a rich array of conversations about the theories and methods that support this type of study has also begun to emerge (Mayer, Banks, & Caldwell, 2009; Havens, Lotz, & Tinic, 2009; Hesmondhalgh, 2011). Even in this environment of considerable scholarly dynamism, a basic taxonomy such as the levels of analysis we offer remains useful as a preliminary rubric for sketching the relevant range of analytic sites and methods as researchers begin to delimit their studies. This may especially be the case as the growing depth of media industry studies leaves researchers facing new challenges. As a result of the relative paucity of social media – Chapter 10, p. 201 research ethics – Chapter 20, p. 428
entertainment production studies, many among the first generations of studies necessarily provided heavily detailed descriptions of the very processes they analyzed. Few academic scholars had detailed knowledge of industrial production practices and found it necessary to describe basic features prior to attempting more theoretically informed analysis. Future scholarship should build on these sources and focus on analysis rather than repeated description. As Hesmondhalgh (2011) recently commented, although the field has been enriched by newer studies considering the “culture, codes, rituals, representation and discourse” of media production, these analyses have not been “integrated into an explanatory and normative framework of the kind associated with critical social science” (p. 10). It is also crucial that case studies, especially those dealing with individual productions, be carefully considered and assessed for their broader relevance and application. In all but the most novel of cases, it is important to connect specific studies with a more expansive range of
The production of entertainment media
film production vs. television production
practices to draw out information or perspectives that transcend the single case. In this way, discussions of the roles of individuals and particular productions also serve as a reminder that the analytical process should move back ‘up’ the levels of analysis. For instance, in the film industry, creative control is primarily assumed by directors, while writers are relegated to a lower status and involvement, but in the television industry, writers often move into the producer role and assume creative control of a series. Film directors are not under contract but make professional arrangements, through agents and lawyers, to work on individual projects. And, unlike television producers, who are most often directly involved in the creative process, the role of the film producer is generally focused on arranging financing for specific productions. In the context of the more general economic arrangements for entertainment production, still other differences emerge. Film financing is based on income from the national and international box office and home video, which now includes streaming-service licensing revenue. Television financing comes from either advertising or nationally regulated license fees and other support or a combination of the two. These differences in political-economic contexts, which will tend to shape institutional structures, organizational practices, and the consequent roles of individuals, demonstrate how levels of analysis vary from context to context and should be taken into account in concrete production studies. Partly for these reasons, many of the most significant current questions within production research involve corporate mergers, technological innovation and its consequences, and the cultural and other social implications of new industrial configurations. As we suggest previously, when a book may become a movie that becomes a television series that becomes a theme park ride that becomes a video game that becomes a line of toys, production researchers find themselves involved
with new sets of issues. The research process may start with any one of these media products, studying the distinctive work processes at a given production site. But it should ultimately address not only the goals of creative individuals but also the configuration of media organizations with particular industrial strategies which are embedded in, and respond to, largescale political-economic conditions. The current state of entertainment in the United States, and increasingly elsewhere, as defined in part by technological developments leading to more, and more differentiated, distribution outlets, may favor those who work to place their visions on screens, even if viewed by comparatively smaller numbers. Within the commercial political economy, the creative process of producing media entertainment remains complex, dense, and variously inflected by those involved. Particularly at a time when media systems throughout the world are in a process of vital change as a result of economic, regulatory, and technological developments, it is important that comparative studies of production processes be undertaken, including different national and regional contexts. Analyzing these processes in more detail will complement studies of audiences in relation to media products and will help explain the equally complicated responses recorded in reception studies. In this way, our understanding of the social and cultural roles of mediated entertainment will be enriched and more precisely understood. Academic researchers must also remember how their task differs from that of researchers employed by media organizations that operate in the express interests of media industries. Although cross-media production and intertextuality – Chapter 10, p. 200 culturally comparative research – Chapter 11, p. 223 reception studies – Chapter 9 administrative and critical research – Chapter 20, p. 421
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Amanda D. Lotz and Horace Newcomb media practitioners can learn from critical scholarship, the task of the critical scholar is to draw connections among the practices and entities they study and broader social and cultural concerns. The general area of media industry studies has grown considerably, but much remains unknown and needs study. The field needs research, for example, that employs empirical methods to test existing theories about conglomerate operation. Similarly, many significant roles in industry operation lack meaningful analysis, especially analysis based in careful fieldwork. Finally, it is clear that many media industries and the production of entertainment within those industries have faced substantial challenges to long-held
operational norms in the last two decades. Such periods of change provide profound opportunities for the realignment of interests and structural power. Thus, the disruption caused by digitalization and the modifications in established practices required by the necessity of competing in increasingly global media systems may make it beneficial to revisit earlier studies of industry operation. Historical comparisons would sharpen our knowledge of specific cases, of processes of change in entertainment media production, and of the broader theories which we construct and on which we rely. Once again, it is context, ever more important in the fluid or unstable state of media industries, that we most strongly emphasize.
historically comparative research – Chapter 12
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News production Folker Hanusch and Phoebe Maares
• a review of news production research and of journalism as a social field • a five-level systematics of analysis: individual journalists, news routines, media organizations, extra-media influences, and macro-level societal forces • exemplification of different news media, newsroom cultures, news formats, and news beats • an account of the commercial and technological influences on contemporary news production • a discussion of the increasingly porous boundaries of professional journalism
FROM GATEKEEPING THEORY TO A HIERARCHY OF INFLUENCES When one of the oldest Gothic cathedrals in France, Notre-Dame de Paris, caught fire in April 2019, media outlets the world over reported live and at length as its spire and roof burnt and eventually collapsed (Notre-Dame, 2019). At the same time, another fire broke out in a prayer room of the Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem (O’Connor, 2019). As in France, citizens posted videos of it on social media, yet legacy media around the globe focused almost exclusively on the fire in France. Why was this the case? How does information make it into the public sphere, and who decides which events make it into the evening news or the front page? And, in a day and age where anyone can post news such as videos of a burning building, “who makes news, what counts as news, and whose the public sphere – Chapter 1, p. 18
interests does news serve” (Reese & Shoemaker, 2016: 395)? These questions have been occupying journalism research since its early days. At a time when print space and air time were scarce and mass media were the only means of reaching large audiences, the newsroom was perceived as a gate that information needed to pass through to enter the public sphere, with the journalists employed in the newsroom being conceptualized as gatekeepers. This approach to understanding news production goes back to David M. White’s (1950) seminal study, which explored the news decisionmaking process of the wire editor of a local newspaper in the United States. White had been a student of Kurt Lewin, a social psychologist, who some years earlier had developed the concept of gates in relation to the process of decision-making in a family’s food purchases (Lewin, 1947). White adapted this model to news decisions, tracking the news choices of the wire editor – whom he named
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tacit rules of newswork
news as historical construct
external pressures on news production
“Mr Gates” – through the notes Mr Gates provided when he rejected news items. While White acknowledged the existence of multiple ‘gates’ in the form of reporters, editors, and bureau chiefs, as well as the pressure to publish certain stories to keep up with competitors, he explained news selection mostly through Mr Gates’s individual preferences. Early gatekeeping theory thus assumed that ‘news’ is information journalists simply have to select, which, however, ignores many other crucial factors in news production, among them how journalists and editors are socialized in a newsroom. Soon, research would take these factors into consideration. Warren Breed (1955) challenged the one-dimensionality of White’s gatekeeper approach with his study on social control in the newsroom, in which he focused on the tacit rules that are present within the newsroom and are absorbed by journalists as ‘natural’ or given (Shoemaker & Vos, 2009). Further research soon discovered other factors that influence news production; for instance, Michael Schudson (1978) traced the social history of US-American newspaper journalism, illustrating the institutionalization of organizational routines and standards of impartiality. Gaye Tuchman (1972) examined these news routines, the role of interorganizational relationships in news selection, and how strategic rituals maintain shared norms such as objectivity. In his influential and one-decade-long ethnographic work, Herbert J. Gans (1979) added to the understanding of these professional standards in journalistic work and explored the role of external pressures on news production. All these sociological approaches conceptualized news as a product of social interaction within news organizations, within the journalistic field, and among different societal fields (Reese & Shoemaker, 2016). objectivity as strategic ritual, p. 99 social fields – Chapter 8, p. 175
In the 1990s, Pamela Shoemaker and Stephen Reese (1996) organized these forces on newswork into what they called a hierarchy of influences, which has become a key model for understanding news production. The concept is based on five distinct levels, from macro to micro influences, with each level offering a range of factors that shape news production. By dividing news production and journalistic practice into these clearly defined categories, we can identify and analyse influential forces, both structural factors such as market orientation as well as individual factors such as journalists’ agency, which might be informed by their specific ideology. While the model is hierarchical, influence is not uni-directional, and individual attributes can be as influential on news routines and organizational structures as vice versa. At the centre of the model in its most recent form (Shoemaker & Reese, 2014) (see Figure 5.1) lies the individual level, which explores how journalists’ professional identity and ideology, as well as individual attributes like gender or age, affect news production. The next level is concerned with routines of news production and includes practices such as news sourcing and fact-checking, as well as tacit rules and strategic rituals to resolve organizational limits such as time constraints. Third, the organizational level can be used to study the spatial organization and convergence of news production across different media, as well as how ownership affects journalistic work and journalists’ perceived autonomy in news selection and production. The organizational level is embedded in the level of extra-media influences, referred to as the level of social institutions, which includes economic or political influences but lately also the field of technology (Vos & Russel, 2019) and concomitantly the audience, who affect news production as both consumers and contributors. Finally, from a macro perspective, the societal level considers social and cultural differences in
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Societal Level e.g. social and cultural contexts, ideology and power relations
Level of Social Institutions e.g. extra-media actors such as the political and economic fields, or audiences
Organizational Level e.g. ownership or media management
Routine Level e.g. practices and tacit rules such as news values
Individual Level e.g. journalists’ p rofessional identity, gender, age Figure 5.1 A model of news production (adapted from Shoemaker & Reese, 2014: 9)
news production, as well as the ideology and power relations that shape the ways in which news can be produced. Moreover, this level recognizes that “media institutions function within a larger social system, and these systems increasingly span national boundaries” (Reese & Shoemaker, 2016: 404). This chapter critically reviews and explores research on news production with the hierarchy of influences model as the structure guiding the narrative, before discussing three recent key trends in the form of a critique of newsroom-centric research, a review of non-human news production, and a call to investigate new entrants to the journalistic field more closely.
THE INDIVIDUAL LEVEL OF NEWS PRODUCTION The individual level might be the most paradoxical one in the hierarchy of influences, as it “combines personal characteristics and professional variables” (Hellmueller, 2015: 49). In this way, it is seemingly individual (personal characteristics) – including aspects like age, gender, and education – while at the same time
capturing a collective professional ideology through taking into account journalists’ individual roles in a newsroom and their professional experience, as well as their orientation towards their social role. Journalism is widely regarded as an essential societal field; by monitoring and reporting the news of the day, scrutinizing those in power, and offering a place for public debate, it is often ascribed a special role in democratic societies (Gans, 2003; Habermas, 1991). Its objectives to portray ‘reality’ and report the truth are legitimized by normative ideals such as objectivity and autonomy (Deuze, 2005). Along with the goal to provide a public service, adhere to ethical standards, and report news quickly, these objectives make up journalistic ideology. This presupposes that journalists’ personal attributes – like political preferences or personal views on specific societal issues such as climate change – are erased, or at least banished from the process. These key ideological tenets have been used by journalists for more than a hundred years to legitimize the occupation and to create professional standards which raise the credibility of the public sphere – Chapter 1, p. 18
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codes of conduct occupational education
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journalism in society (Tuchman, 1972). In this way, professionalism can be perceived as an attempt by the journalistic field to reduce the risk that personal ideals or attributes like gender might influence news production (Singer, 2003: 143). Professionalism includes the creation of ethical guidelines and organizational codes of conduct, as well as an occupation-specific education, such as university degrees in journalism. Moreover, professional ideology also encompasses journalists’ perception of their role in society, which is considered a manifestation of institutional norms and their professional motivations (Hanitzsch & Vos, 2018). The study of journalistic role perceptions has a long history in journalism research, with early typologies distinguishing between a binary of ‘neutral’ and ‘participant’ roles (Cohen, 1963). Over the past 50 years, more and more roles were added through empirical research, creating a complex canon of how journalists conceive of their work. Most of this work, however, has been descriptive rather than theory driven (for a more thorough discussion, see Hanitzsch & Vos, 2018; Hanusch & Banjac, 2018) and has focused predominantly on Western political journalism cultures (Hanitzsch, 2007; Hanitzsch & Vos, 2018). A noteworthy exception is Hanitzsch’s (2007) conceptualization of institutional roles along three dimensions: interventionism, power distance, and market orientation. These dimensions evaluate whether journalists want to promote specific values or a mission, how they position themselves in relation to loci of power in society, and whether they work in an environment which views journalism as a public good or as a sellable product subordinate to market logic. Positions can be taken along a spectrum, for interventionism between a passive and an active pole, for power distance between an adversarial and a loyal pole, and for market orientation between high and low market orientation. As such, the framework allows for the
examination of journalists in both liberal and emerging or transitional democracies, in political and lifestyle journalism, and in highly commercialized and public-service broadcast journalism. While research on role perceptions assumes that journalists will act in accordance with their views, more recent research questions the linearity of this argument, demonstrating that the relationship between perceived and enacted, or performed, roles is far more complex (Mellado, Hellmueller, & Donsbach, 2016; Tandoc, Hellmueller, & Vos, 2013). Role perceptions are not the only factor often assumed to be influential in news production on the individual level. Gendered experiences in the newsroom can also shape professional experiences (Jenkins & Finneman, 2018). While comparative research shows that gender explains only minimal differences in journalists’ role perceptions (Hanitzsch & Hanusch, 2012) and perceived autonomy (Örnebring, Lindell, Clerwall, & Karlsson, 2016), gender can affect the kinds of skills journalists acquire and which topics they will cover. For instance, De Vuyst and Raeymaeckers (2017) argue that the opportunities for journalists to broaden their technological skills and work in data journalism are gendered. Stereotypes limit female journalists’ chances to work in data journalism, first on the basic level of training, as women often feel less tech savvy, but also in the newsroom, where their skills were regularly doubted and questioned. As a result, female journalists often start doubting themselves and may pursue other forms of journalism. Research has also observed a gender division along different forms of news. Hard news – typically about politics, economics, and current affairs, which tends to be more prestigious and well paid – is more often assigned to male journalists, with women more likely to be assigned to soft news such as lifestyle or humaninterest topics (Schultz, 2007). Similarly, female journalists are more often
gender roles
hard and soft news
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rank and status
subjected to online harassment (Antunovic, 2019). Feminist journalism scholars argue that the newsroom is still grossly gendered, with a masculine culture dominating production processes and even journalistic ideology (Djerf-Pierre, 2007; Zuiderveld, 2011). To make it in the journalistic field, female journalists therefore often adapt to these norms, hiding personal attributes to adhere to professional standards. In that way, female journalists “as a group tend to internalize a negative social identity, according to which they are outsiders” (Lobo, Silveirinha, Torres da Silva, & Subtil, 2017: 1157). Finally, a journalist’s role or position within a newsroom may affect which stories s/he can pursue and whether his/her ideas are perceived as valuable (Schultz, 2007). This appears to be common sense, as someone with a higher rank in a newsroom is most likely an experienced journalist who will be well versed in journalistic routines and will recognize a ‘good story’ when s/he sees one. However, status not only refers to rank within a newsroom but also to whether journalists are employed in an organization in the first place. Occupational security and access to material resources increasingly affect journalists’ opportunities to work on specific stories, be it that they need advance funding for research (Rosenkranz, 2018) or that they have less opportunity to affect editorial decision-making because of their lack of personal contact with the newsroom (Mathisen, 2018). Moreover, freelance and contract work may affect the degree to which journalists can enact a specific role. For example, adversarial, investigative reporting requires financial security (Cohen, Hunter, & O’Donnell, 2019; Örnebring, Karlsson, Fast, & Lindell, 2018), and commercial pressures can reduce journalists’ autonomy (Phillips, 2015). The individual level of analysis thus offers an opportunity to investigate journalists’ influence on news production. However, due to routines and organization- level influences, individual
journalists have very limited capacities to shape the news to their liking. Tanikawa (2017: 328) argues that journalists “operate on two different modes, one for urgent news and another for feature coverage.” His research suggests that personal experiences such as a degree in technology or a preference for specific topics are more influential when journalists choose these topics for feature stories that are not dependent on the news cycle, whereas the routine level, especially news values, tends to decide which stories are covered in urgent news.
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ROUTINES OF NEWS PRODUCTION One way to minimize individual influences on news production has been established through journalistic routines, a tacit framework which mostly informs journalistic practice unconsciously but which can be useful in moments of unexpected events (Schultz, 2007). Reese and Shoemaker (2016: 399) define routines as the “patterns of behavior that form the immediate structures of mediawork,” which include “unstated rules and ritualized enactments.” Journalists internalize these patterns through their on-the-job training and immersion in a newsroom, a process often referred to as ‘socialization.’ In trying to better understand journalistic work, ethnographic research, observational studies, and content analyses have uncovered these patterns, and in doing so have made them tangible. Such research has added to a canon that is taught to aspiring journalists. As more and more journalists are educated at universities, they are thus ‘pre-socialized’ into the profession (Mellado et al., 2013). These professional beliefs “tend to appear as evident, natural and self-explaining norms of journalistic practice” (Schultz, 2007: 194). Journalistic routines, therefore, run in the background most of the time. They include aspects such as working to a deadline, adhering to space limitations and aesthetic requirements, and observing
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Folker Hanusch and Phoebe Maares unwritten rules of news selection (Schultz, 2007), as well as performing strategic rituals like objectivity (Tuchman, 1972; Wahl-Jorgensen, 2013). News values make up one of the most commonly discussed measures to safeguard journalists’ impartiality. They inform news selection and, as the term indicates, aid in deciding which events are worthy of being reported on. News values research has a long history, starting in 1922 with Walter Lippmann’s (1992) observations on public opinion, in which he coined the term. While Lippmann already acknowledged the (necessarily local) audience as a relevant factor for news selection, his writing was heavily focused on US journalism. With their seminal study on the structure of foreign news, Johan Galtung and Mari Holmboe Ruge (1965: 66–71) broadened Lippmann’s news values into a typology that could be useful across cultures. They differentiated between values that would be applicable to journalism anywhere (factors 1–8) and values that were culture-bound (factors 9–12). According to this model, events are more likely to be reported on if they 1 unfold at a speed similar to the news cycle and not slowly over a longer time span (Frequency); 2 pass a certain threshold, such as the intensity of an event or the popularity of persons involved (Threshold); 3 are easily understood and explained (Unambiguity); 4 are relevant for the audience, or if they unfold in culturally proximate locations (Meaningfulness); 5 resemble predictions by news producers (Consonance); 6 are unexpected and rare (Unexpectedness); 7 unfold continuously and have previously been reported on, such as new details of a trial (Continuity); 8 fit into the overall composition of a newspaper, such as a special focus on elections that also includes less prom-
inent events of campaigns, or make the newspaper more balanced among different ‘beats’ or areas of coverage (Composition); 9 refer to elite nations, as their actions are perceived as more consequential than those of other nations (Reference to elite nations); 10 refer to elite people, as audiences might identify more with them and because their actions are perceived as more consequential (Reference to elite people); 11 refer to humans, as this reduces complexity, makes events appear more as an outcome of individuals’ actions, and is more easily presented (Personification); 12 are negative, as negative news more often fulfils the criteria of frequency, unambiguity, consonance, and unexpectedness (Reference to negative information). Over the past 50 years, this typology – as well as others – has been regularly applied in research, but, as Tony Harcup and Deidre O’Neill (2001) pointed out, it needs regular scrutiny and adaptation. In a study of the front pages of British newspapers, they concluded that not all published stories related to events and that positive information was also frequently picked up. Moreover, they showed that entertainment and easily visualized events seem to be important factors in news selection that previously were not considered by research. What is more, they argued that frequency, and with it the idea of ‘newness,’ might not be as relevant for newspapers in an age where other media will report on breaking news much faster. Further, the digital age adds to the complexity, as journalists increasingly apply different news values depending on the platform they report for (Hanusch, 2017; Harcup & O’Neill, 2017). Journalism education teaches these typologies, as well, sometimes in a reduced form. Therefore, journalists with
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a journalism-specific education know widely acknowledged news values by heart, and in making up what Schultz (2007: 190) called the “journalistic gut feeling,” these news values are embodied in everyday news production. Hence, when journalists select news events, this will not take long if they perceive the event to carry one of the acknowledged news values. Selection is less straightforward and more up to debate when events carry less accepted news values, such as anything relating to soft news (Schultz, 2007). Regardless, these institutionalized news values are still dependent on their context and competing stories when constructing newsworthiness. While news values always relate to the audience and which events might be perceived as relevant for them, recent research shows that online journalism caters more and more to what the audience clicks. Web metrics inform journalists about audience preferences, which are increasingly factored into journalists’ selections and might lead to replacing or removing stories that audiences are not interested in (Hanusch, 2017; Tandoc, 2014). Another routine-level pattern comprises similarly tacit rituals, such as the need to be objective, impartial, and balanced in reporting. Objectivity developed into a journalistic norm in US journalism only during the early twentieth century (Schudson, 1978). Indicators to achieve objectivity include journalists’ use of quotation marks and the presentation of supporting evidence or conflicting alternative possibilities. But structuring information in a specific form can also contribute to objectivity. Journalists assume that readers can recognize news when it is presented in an inverted pyramid form starting with the key information, followed by background information (Tuchman, 1972). Gaye Tuchman (1972) conceptualized these patterns to provide objectivity as “strategic rituals” through web metrics – Chapter 13, p. 270
which journalists protect both the credibility of journalism as an institution and their profession. Impartiality and balanced reporting are similar objectives that journalism as a profession has set out to fulfil. These are all interrelated concepts, but each relates to a slightly different aspect of journalistic professionalism. Objectivity can be defined as reporting without subjective views and personal opinions, balance as providing equal space to all opposing views involved, and impartiality as providing a “broad view of the range and weight of opinion on a particular topic” (Wahl-Jorgensen, Berry, Garcia-Blanco, Bennett, & Cable, 2017). These strategic rituals can also be expanded. For example, to make complex matters more relatable and enjoyable to read, journalists use emotions and personal accounts of sources as strategic rituals to maintain credibility and objectivity (Wahl-Jorgensen, 2013). Recent research, however, suggests that the norm of objectivity might be shifting (Hellmueller, Vos, & Poepsel, 2013) and that balance and impartiality as routines might overrepresent some views. For example, journalistic discourse already acknowledges the limits of balance and impartiality when it comes to environmental reporting, as previous journalistic coverage granted climate change deniers too much space (Brüggemann & Engesser, 2017). Moreover, Stephen Cushion and Justin Lewis (2017), as well as Karin Wahl-Jorgensen and colleagues (2017), point out that political journalism often collapses impartiality and balance, which promotes a news cycle focusing on party-political conflict and leaving out a broader range of opinions. The routine level of analysis also includes journalistic practices. Deadline-oriented writing, sourcing, and fact-checking of information follow long-established and internalized patterns such as “verification before dissemination” (Silverman, 2011) and “leg-work,” that is, leaving the newsroom to source
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gatecheckers
business practices
and verify information as the basis of legitimate knowledge acquisition (Reich & Godler, 2017). However, with technological and economic shifts, these practices are changing rapidly. For instance, more and more information is sourced and verified entirely online, as some newsrooms lack resources for “leg-work,” and other societal institutions increasingly use social media to release information (Dodds, 2019). This requires a new set of verification skills of journalists (Lecheler & Kruikemeier, 2016), especially for so-called “gatecheckers” – journalists who monitor social media content and “quickly select, verify, and disseminate visual and textual news and information” (Schwalbe, Silcock, & Candello, 2015: 478). Journalists are increasingly expected to be multi-skilled and to be tech savvy and able to produce not only text but (audio)visual content, as well as making sense of large amounts of data (Kosterich & Weber, 2019). Moreover, many practices are restricted due to economic constraints in the field, which manifests in a lack of time or resources. At the same time, economic shifts require journalists to include more and more management and business practices in their everyday work routine, such as organizational or personal branding (Molyneux, Holton, & Lewis, 2018), marketing, crowd-sourcing, and administrative work to gain funding (Scott, Bunce, & Wright, 2018).
THE ORGANIZATIONAL LEVEL OF NEWS PRODUCTION meso level of analysis
newsroom level and media-organization level
News production is also impacted on the meso level, which concerns the newsroom and the wider media organization, the aspects of news production it favours, and the ways in which it enables and constrains news production. Hanitzsch and Mellado (2011) distinguish organizational influence into newsroom-level influence and media organization-level influence. On the media-organization level, the type of ownership and the
hierarchies of management but also the availability and allocation of resources, as well as the implementation of technology, affect how news is produced. On the newsroom level, every newsroom has its own specific arrangements, even though many news routines are similar for all journalistic media, genres, and beats. These two levels are closely connected. For instance, media owners often imprint traces of their specific worldview through a more or less explicit editorial policy and through newsroom management, limiting journalists’ autonomy in choosing particular topics in their reporting (Deuze, 2007). This influence can be quite subtle and may manifest in different organizational objectives. For instance, a public-service broadcast news organization may have very clear ideas about informing and educating citizens, while a private broadcast news organization may pursue a different goal. These different objectives inform both which news events are selected and how they are reported. Similarly, a newsroom focusing on breaking news will differ – in its spatial organization, rou tines, and distribution of resources – from the newsroom of a specialized magazine, even if they belong to the same news corporation (Boczkowski, 2010). This also includes different perceptions of time and time pressure. Newsrooms focusing on breaking news are characterized by features that constantly remind journalists of time passing, such as multiple screens to monitor news agencies and social media and news channels which enhance a “state of never-ending rolling” (Dodds, 2019: 8). Moreover, managerial decisions about whether, when, and how often journalists will meet to discuss the next day’s newspaper or the next evening’s news bulletin influence how much opportunity and time journalists have to develop ideas and include the perspectives of other journalists (Usher, 2014). Likewise, change in spatial organization has been described as a factor influencing news production. As discussed
public-service and commercial news organizations
perceptions of time pressure
spatial organization of newswork
News production
convergence within and across news organizations
newspaper and online newsrooms
open newsrooms
earlier, two external forces have shaped and transformed newsroom spaces throughout the history of journalism: technological developments and economic considerations. With technological development, and with the aim of synergizing skills and knowledge, the organization of newsrooms has slowly become more open and less hierarchical (Meier, 2007; Zaman, 2013). This is often subsumed under the term ‘convergence,’ which describes: 1) efforts by media companies to merge newsrooms with similar beats but different platforms within one media organization (Dailey, Demo, & Spillman, 2005); 2) multi-skilling individual journalists to “master journalism as a whole” (Deuze, 2007: 147); and 3) collaborations, syndication, and promotion of news content with other media companies (Deuze, 2007; Salamon, 2016). While cross-sectional convergence within one company is often pursued for its innovative prospects, research has shown that the period of transition is not without challenges for journalists and newsrooms, as completely different newsroom cultures may clash (Deuze, 2007). Most existing research has focused on the convergence of newspaper and online-only newsrooms, dissecting the difficulties traditional journalists have with accepting online-only as equivalent to a printed newspaper (Singer, 2003). This “fetishization of the print product” (Usher, 2014: 90) also contributes to the gap between former print-only journalists and their online-only colleagues. While technological change in journalism is eventually integrated into existing norms and practices (Singer, 2005; Tandoc, 2014), open newsrooms are regularly characterized by a “material messiness” (Steensen, 2018: 447) and fluctuation, which may influence how journalists form relationships with their colleagues, which, in turn, socializes them into a newsroom culture developing specific routines and ultimately producing news. Steensen (2018) explored how open spaces influence the adaption of interns to the
newsroom and found that ‘hot-deskers’ – journalists who do not have their own place where they are able to form relationships with more senior journalists who could help and mentor them – have more difficulties understanding a specific newsroom culture and sometimes even the particular technology used. Other news producers, such as freelancers and contingent workers, may also feel left out by ambiguous newsroom norms or when it is unclear who will be responsible for editing and accepting their work (Gollmitzer, 2014). The media-organization level is also characterized by commercial shifts in the journalistic field. Commercialization has been transforming media organizations since the late twentieth century (Picard, 2005). Media companies used to be profitable enterprises for investment back when advertisement revenue was mostly generated through newspapers and commercials on television and radio. Moreover, commercialization and new technological opportunities have driven the emergence of media monopolies; media companies were able to merge content creation, packaging, distribution, and place of consumption in one organization (Picard, 2005; Salamon, 2016). The focus on advertising revenue represents a risk for journalistic news production. With the emergence of cable television, and later the world wide web, information is now widely accessible, but the audiences’ attention span remains the same. This leads to a fragmentation of the audience and, with this, declining advertising revenues. The dependence on advertising, the financial situation, and the competitive environment of a media organization have been conceptualized as key influences on the media organization level (Hanitzsch & Mellado, 2011). These factors affect the infrastructure of a newsroom as well as the content that is produced. Research shows, first, that the infrastructure of newsrooms is increasingly shaped by fewer resources and less time
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less controversial, more entertaining news
homogenization of news
Folker Hanusch and Phoebe Maares to produce news, as employed journalists are laid off and the remaining staff need to cover the same broad spectrum (Ferrucci, 2015). This results in less time to verify information and a decrease in specialized knowledge as well as an increase in the use of public relations material (Nikunen, 2014). Moreover, a lot of newswork, such as editing, is outsourced (Örnebring & Ferrer-Conill, 2016). As freelancers and contract workers increase, wages are declining, which makes these groups especially prone to commercial influences (Cohen, 2015). Second, news content is also affected by commercial influences. To attract larger audiences, news production includes more and more entertaining content and soft news (McManus, 1995), as well as more sensational news (Picard, 2005). More over, commercial news organizations tend to report less controversial information to attract a broader audience, which may lead to relevant criticism not being included if the opinion or taste of the audience is expected to be different. For instance, issues of racism might not be discussed, as they might drive audiences away (Ferrucci, 2015). On the other hand, these media organizations try to produce in more cost-efficient ways by syndicating and sharing content with collaborators and reducing the in-house production of expensive, in-depth reporting (Ferrucci, 2015; Örnebring & Ferrer-Conill, 2016; Salamon, 2016). This eventually results in more of the same content and a homogenization across different media outlet (McManus, 1995). These insights, in sum, demonstrate that while the organizational level is an important consideration, external influences are also crucial to understanding why media organizations manage their newsrooms as they do.
NEWS PRODUCTION AND EXTRA-MEDIA INFLUENCES macro level of analysis
The macro level of analysis identifies and explores the power dynamics involving
different institutions or social fields and journalism, posing the question, among other things, of where the boundaries of the journalistic field lie. In a very basic way, extra-media influences refer to the relations between journalism and “everything ‘outside of’ [the] media organizational boundary” (Reese & Shoemaker, 2016: 402). However, this perspective understates the influence of other institutional fields on journalism as a whole. From a field-theoretical perspective (Benson, 2006; Bourdieu, 1998), the journalistic field is considered a heteronomous field, which means that it is more oriented towards the logics of other fields, such as an economic logic, than towards its own logic and core norms and values. Through socialization processes in the newsroom and routine interactions with actors from other institutions, such as politicians or public relations officers, journalists form relationships and routines which are, again, rendered ‘natural’ or rational (Shoemaker & Vos, 2009). News production relies on these external institutions and can therefore be influenced by them. The most influential external institutions or fields are discussed here: politics, economy, technology, and the audience. Economic and political influences are highly correlated (Hanitzsch & Mellado, 2011); media organizations in highly competitive environments, and those with low economic resources, are more likely to be influenced by these extra-media influences (Benson, 2006). Political influence mostly comprises sources from the political field as well as policy-making when news production is restricted by political regulation (Hanitzsch & Mellado, 2011). The influence can be exerted implicitly or explicitly. For instance, implicit political influence can be observed when journalists have close relationships with politicians or other actors from the political field that limit their ability to be adversarial. Journalists often have to walk a fine line, especially in local and regional contexts, as good relationships
journalism – a heteronomous field
political sources
News production
lawsuits
pseudoinvestigative journalism
with political sources are essential for them and their news outlets to gain exclusive and sometimes confidential information, a key asset in competitive media environments (Dodds, 2019). At the same time, to maintain such good relationships, journalists might be less confrontational or adversarial in their reporting. Explicit political influences include the anecdotal angry phone call from a politician after a story is published or legal action after a story has been printed. While the former may not be as grave, the latter might “deter journalists from further critical reporting” (Örnebring, 2016: 131). If journalists and media outlets do not have the necessary financial resources to settle these lawsuits, they might not pursue investigative reporting in the first place (Gerli, Mazzoni, and Mincigrucci, 2018). Instead, “pseudo-investigative journalism” (Stetka & Örnebring, 2013) is published, which describes news production that calls itself investigative but only serves the “owners’ political or economic interests, or simply publish[es] leaked information without much of an effort to cross-check and elaborate on it analytically” (Stetka & Örnebring, 2013: 420). This political influence is mediated through the organizational level, when either media are state-owned, owners are affiliated with politics, the news outlet is a partisan publisher, or political actors are appointed as board members, which is frequently the case for Italian and Eastern European public broadcasters (Örnebring, 2016). Unsurprisingly, political influence is experienced more strongly by journalists in authoritarian and hybrid regimes and in state-owned media (Hanitzsch & Mellado, 2011). In full democracies, journalists might internalize political influences as mediated through the organizational level. In this case, they become tacit rules about which topics will not succeed in editorial meetings, and journalists will select news stories accordingly (Hanitzsch & Mellado, 2011; Reich & Hanitzsch, 2013).
Economic influence can be exerted in a similar internalized fashion. Thomas Hanitzsch and colleagues (2010) found four dimensions of perceived economic influence which journalists report as moderately important but still more important than political influences. They include external influences such as profit expectations, the needs of advertisers, and market and audience research, as well as internalized advertising considerations, when journalists anticipate the needs of advertisers in news production. In that sense, economic influence on journalists is mostly mediated through the organizational level and public relations officials. For instance, the editor-in-chief or management might exert their power by pressuring journalists not to write about topics concerning powerful advertisers (McManus, 1995; Picard, 2005). This is done covertly through the organizational culture: “In few newsrooms will it be written that a reporter may not initiate critical coverage of major advertisers. . . . Organizational culture normally steers reporters away from sensitive topics” (McManus, 1995: 309). While research has been unable to demonstrate any significant differences in perceived economic influence among journalists working for state-owned and private news media (Hanitzsch & Mellado, 2011), economic influences do appear to affect journalists’ perception of autonomy and job satisfaction (McManus, 1995; Örnebring et al., 2016). In more commercialized media environments such as the United Kingdom, journalists experience less autonomy in decision-making. Economic influences are, again, mediated through discretionary decisions and the workplace hierarchy. While journalists do not feel that external factors directly affect their workplace autonomy, they believe public relations officials try to influence their work (Örnebring et al., 2016). This is in line with the focus on independence in journalistic ideology (Deuze, 2005), with journalists viewing public relations
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lifestyle journalism
technological influences
Folker Hanusch and Phoebe Maares as antagonistic to journalism (Koch, Obermaier, & Riesmeyer, 2018), even though this traditional boundary between the commercial and editorial side of journalism has become more and more porous (Coddington, 2015). Journalists report that public relations practitioners try to influence their reporting by buying advertising space to exert pressure through the owner or management, while PR professionals claim they convince journalists mainly by employing arguments or exclusive information. Commercial influences are especially present in lifestyle beats overall (Hanusch, Hanitzsch, & Lauerer, 2017), as lifestyle journalism is closely connected to consumerism. Lifestyle magazines are particularly dependent on advertising (Duffy, 2013), and lifestyle journalists often rely on public relations material as well as free access to services and products to test them for their audience. This is especially true for travel journalism, where media organizations often rely on tourism agencies to cover travel costs. Interestingly, experience and training seem to provide journalists with a good shield: A study of travel journalists’ perceptions of economic influence showed that journalists with less training are more wary of being potentially influenced in their reporting by free trips and services (Hanusch, 2012a). Less fortunate are freelance travel journalists, who have to walk a fine line between their work for journalistic outlets and public relations (Rosenkranz, 2016). While political and economic influences have long been considered in journalism research, the impact of technology as an institution or field is relatively underexplored. Russell (2019) describes Silicon Valley, or rather innovative technology start-ups, as an emerging institution, as their open-source and hacker ideology can be perceived as an institutional ideology. These companies enable and constrain the news “by influencing the range of technologies available to individuals and organizations” (Russell, 2019: 5). In this way,
Silicon Valley and its products serve as an intermediator between journalism and the audience. In this relationship, the position of the journalistic field is relatively weak (Vos & Russell, 2019). Not only do Silicon Valley and its products hold most of the advertising market share; they also increasingly control social reality through their algorithms. This asymmetrical power relationship is reinforced by the fact that media houses publish on their competitors’ platforms, so that they need the infrastructure provided by Silicon Valley to reach their audiences (Cornia, Sehl, & Nielsen, 2016). Like the majority of other users, few journalists understand the underlying mechanisms of these technological affordances, which makes news organizations highly dependent on the technological field and its enterprises (Mansell, 2012). However, the power of Silicon Valley is relative as it is dependent, in turn, on social-system-level forces. In Europe, for example, Google cannot impose the same constraints on journalists as in the United States (Vos & Russell, 2019), and in China, Google is completely disabled. The dominant form of influence from technology firms on journalism derives from changes in software code and algorithms, which affect both the visibility of content and the activities of users (Vos & Russell, 2019). In this way, the technological field has taken on a decisive role in the gatekeeping process. Technology firms work with coercive incentives. News media fear that their competitors from the journalistic field will reach audiences through platforms such as Facebook and that these might become the only place to reach a wider audience. Thus, they face a dilemma: They use third-party platforms actively because they seek to publish to a wider audience, but at the same time, they may lose control over their content. The technological field, further, exerts influence on both managers and reporters. affordances – Chapter 1, p. 5
algorithmic gatekeeping
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News production
from objectivity towards transparency
While managers feel pressure due to the competition for advertising revenue and have to shift resources to employ social media managers, journalists experience such influence when they try to interact with audiences through social media to enhance readership (Molyneux et al., 2018). This strategy might also interfere with their norms of objectivity, which is why a shift towards transparency as a norm has been observed (Hellmueller et al., 2013). Last, algorithms influence what kinds of stories journalists pursue, as they might be tempted to focus on what content
can gain the most clicks. However, Vos & Russell (2019) argue that technology is most likely affecting journalism as a whole instead of individual gatekeeping choices, because digital platforms “influence which publishers survive as much as which stories surviving news organizations pursue” (Vos & Russell, 2019: 13). Often it is large national or international news organizations that thrive, while local news media struggle. Yet, as much as the technological field controls who can see what, it also empowers the audience and has enhanced their relevance for the journalistic field.
technology as structural influence
ANALYSIS BOX 5.1 THE CASE OF AUDIENCES AS EXTRA-MEDIA INFLUENCES Readers, listeners, and viewers have always played an important role in news production. Nevertheless, technological affordances have shifted more power towards the audience in this relationship, and they occupy a more prominent place in the gatekeeping process. The influence from audiences can be perceived as twofold: First, it has never been so easy for the audience to contribute to news production, and second, technology enables media houses to track every aspect of how their product is consumed. With smart information and communication technologies (ICTs) such as cameras that could record video and take high-resolution pictures, audiences started to contribute substantially to news production. For instance, they provided eye-witness material in the form of photos or videos, which journalists would use; they commented on news stories, providing information on similar news; or they started their own blogs, discussing politics and other topics. Journalism research has tried to capture these practices and their impact on news production, conceptualizing them through terms such as “produsage” (Bruns, 2008), citizen journalism, user-generated content (UGC), and “semi-professional” news production (Nicey, 2016). All these terms refer to different aspects of audience news production, which is extremely diverse and includes producers with varying degrees of experience and training and as such varying understanding of journalistic ideology and tacit rules (Ahva, 2017; Wall, 2015). This broad pool comprises accidental eye-witnesses, regular citizen journalists, bloggers, students aspiring to become journalists, academics contributing to public discourse, activists, and influencers on social media. They are blogging on their personal blogs or on social media platforms such as YouTube, Instagram, or Twitter. They produce for traditional media on an (ir-) regular basis and create content of public interest, informing audiences and media alike, and thus can be discerned from regular users sharing private content (Nicey, 2016). From a functional perspective, this audience news production can be understood as a “mode of public communication that fulfills the same tasks as professional journalism, i.e., the selection and dissemination of current topics for the self-monitoring of society” (Kus, Eberwein, Porlezza, & Splendor, 2017: 357, italics in original). The journalistic field both embraces these new forms of news production and rejects them at the same time. On an organizational level, newsrooms want to foster this form
audiences as news producers
citizen journalism produsage user-generated content
cont.
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social media
photo journalism
in-group and out-group
gatewatching
audience feedback
of audience participation, as it not only provides mostly free content but also engages the audience and might further their understanding of how news production works (Kus et al., 2017). However, Michal Kus and colleagues show that only a minority of audience news production occurs inside media institutions, within special sections of legacy media, or as sources of journalistic reporting. Instead, much citizen journalism takes place on social media, such as traditional weblogging sites like Wordpress, specific platforms for (audio)visual content like YouTube, Soundcloud, or Flickr, or social media networks which enable micro-blogging formats like Twitter or Instagram. By browsing these platforms, journalists and editors gain access to content produced by citizens. The motivation of a news outlet to include audiences’ content varies depending on resources, commercial pressures, and competition. For instance, hyperlocal news outlets could not exist without their various unpaid contributions from citizens (Wall, 2015). As resources for photojournalists in smaller newsrooms decline, more and more news organizations benefit from eyewitness photos (Schwalbe et al., 2015) and especially from semi-professional photojournalists, who have obtained a good understanding of journalistic photo practices and ethical considerations (Nicey, 2016). Journalists, on the other hand, try to maintain the professional boundaries of the field by dismissing the quality of audience news production (Ferrucci & Vos, 2017; Örnebring, 2013; Wall, 2015). This reaction can also be observed among audience news producers themselves. Merel Borger and colleagues (2016), for example, showed that citizen journalists dismissed the quality of the content of others. As soon as their work is discursively valued by journalists, they perceive themselves as members of the in-group and therefore defend the boundaries against other members of the out-group. On the individual level, journalists also have other reasons to be apprehensive towards audience participation: Journalistic practice is affected by these new producers, as journalists are increasingly expected to be facilitators and editors of audience news content (Borger et al., 2016; Wall, 2015). In that sense, the gatekeeping process is expanded to the audience field, so much so that some journalists turn into “gatecheckers” or “gatewatchers” of the visual stream of social media and other platforms (Bruns, 2005; Schwalbe et al., 2015). Moreover, as technology not only enables the production of (audio)visual content but also its manipulation, journalists’ routine gradually comes to include fact-checking audience-produced content and the origin of visuals (Graves, 2016). Beyond actual participation, audiences also increasingly influence news production through their mere consumption of news. In their competition for audiences’ attention, news producers have always monitored audience preferences, tailoring their products accordingly (McManus, 1995). However, while readership numbers, TV ratings, and letters to the editor might have influenced news production on the organizational level for quite some time, new forms of audience feedback are also changing how journalists perceive their role (Hanusch & Tandoc, 2019), as well as how news is selected and presented (Cohen, 2018; Hanusch, 2017). These forms of audience feedback include the opportunity for audiences to comment on specific stories and the growth in web analytics which measure audience behaviour in real time, as well as interactions between journalists and audiences on social media (Hanusch & Tandoc, 2019). Web analytics, in particular, has gained in relevance in newsrooms in highly competitive and financially unstable environments (Tandoc, 2014). cont.
web analytics – Chapter 13, p. 270
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When it is essential to attract audiences, web analytics enhances commercial pressures for journalists (Cohen, 2018; Hanusch & Tandoc, 2019). This institutionalizes web analytics in the newsroom (Tandoc, 2014) and transfers financial responsibility onto the individual level; journalists are at once aware of their precarious work conditions and “feel responsible for the profitability of their company” (Cohen, 2018: 13). Adding to these conditions is the fact that newsrooms rarely offer formalized training in the use of web analytics, leaving journalists to figure it out for themselves (Tandoc, 2014). This can have effects on journalists’ mental health, as Nicole Cohen (2018) reports, with journalists feeling a sense of addiction to the numbers, feeling demoralized by the lack of interest among their audience, as well as exhaustion. Moreover, web analytics influences news production, so that the number of views and the time spent on a story affect journalists’ news values and their writing and editing style (Cohen, 2018). When statistics are omnipresent, keeping the numbers up can evolve into the main objective, and eventually “the impact on editorial priorities and . . . role conceptions and market orientation can be quite significant” (Hanusch & Tandoc, 2019: 709). Based on previous performance, journalists select topics, write headlines, and select visuals (Cohen, 2018; Lamot & Paulussen, 2019; Tandoc, 2014). This practice includes adapting content for specific audiences depending on the time of day and the platform; headlines and visuals for the homepage will change throughout the day and will differ from those for both Facebook and Twitter. In fact, this could be perceived as a differentiation of journalistic practices where journalists “may activate certain practices, norms and values strategically at different times within a day, depending on what analytics tells them about their audience” (Hanusch, 2017: 1583).
THE SOCIETAL LEVEL OF NEWS PRODUCTION From the themes discussed in this chapter so far, it is safe to say that journalism is a very heterogeneous occupation. There is not one type of journalism, “not even within national cultures” (Reese & Shoemaker, 2016: 398), and this is due to different types of media organizations, newsroom cultures, media formats, and beats. It can make a difference whether journalists work in the United Kingdom or Germany; whether they have been socialized and are working in a widely recognized legacy outlet such as The New York Times, a new player such as Buzzfeed, or a local newspaper; whether they work for television news, weeklies, or a multi-media platform; and whether they report mainly on current affairs and politics, travel, or other topics. Explanations for broader differences across countries
can often be found on the social-systems level, which is defined as “an aggregation of subsystems, such as political, economic, cultural, and mass communication” (Shoemaker & Reese, 2014: 64, italics in original). While we often think of nation states when referring to the social systems level, we could also conceptualize this factor of influence as the culture – the specific field of power – in which journalism is carried out. However, the nation state has a strong impact on how journalistic ideology is constructed and which aspects are perceived as more important than others (Hanitzsch, 2011). Comparative research on journalism has thus gained considerable popularity over the past 20 years. While much journalism research in the twentieth century tended to focus on journalism as a social field, p. 94
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Folker Hanusch and Phoebe Maares single-nation contexts, there now exists a wider awareness of the benefits of cross-national research to better understand social-system influences. Such recent research has included studies of journalists’ professional views (Hanitzsch et al., 2010; Weaver & Willnat, 2012), journalism students (Mellado et al., 2013), news content (Aalberg et al., 2013; Shoemaker & Cohen, 2012; Wilke, Heimprecht, & Cohen, 2012), and journalists’ role performance (Mellado et al., 2016). A recent review of comparative journalism studies showed a marked increase in such research, with more, and more complex, multi-nation studies (Hanusch & Vos, 2019). Political and economic factors have been at the forefront of attempts to explain differences across nations, as has, more recently, a focus on cultural influences. In terms of political and economic factors, a seminal model was Siebert, Peterson, and Schramm’s (1956) famous Four Theories of the Press, which posited four theories – authoritarian, libertarian, social responsibility, and Soviet Communist – that sought to explain why the press was the way it was in different countries. Based on contextual aspects such as the nature of humans, the nature of society and the state, the relation of citizens to the state, and the nature of knowledge and truth (Siebert et al., 1956), the theory came to be a key influence in the field, despite a range of shortcomings. In the authoritarian theory, the press was conceived of as a servant of the state, acting as mouthpiece for those in power, while in the libertarian theory, the press served as a check on government. In the social responsibility theory, the press was – similar to the libertarian model – considered free but with obligations and responsibilities to society, while in the Soviet Communist theory – an offshoot of the authoritarian theory – the press was a servant not of the normative theories of communication – Chapter 20, p. 413
state but of the Communist Party (Siebert et al., 1956). These forces on the ideological level were considered to affect news production in more or less opaque ways. Overtaken by geopolitical events, and considered ideologically biased, the 1956 theory has been supplanted by others in more recent times, the most popular among which is the work of Daniel Hallin and Paolo Mancini (2004), who developed three models of media systems in Western Europe and North America. Hallin and Mancini identified four key contextual factors shaping media systems in 18 Western democracies, which included the level of development of media markets, political parallelism (links between political actors and presses), the development of journalistic professionalism, and the degree and nature of state intervention. They proposed three models: the Liberal or North Atlantic Model, its main feature being the influence of market forces and the predominance of commercial media; the Democratic Corporatist or Northern European Model marked by a mutually beneficial relationship that exists between commercial media and media that are tied to social and political groups; and the Polarized Pluralist or Mediterranean Model, which represents a mix of weaker commercial media and a more active relationship between, on the one hand, journalism and, on the other hand, party politics as well as the state. The contextual factors which Hallin and Mancini identified operate on and across the various levels already discussed, in particular the individual, organizational, and extra-media levels. Taken together, however, they also arguably form an ideological background which informs news production (Strömbäck & Shehata, 2007). Other approaches from a critical and cultural studies tradition have tended to focus specifically on aspects of ideology and hegemony in this regard and have been interested predominantly in the power relations that shape the news (Entman & Rojecki, 2000).
media systems analysis
News production
religious traditions
individualist and collectivist cultures
A further important aspect of socialsystems analysis relates to the role of culture in journalistic processes. Itself complex because of the wide range of how people employ the term, culture is here defined as the “rich complex of meanings, beliefs, practices, symbols, norms and values prevalent among people in a society” (Schwartz, 2004: 43). The study of culture and cultural values has a rich tradition in fields like anthropology, political science, and cross-cultural psychology (see, for example, Hofstede, 2001; Inglehart, 1997; Rokeach, 1973; Schwartz, 2004). In the study of news production, the concept of culture is used in two ways. On the one hand, scholars are interested in communication as “a symbolic process whereby reality is produced, maintained, repaired, and transformed” (Carey, 1989b: 23). One example of such work is the study of journalism’s role in making sense of high-impact events through narratives that resonate culturally with their audiences, such as reporting on high-profile deaths (Hanusch, 2010; Kitch & Hume, 2008). A second strand is interested in cultural influences on news production, which includes a focus on broader cultural values in national contexts. These values are seen as being one factor among others that shape the way news is portrayed. For example, a comparative study of newspaper coverage of the 2010 Haiti earthquake showed that different religious traditions could at least partly explain the amount of graphic images that were shown (Hanusch, 2012b). Other studies have explored differences between Asian and Western news production, arguing that the extent to which societies are individualist or collectivist could explain some differences (Chang & Massey, 2010; Kim & Kelly, 2008). These cultural differences the concept of culture – Chapter 11, p. 214 the ritual model of communication – Chapter 1, p. 13 media events – Chapter 8, p. 176
have also repeatedly been used by politicians but also academics to propose new models of journalism that are better aligned with local cultures, for example, in Southeast Asia and Africa (Kasoma, 1996; Xu, 2005). Indeed, a growing number of studies has shown that cultural values can play an important role in news production in Indigenous contexts across the world (Grixti, 2011; Hanusch, 2015; Pietikäinen, 2008).
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OUTLOOK: RECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN NEWS PRODUCTION RESEARCH Throughout this chapter, we have reviewed influences on journalistic news production within a conventional framework of what constitutes journalism, namely, newswork that is done by employed journalists within a legitimized organization. However, there are reasons to broaden the scope, since more and more news is produced outside the newsroom. We will, therefore, end this chapter with recent developments in journalism research, presenting a critique of newsroom-centric research, a brief review of non-human news production, and a call to investigate new entrants to the journalistic field more closely. Traditionally, journalism research has closely focused on mainstream journalism and more precisely elite and print journalists (Hanitzsch & Wahl-Jorgensen, 2009), construing an “assumed homogeneity of the profession” (Deuze & Witschge, 2018: 168) in which everyone and everything that does not resemble legacy (print) newswork is referred to as marginal and divergent. A newsroom-centric approach to journalism, however, excludes many producers who regularly contribute to news production. Studies employing a very narrow definition of journalists, for instance, requiring full-time employment in legacy media, may not be able to fully detect the dynamic process of journalism, limiting our understanding of contemporary
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stratified spaces of newswork journalism as networked practice
non-human actors of news production
Folker Hanusch and Phoebe Maares journalistic practice and of the contexts in which journalistic content is produced. In recent years, journalism research has seen a shift in this regard, with scholars criticising the newsroom-centricity in studies of news production and proposing frameworks that might better accommodate other news producers, such as conceptualizing journalism as a stratified space of work (Cohen, 2018; Örnebring et al., 2018) or a networked practice beyond journalistic organizations and recognized actors (Deuze & Witschge, 2018). Both frameworks include legacy journalists as well as various forms of atypically employed journalists such as freelancers and entrepreneurial journalists, but also actors who do not necessarily perceive themselves as journalists but who contribute to news production, as well as non-human entities. The role of non-human entities in news production has already been mentioned earlier in this chapter, in the form of algorithms and web analytics. Seth Lewis and Oscar Westlund (2015) conceptualize them as ‘nonhuman technological actants,’ which partake in the production, distribution, and consumption of journalistic content in numerous ways. As “material objects that are notable for their association with human actors and the activities they undertake in conjunction with such objects” (Lewis & Westlund, 2015: 23), these non-human technological actants are socially constructed by humans (not necessarily journalists), and their role in journalism can only be understood through their relationships with humans (Lewis, Guzman, & Schmidt, 2019), even if journalists are not fully able to understand the underlying mechanisms of these technological affordances (Mansell, 2012). This process also includes the cultural norms and practices that are associated with non-human entities (Lewis et al., 2019). Non-human technological actants influence news production on various levels. For instance, algorithms and web
analytics can impact the selection and filtering of news. Content management systems (CMSs) and interfaces change the processing and editing of content, as well as the spatial availability of content distribution, as these systems can also be accessed from the road (Cohen, 2018). Code and scripts (often provided by non-traditional actors from the technology sector) enable data journalists to scrape and analyze large amounts of data (Baack, 2018). Machine learning enables automated fact-checking and journalism (Carlson, 2015), while social media constitute an omnipresent non-human technological actant that provides an “ambient” awareness system of what is happening in the world (Hermida, 2010). Journalists engage with these actants and adapt their own behaviour and norms; for instance, to train machine learning for automated journalism, they have to “think like the machine” (Lewis et al., 2019: 12). At the same time, as machines are products of humans, they inevitably include the possibility of bias (Carlson, 2015) – treating non-human technological actants as more objective and impeccable might do journalism as a whole a disfavour. Recent studies which explore these effects find that journalists are frustrated with machine learning and its limits (Thurman, Dörr, & Kunert, 2017) and that audiences perceive human-written news to be of higher quality but automated journalism as more credible (Haim & Graefe, 2017). The emergence of these technological affordances has also introduced many new actors to news production. Research on the boundaries of journalism has explored many of them as ‘others,’ as new entrants, “strangers to the game” (Belair-Gagnon & Holton, 2018), or interlopers (Eldridge, 2014). For instance, studies have investigated the place of various actors in the journalistic field and how they challenge or maintain machine learning – Chapter 15, p. 314 social media – Chapter 10, p. 201
content management systems
scripts
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News production
explicit interlopers
implicit interlopers
intralopers
journalism’s core values: political bloggers (Vos, Craft, & Ashley, 2012), new actors such as Wikileaks (Eldridge, 2014), venturebacked news start-ups (Carlson & Usher, 2016), fact-checkers (Singer, 2018), civic tech organizations (Baack, 2018; Cheruiyot, Baack, & Ferrer-Conill, 2019), and influencers (Maares & Hanusch, 2018). By framing these contributors as marginal or peripheral, research, once again, maintains the core of legacy, newsroom-centric journalism as the legitimate variety and conflates all other forms of news production as an ‘outsider’ or ‘other’ (BelairGagnon & Holton, 2018). However, as these ‘other’ forms gain in relevance, a more nuanced typology is needed. Valerie Belair-Gagnon and Avery Holton (2018) differentiate between explicit interlopers, implicit interlopers, and intralopers. Explicit interlopers comprise a group of non-traditional actors – critical political bloggers, Wikileaks, or influencers – who challenge journalistic authority and compete with news organizations for the audience’s attention through their content production and distribution. Implicit interlopers are also non-traditional actors, often with a background in programming and coding. For instance, civic hackers or entrepreneurial fact-checkers do not overtly challenge journalistic practice but change it by offering technological applications and contributing to news production. Journalists more easily accept these and their contributions, even though implicit interlopers often do not perceive themselves as journalistic actors (Baack, 2018). Last, intralopers are located within traditional news
organizations and might have journalistic training or at least a good knowledge of journalistic norms but are not employed as journalists. Belair-Gagnon and Holton define them as strangers to journalism because they offer non-journalistic expertise and knowledge and can thus disrupt journalistic practice, even though they may have less impact than implicit and explicit interlopers because they are more limited by institutional norms. By broadening what we understand as news production, this typology helps to explore how journalistic culture might be changing in several different directions. To end this chapter, it should be stressed that the focus on change may run the risk of overstating the enormity of the ongoing transformation of news production processes. For much of the first two decades of the twenty-first century, scholarship has placed exceeding emphasis on what is changing in journalism, perhaps at the expense of the constants that still pervade the production of news. As Henrik Örnebring (2016) has pointed out, the technologically and economically induced transformation of news production is perhaps not quite as dramatic as has been widely proclaimed. In fact, radical change has always been part of the profession, even as far back as when printed newspapers first emerged. It is therefore important that studies of news production approach this issue from a perspective of ‘temporal reflectivity,’ which contextualizes emerging phenomena and critically questions whether they really constitute a break with the past (Carlson & Lewis, 2019).
the emergence of newspapers – Chapter 12, p. 238
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6 • • • • •
Analysing news discourse Darren Kelsey and Lyndon Way
an illustration of quantitative-qualitative synergies in the study of media texts a characterisation of critical linguistics and its contribution to media studies an elaboration of critical discourse analysis and its application to different media genres an account of multimodal aspects of discourse analysis and their place in the study of online news a case study of Turkish media coverage of Brexit
INTRODUCTION This chapter offers a qualitative approach to critical media research from a discourse-analytical perspective. This is not to suggest that qualitative approaches are the only valid method for analysing news and journalism. Quantitative methodologies (Baker & McEnery, 2015; Baker et al., 2008; Gabrielatos & Baker, 2008) provide useful toolkits for highlighting large-scale patterns and frequencies in, for example, news media. Genres, themes and words can be quantified to show what is commonly (or not) occurring in news coverage of particular issues. Furthermore, quantitative research can show what issues are (or are not) receiving adequate attention in news coverage. In other words, quantitative methods are effective for showing ‘what’ is present in news media. The opening section provides examples of synergies between quantitative and qualitative methodologies to show how quantitative data can often provide indicative insights on large datasets
that stimulate further qualitative analysis. So this is not a chapter that rejects quantitative methodologies – they are undoubtedly very useful – but our primary aim is to introduce readers to qualitative methodologies that are appropriate for critical media research on texts and images. More specifically, this chapter should show students, scholars and researchers how to navigate the methodological landscape of discursive, semiotic and multimodal approaches to analysing news media. We begin with critical linguistics (CL), which accounts for the social production of language in news texts (Fowler, Hodge, Kress, & Trew, 1979; Trew, 1979; Kress, 1983; Fowler, 1991; Bell, 1991; Hodge and Kress, 1993). We then review how frameworks in CL developed into models of critical discourse analysis (CDA), which offered genre-specific approaches designed to rigorously interrogate the power dynamics that operate semiotics – Chapter 2, p. 34
Analysing news discourse through: the language of journalistic texts, the discursive practices of production and consumption involved in news stories, and the social contexts in which they are situated (van Dijk, 1988a, 1988b, 1991; Richardson, 2007; Kelsey, 2015c). We next consider more recent developments in CDA, which have expanded beyond the central focus on linguistics to consider the multimodal dynamics of discourse in news media (Machin & Mayr, 2012; van Leeuwen and Kress, 2011). By continually adapting to technological developments in the production and consumption of news, these multimodal approaches have come to focus on the significance of specific features in online news (Kelsey, 2015a; Bednarek & Caple, 2012; Caple, 2013; Knox, 2007, 2010; Way & Akan, 2017). Following some attention to these approaches, we provide a case study to demonstrate how multimodal discourse analysis can be applied to news media texts. Our analysis focuses on Turkish media coverage of Brexit. This shows how those tools introduced throughout the chapter can be used to expand the interdisciplinary and transnational research that has already begun to scrutinise media and political storytelling in relation to Brexit. For now, in order to provide some context to qualitative methodologies, let us briefly consider those quantitative-qualitative synergies we mentioned a moment ago.
QUANTITATIVE-QUALITATIVE SYNERGIES Content analysis is a quantitative research method that counts the number of times particular words, themes and other textual characteristics occur within a sample of, for example, news stories. Our brief attention to this approach is important because it clarifies three key considerations that are significant to quantitative-qualitative synergies: the positive role of content analysis (Kerlinger, 1986; Krippendorff, content analysis – Chapter 13, p. 273
1980); the limitations, like any approach, to content analysis as a standalone method (Berger, 1998; Hansen, Cottle, & Negrine, 1998); and examples of studies that have successfully adopted content analysis to supplement discourse analysis (van Dijk, 1991; Kelsey, 2015c). Kerlinger (1986) defines content analysis as a systematic method; the process of coding and counting should remain uniform throughout the analysis. If there is more than one researcher, then these uniform guidelines for coding and analysing content must be reliably and consistently followed throughout the research. This means that the researcher’s bias should not affect the procedures of analysis, and if the analysis were repeated by anyone else, then the same results should be produced. For this reason, content analysis enables researchers to make “replicable and valid inferences from data to their context” (Krippendorff, 1980: 21). At the same time, it is worth noting that “the interests, beliefs, and maybe even the personalities of researchers are important for these factors may play a role in determining what researchers choose to investigate” (Berger, 1998: 26). After all, it is the researcher who decides what to look for (or code) when designing and conducting content analysis. There are questions that the researcher has set out to answer and frequently a particular ‘problem’ that the research intends to tackle (Hansen et al., 1998; Deacon, Murdock, Pickering, & Golding, 1999; Richardson, 2007). Furthermore, when drawing conclusions from quantitative data, a particular political stance or theoretical framework will influence interpretations of the data (Philo, 1982: 134). Nonetheless, content analysis is still a helpful method for gathering numerical data from large samples prior to a qualitative analysis on a smaller number of texts. But quantitative interpretations of data cannot apply the depth and complexity that are needed to address the wider political and social significance not just of what newspapers write but how newspapers
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Darren Kelsey and Lyndon Way write and construct social reality. This is what influenced Richardson in his work on the media coverage of Islam, which developed from “quantifying the patterns across a sample of media texts (content analysis) into a project aimed at examining meaning within texts and relationships between these meanings and the wider processes of media production and consumption” (Richardson, 2007: 20). Hence, content analysis has been effectively synergised with other research methods. As Hansen et al. have argued, content analysis “should be enriched by the theoretical framework offered by other more qualitative approaches” (1998: 91). There have been conflicting views in the field of media research regarding whether the preferred choice of method should be quantitative or qualitative. However, most researchers in this field have realised “that both methods are important in understanding any phenomenon” (Wimmer & Dominick, 2000: 49). Hence, quantitative-qualitative synergies can provide rich and insightful data analysis. Teun van Dijk’s (1991) seminal Racism and the Press exemplifies this combination of approaches to the study of language use in the news. Focusing on British and Dutch newspapers, it “complements” the many studies on racism that examine the “macro-level, societal or political aspects of racism” by considering the “the micro-levels of actual expressions, manifestations and mechanisms of the reproduction of racism” (van Dijk, 1991: 5). This is achieved through a synergy of content analysis and critical discourse analysis. Content analysis is used to “establish what is being said or written . . . in terms of global topics and local meanings . . . [while] textual analysis pays special attention to how such contents are formulated” (p. 6). For example, van Dijk first uses content analysis of headlines to determine the most frequent words, the frequency of actors and the frequency of relations to determine what is being communicated to readers. He then examines
the headlines from a critical discursive approach to “reveal the ideological implications of the headlines, that is, from which socio-political position the news events are defined” (p. 62). Here he considers lexical choices, grammatical structures and the representation of actions in headlines, as well as style, rhetoric, argumentative or narrative structures and conversational strategies to determine how such contents are formulated. Similarly, in Kelsey’s research on newspaper responses to the July 7th 2005 bombings in London, he used content analysis to highlight the prevalence of references to the myth of the Blitz and the Second World War on the days following the bombings. By counting sources, words, phrases and themes in a large sample of 257 newspaper articles, content analysis showed when these discourses were most prevalent, which newspapers and sources featured them, how Londoners and perpetrators were described and which discursive themes appeared most often. In doing so, content analysis provided a quantitative overview of a large sample. The three figures provide examples of the quantitative data presented in Kelsey’s (2015c) findings, showing where the references featured, when they occurred and what the stories were about (Figures 6.1 - 6.3). The prominent discursive themes from these data were then used to determine the structure and focus of the qualitative analysis. As Kelsey points out in his discussion of the statistical data, many of the same “words, phrases and themes occurred in different discursive contexts and often served oppositional interests” (Kelsey, 2005c: 75). For example, there were 55 articles that mentioned the Second World War in relation to British foreign policy (mainly Iraq or Afghanistan) but a range of discursive contexts occurred within these articles: Some were discussing the war in Iraq because they were dismissing it as a motivation for the July 7th attacks, whilst other articles were proposing that
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Independent Sun Times Daily Mail Mirror Guardian Express Telegraph People Star 0
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Figure 6.1 Number of articles in individual newspapers
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Figure 6.2 Articles across sample period: July 8th – August 8th 2005
there was a link between Iraq and the bombings. Iraq was sometimes a topic of debate in both support for and criticism of the Tony Blair government (which led the United Kingdom into the Iraq war) in different discursive contexts.
Likewise, in discourses on the Royal Family, whilst the Queen was often used as a metaphor for British defiance and cross-generational unity, her role was sometimes used to ostracise Blair by contrasting his unworthy status with that
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Biggest threat since the Second World War Discourses of British foreign policy
Discourses of Royalty Discourses of international unity
London can take it / Business as usual Discourses of the economy 0
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Figure 6.3 Second World War discourses
of the Queen and of Winston Churchill during the Second World War. Thus, the discourses around Blair were mixed in critical and uncritical contexts across the discursive fields that Kelsey quantified. Even when the Blitz spirit was invoked in references to the British public, Blair was often ostracised in this context. So Kelsey’s qualitative analysis was able to shed further light on the complex role that Blair played in these stories through attention to different ideological contexts. As we can see, the quantitative data were very useful in highlighting the prominence of some discursive components, but they did not account for the “contextual nuances that reflect how this language was used” (Kelsey, 2015c: 75). Hence his qualitative analysis used critical discourse analysis to go beyond the data by exploring the ideological battleground of Blitz mythology that occurred in those discursive fields. These are useful examples of projects that adopted quantitative methodologies to supplement discourse analysis. As van Dijk (1991) and Kelsey (2015c) have shown, if quantitative analysis is conducted exclusively, it lacks the contextual depth of insight that qualitative analysis
can provide. But this is not a criticism of content analysis. Rather, it demonstrates the importance of methodological synergies wherever possible since all methodologies have their limitations. Likewise, when qualitative analysis is conducted exclusively, it cannot make generalisations or observations beyond the case concerned – it does not provide the quantitative evidence to do so. Researchers should scrutinise any instance in which a qualitative case or example is used to make broader, representative claims. The ‘how’ of discourse is important, since it addresses the functional role of language and representation in news media. In other words, language is a tool of communication that is used with purpose – language in news media involves ideological practices. Hence, the linguistic and semiotic frameworks of discourse analysis help to show how news discourse operates within the cultural and ideological complexities of the societies in which it is produced. But before we get to CDA and those multimodal synergies that have influenced its expansive analytical scope, let us consider its predecessor that formed the foundations for CDA to flourish.
Analysing news discourse CRITICAL LINGUISTICS
nominalization passivization
Critical linguistics provided the foundations of linguistic frameworks designed to critically interrogate journalistic material in relation to power and society (Fowler et al., 1979; Trew, 1979; Kress, 1983; Chilton, 1985; Fowler, 1991; Hodge and Kress, 1993). With its connections to Halliday’s (1978) systemic functional linguistics, CL’s focus on grammar and ideology provided an ideal framework for analysing language in political environments and critical contexts, such as newspapers. In Language and Control (1979), Fowler et al.’s seminal work developed CL by relating micro-analytical techniques to more macro-orientated contexts such a class structure and social power, which were significant to journalism studies. This work laid the foundations for expansive CL research on media texts that would provide the roots to CDA. Amongst various innovations, Trew’s (1979) work on linguistic variation and ideology in newspaper discourse became a milestone text that paved the way for the introduction of CL to critical media research. He showed how various linguistic mechanisms such as nominalisation and passivisation, which later became familiar analytical traits in CDA, functioned in news stories. In doing so, Trew developed “systematic ways of isolating ideology in discourse to illustrate further aspects of the linguistic expression of the relations of newspapers and ideologies to social processes” (1979: 118). For example, Trew’s (1979) work on press coverage of the 1977 Notting Hill Carnival showed how print news covered social violence through different language choices across texts that reflected the ideological interests of particular news sources, according to their accounts of different social groups and their agency. Most importantly, whilst this work showed how CL could be applied in journalism studies, this was only on the condition that the linguistic frameworks
applied could capture the specific generic context and cultural landscape of the press. As a former journalist, Bell’s (1991) work adopted this ethos. Bell was particularly astute in the insights he brought to CL: His ability to introduce practical and environmental analysis of news production shed light on how language is a product of explicit functional processes of the newsroom. Bell’s work covered a range of practical journalistic factors to show how the production of a news story determined its structure and narrative. His experience meant he could both account for the newsgathering processes of a newsroom and explain the values behind processes of news storytelling. For media scholars adopting the innovative but complex frameworks of CL theory in journalism studies, Fowler (1991) also provided an accessible approach. Fowler addressed the micro structures of language and power through to the macro ideological contexts of newspapers and their editorial values. He argued that the news media often reproduce the dominant order due to the ideological influence of those in positions of power. Powerful institutions “provide the newspapers with modes of discourse which already encode the attitudes of a powerful elite. Newspapers in part adopt this language for their own and . . . reproduce the attitudes of the powerful” (Fowler, 1991: 23–24). Fowler provided a series of case studies, including discourses discriminating on the basis of gender and differential social power, discursive constructions of public opinion and consensus in newspapers, and the argumentative generic conventions and forms of modality that newspaper editorials adopt in their style of ‘connecting’ with readers. Fowler argued that language is always produced by sources with their own ideological interests: “Anything that is said or written about the world is articulated from a particular ideological position: language is not a clear window newsroom studies – Chapter 5, p. 100
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Darren Kelsey and Lyndon Way but a refracting, structuring medium” (1991: 10). Fowler’s approach was a welcome effort to explicitly address interdisciplinary nuances (through connections to media studies) that valued the work of critical media research (Philo, 1982) but was also committed to a more sophisticated understanding of language in media texts: The ‘standard position’ of current students of the media is that news is a construct which is to be understood in social and semiotic terms; and everyone acknowledges the importance of language in this process of construction. But in practice, language gets relatively meagre treatment, when it comes to analysis: the Glasgow Group, and Hartley, for example, are more interested in, and better equipped technically to analyse, visual techniques in television. (Fowler, 1991: 8) By Fowler’s admission, there are multiple dimensions and discursive components in the construction of any newspaper text that are beyond the scope of CL. The layout, images, headlines, typography and other representational elements of newspapers are not considered in his analysis. Particularly in the world of online news, stories are constructed through unique and complex textual and digitally interactive layouts that require multimodal frameworks to analyse them in their entirety (Bednarek & Caple, 2012; Knox, 2007, 2010). But Fowler was justifiably content in his focus on language from a CL perspective through a framework designed to do a specific job: to interrogate the social and ideological role of language in the news. He further acknowledged the importance of understanding contextual circumstances and processes of production behind news discourse, which his peers such as Bell (1991) had demonstrated the significance of. Subsequently, developments in CDA since CL have sought to
further address the practical and contextual complexities of news content beyond exclusive analyses of language.
CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS A significant step in the development from CL to CDA came in the work of van Dijk (1988a, 1988b, 1991, 1998). This work presented a new, interdisciplinary approach to critical media analysis through a framework of discourse analysis and social cognition. Van Dijk differentiated this approach from other critical media and communication research: We . . . find that few approaches pay sufficient attention to the study of news as discourse in its own right. This is particularly true of the macrosocio logical approaches to news. We also believe that the cognitive dimension of news production and understanding has been neglected. (1988a: 2–3) From a discourse-analytical grounding, van Dijk has always argued that news should be studied in its relevant context but still as a significant form of public discourse. He understood that mass communication research was already concerned with the economic, social, and cultural contexts of news media, but he also stressed the importance of conducting structural analysis of news stories as a “qualitative alternative to traditional methods of content analysis” (1988a: vii). He claimed that news discourse was “explicitly linked to social practices and ideologies of newsmaking and, indirectly, to the institutional and macrosociological contexts of the news media” (p. vii). A useful example of this approach applied to journalistic material is his earlier mentioned work on racism in the press (van Dijk, 1991). Following transnational research on the negative representations and stereotyping of racial minorities, van Dijk highlighted the institutional
Analysing news discourse
textual analysis
bias against ethnic minority leaders and workers, with minority journalists often discriminated against in professional environments. He addressed a range of theoretically informed discussions on key areas in his discourse-analytic framework of the press: social cognition and the ideological processes and contexts of cognitive strategies, structural and strategical processes in news production, the public reproduction of racist beliefs and attitudes in the production and consumption of news, and the complexities of elite racism impacting upon journalistic practice and content. This socio-cognitive approach studied multiple dimensions of newspaper discourse and practice: headlines; subjects and topics; news schemata, argumentation and editorials; quotations and sources; meanings and ideologies; style and rhetoric; and the reproduction of news values regarding ethnic affairs. This research was methodologically significant at the time due to its interdisciplinary theoretical scope and its synergy of quantitative (content analysis) and qualitative (CDA) approaches. Another popular approach in critical media research, which again developed from its roots in CL, is Fairclough’s (1995, 2003) three-layered model of CDA. This framework transcended “the division between work inspired by social theory which tends not to analyse texts, and work which focuses upon the language of texts but tends not to engage with social theoretical issues” (Fairclough, 2003: 2–3). Fairclough’s approach includes “interdiscursive analysis, that is, seeing texts in terms of the different discourses, genres and styles they draw upon and articulate together” (p. 3). This enables a critical outlook on “the relatively durable structuring of language which is itself one element of the relatively durable structuring and networking of social practices” (p. 3). The first layer of Fairclough’s model is concerned with textual analysis. This is more than linguistic or grammatical
analysis of texts; like CL, it concerns the ideological role of language as a social product. As Paul Simpson (1993) explains, language is used by powerful groups to reinforce dominant ideologies and therefore needs to be studied as a site of ideological struggle. Hence, the second layer of analysis is discursive practice. In terms of news discourse and journalism, textual features are all seen to occur through decision-making processes in their cultural and professional contexts. Journalists and news organisations are wrapped up in cultural practices of time and place as well as by their employers, who have their own editorial interests and socio-economic agendas to fulfil. Attention to discursive practice means that processes of textual production and consumption are scrutinised. Discursive practices can account for the ways in which “authors of texts draw on already existing discourses and genres to create a text and . . . how receivers of texts also apply available discourses and genres in the consumption and interpretation of . . . texts” (Phillips and Jorgen sen, 2002: 69). This has been particularly important in Kelsey’s work on journalism, mythology, memory and discourses of national narration (Kelsey, 2015c). These elements reflect what Blommaert (1999: 5–6) refers to as systems of reproduction, reception and remembering, which affect the way that texts are produced and consumed: Socio-historical and cultural mechanisms form discourses and produce meaning. In Analysing Newspapers (2007), Richardson provides a rigorous example of Fairclough’s model applied in journalism studies. In terms of discursive practice, he argues that journalists are workers who are pressured and obliged to respond to editorial, professional and managerial pressures and constraints. Richardson also discusses the issue of objectivity (2007: 86), noting that journalists reporting opinion must do so by reporting via sources and the views of people other than themselves. However, when sources are
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Darren Kelsey and Lyndon Way used to legitimise viewpoints and demonstrate objective reporting, issues regarding access to the news arise (Hall et al., 1978). It is not the case that journalists are conspiratorially committed to elite sources or determined to reproduce dominant ideologies. Neither is it the case that a limited range of sources always dictates who speaks in the media. Rather, as Richardson points out, journalists need to use authoritative sources in order to protect themselves from criticism and appear to be objective. Richardson (2007) continues to explore other levels of discursive practice at which processes of news production and consumption explain the dynamics of newspaper stories in relation to their readerships, editorial values and social context. In attempts to make sense of contradiction and ideological context in news stories, Kelsey has adopted aspects of this approach to CDA to examine the ‘paradoxical persuasions’ of discourse (Kelsey, 2015b, 2015c). The ‘messiness’ and inconsistencies of news demands a thorough cultural and political understanding of the social contexts in which the press operates. For example, Kelsey (2015b) analysed right-wing newspapers during the 2011 London riots to show how the ideological consistencies operating beyond the foreground and immediacy of individual news stories override the appearance of discursive contradiction across different historical contexts. These micro-macro complexities of discursive practice take us to the third level of Fairclough’s model. Fairclough’s third level of analysis is concerned with social practice. This level expands beyond media texts and examines some of the wider social contexts of which the discourse is a product and/or responding to. This is often the level where CDA takes an explicit normative or political position in response to a problem, dominant ideology or exploitative social relations (Richardson, 2007). It is here, in the overlapping ground between discursive and social
practices, that CDA begins to oscillate between its linguistic roots and its connections to social, cultural and critical theoretical analysis. This level addresses broader questions regarding the social and political role of journalism, considering anything from what news says about the society in which it is produced to the impact it has on reproducing the social relations that it is a part of (Richardson, 2007). In Kelsey’s research (2012, 2014, 2015c, 2016), the analytical toolkits and insights of CDA covered so far have been synergised with cultural theory to analyse mythology and ideology in journalistic storytelling. Discourse mythological analysis (DMA) is a model that developed over time through two main objectives: to use the tools of CDA to analyse discursive constructions of mythology in news stories and to show how myth theory can demonstrate cultural, semiotic, archetypal and ideological functions of news discourse and journalistic storytelling (Barthes, 1993; Lule, 2001; Kelsey, 2015c). Analyses of news as a form of mythological storytelling are not uncommon in journalism studies (Lule, 2001; O’Donnell, 2003; Bird & Dardenne, 1988). Lule (2001: 184) argues that mythological storytelling justifies ideological standpoints: “Myth celebrates dominant beliefs and values. Myth degrades and demeans other beliefs that do not align with those of the storyteller.” This selective process is a highly politicised negotiation of discursive practices: “The diachronic and synchronic formations of mythology might articulate simple messages but they are complex processes that often provide sophisticated manipulations of popular stories, memories and identities” (Kelsey, 2015c: 187). Journalists are storytellers (or mythmakers) in contemporary societies: “Like myth tellers from every age, journalists can draw from the rich treasure trove of archetypal stories and make sense of the world” (Lule, 2001: 18). Equally, audiences often rely on the same archetypal
discourse mythological analysis
Analysing news discourse conventions and familiar cultural mythologies to understand the stories they are told (Kelsey, 2015c, 2016). DMA combined Wodak’s discoursehistorical approach (Reisigl & Wodak, 2009) and Fairclough’s (1995) three-layered model to analyse the historical and social contexts of language, ideology and mythology. Wodak’s approach examines the historical meanings, complexities, contradictions and ideological implications of words, phrases and stories in both diachronic and synchronic contexts. In developing the DMA model, Kelsey provided a detailed breakdown of the differences between mythology, ideology and discourse, showing how discourse constructs myth, which carries ideology, yet ideology also informs discourse in the construction of mythology (Kelsey, 2014, 2015c, 2016). Since systematic frameworks for analysing the detailed discursive constructions of myth have been largely absent in myth theory (Flood, 2002), DMA offers a systematic toolkit by drawing on CDA to apply cultural theories of mythology to news texts. It is important to understand how myth “arises from the intricate, highly variable relationship between claims to validity, discursive construction, ideological marking, and reception of the account by a particular audience in a particular historical context” (Flood, 2002). DMA not only helps to fill this necessity that Flood points to, but it also provides a distinct synergy between journalism studies and discourse studies as research disciplines: “DMA [is] a systematic analytical framework that can be adopted to investigate discursive constructions and ideological operations of mythology in journalistic storytelling” (Kelsey, 2015c: 3). Through this summary of developments in CDA since CL, we can see how this stage introduced significant expansions of critical media research. An impressive range of transnational and interdisciplinary approaches have seen CDA expand and develop into a cross-cultural field
of research (Kuo & Nakamura, 2005; Alvaro, 2015; Flowerdew & Leong, 2007, 2010; Hardt-Mautner, 1995; Way, 2015). These approaches have demonstrated how CDA can operate across different cultures and contexts of power and language.
MULTIMODAL CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS Multimodal critical discourse analysis (MCDA) finds its origins in CDA and Halliday’s (1985) functional grammar and assumes that concrete linguistic and visual choices reveal broader discourses articulated in texts (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2001). These discourses can be thought of as models of the world, giving a clear sense of “what view of the world is being communicated through semiotic resources” (Abousnnouga & Machin, 2010: 139). MCDA aims to reveal what kinds of social relations of power, inequalities and interests are perpetuated, generated or legitimated in texts, both explicitly and implicitly (van Dijk, 1993). Though MCDA demands a close reading of texts, social, historical and cultural contexts are essential in determining the meaning potential of choices made in texts. MCDA draws out the details of how broader discourses are communicated by examining how diffe rent modes (visual and verbal) play diffe rent roles and work together to articulate discourses. Though other modes of communication such as layout and typography are used in the stories we examine subsequently, we focus our analysis on the way written text and images work to articulate discourses “on a particular occasion, in a particular text” (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2001: 29). Similarly, Bednarek and Caple’s (2012) approach considered discourse as an incorporation of both language and image cross-cultural communication research – Chapter 11, p. 223
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Darren Kelsey and Lyndon Way in their semiotic modes that are simultaneously operating across different news sources (including print, broadcast and online) to show how various discourse-analytical approaches can be applied to these formats. Caple (2013) further argues that “multisemiotic storytelling” has developed through online news environments. The images of online news serve multifunctional purposes in the construction of a story and its interactive dynamic with the reader. The traditional news‘paper’ story displays its familiar features online combined with other multimedia and interactive elements that are becoming increasingly relevant to developing forms of participatory communicative practice: [Online news stories] represent the institutional news media in the sense that they are usually produced by media professionals. However, the more significant change is that they are published along with user-generated genres that have become popular through social media. (Caple, 2013: 83–84) Therefore, more expansive considerations of entire multisemiotic conventions provide the opportunity to see how stories stimulate particular readings, responses and debates that are significant to the communicative practices relating to news stories in their entirety. Caple’s work is important because, amongst other innovations in the theoretical and analytical progress of CDA (Knox, 2007, 2010), it shows how Halliday’s framework of systemic functional linguistics (SFL) can be adapted and applied through multisemiotic approaches to online news. Knox, for example, made significant advances in SFL for semiotic research by analysing the function of thumbnail images in newsbites and hard-news stories to show how they have become part of significant discursive practices in contemporary news production and consumption. Knox’s work is
important because he identifies newsbites (headline-plus-lead-hyperlink) on newspaper website homepages as complex signs containing hyper-visual elements that attract and stimulate readers in different ways (also see Caple, 2013; Bednarek & Caple, 2012). Knox argues that newsbites operate as “independent texts in their own unique contextual environment to construe actors and events according to the institutional goals and ideologies of the newspaper” (2007: 26). Other adaptations of SFL have seen Halliday’s work merged with Gestalt theories of perception psychology (Engebretsen, 2012). Whilst the move towards discursive-psychological frameworks can take this discussion of CDA into complex territory beyond the scope of this chapter, it is significant that recent work by Wetherell has also argued that approaches in discourse research are compatible with affect theory (Wetherell, 2012; Kelsey, 2015a). This is important given that online news has become an increasingly interactive and participatory process between news stories and its readers with meanings and discursive contributions that complicate the traditional, more linear process of news production and audience consumption. We can now access significant insights into what happens amongst groups and individuals when they come into contact with news stories. To demonstrate how MCDA can integrate and apply some of the approaches and analytical toolkits considered in this chapter, our following case study provides an analysis of Brexit in news media. Here we examine how the modes of writing and images recontextualise events around the UK’s referendum on EU membership. Recontextualisations “encode different interpretations of, and different attitudes to, the social actions represented,” a significant factor in articulating discourses (van Leeuwen, 1995: 81). How social actors and their actions, for example, are recontextualised “always involve transformation, and
recontextualization
Analysing news discourse
presupposition
what exactly gets transformed depends on the interests, goals, and values of the context into which the practice is recontextualised” (van Leeuwen & Wodak, 1999: 96). Transformations include deletions, rearrangements, substitutions and additions (p. 98). We also examine the role of presuppositions. Presuppositions are “a taken-for-granted, implicit claim embedded within the explicit meaning of a text or utterance” (Richardson, 2007: 63). These are powerful ideological tools, where “[t]he unsaid, the already said, the presupposed, is of particular importance in ideological analysis, in that ideologies are generally embedded within the implicit meaning of a text rather than being explicit” (Fairclough, 1995: 108). These implicit ‘taken for granted’ claims enforce ideologies without questioning them (Richardson, 2007: 187). We examine Brexit stories considering such categories of recontextualisations to reveal how these reflect broader ideologies closely associated with the interests of media outlets whilst doing little to inform readers about the implications of Brexit for their everyday lives.
A MULTIMODAL CASE STUDY: TURKISH MEDIA COVERAGE OF BREXIT Brexit in the press Not surprisingly, there has been a lot of academic attention from a variety of disciplines focussing on events before, during and after the UK’s European referendum of 2016 in which a small majority of the British population chose to leave the European Union. Prior to the referendum, Kelsey (2016) analysed media stories about the then leader of the UK Independence Party (UKIP) Nigel Farage and his rhetoric on the EU. By adopting DMA, Kelsey analysed Mail Online articles about Farage to show how archetypal traits of mythological heroism in a populist discourse featured Farage as a ‘man
of the people’ – the underdog fighting against the establishment. Kelsey showed how these mythological stories suppressed ideological, historical and contextual complexities that contradict Farage’s populist persona. Other literature on Brexit has looked both at how the media have represented events and at reactions by the international media (see, for example, Ridge-Newman, Leon-Solis and O’Donnell, 2018). Some of this work has considered Brexit from a discursive perspective. Koller, Kopf, and Miglbauer (2019) offer a range of perspectives into how discourse influenced the outcome of the referendum and what discourses have been the result of it. The journal Critical Discourse Studies has also produced a special issue examining discourses before, during and after Brexit, distinguishing itself by “specifically taking a critical discursive perspective . . . [focusing on] the interplay between socio-political contexts as well as, therein, on various patterns of discursive work of both mediatisation and politicisation of Brexit” (Zappettini & Krzyżanowski, 2019: 1). Language examined includes Facebook posts, websites, traditional news media such as newspapers, vox pops and televised debates. What most of these studies have in common is how they exemplify the importance of examining language to reveal the ideological stances of those in society in a position to articulate public narratives. In order to expand the scope of this literature on Brexit, we will now demonstrate the transnational applicability of those methodological frameworks outlined in this chapter. In doing so, we will conduct a multimodal critical discourse analysis of Brexit in Turkish news media.
The Turkish media environment As noted by scholars of CDA and MCDA, an examination of texts in context is essential. Here we first contextualise our news stories with a brief examination
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Darren Kelsey and Lyndon Way of Turkish politics and media. Turkey’s governing Justice and Development Party (AKP) is an economically liberal and socially conservative political party, which won its first national election in 2002. With the exception of a short-lived minority government in 2015, AKP has won a majority in each national election since then. Unlike administrations before it, AKP brands itself as an alternative to ‘Kemalism,’ the dominant ideology throughout Turkish political history up until AKP. Spearheaded by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (the founder of modern Turkey), Kemalism aims to modernise Turkey by creating a homogeneous, secular and Western society (Mango, 1999). Today the main opposition parties adhere to Kemalism in one form or another. In contrast, AKP represents itself as a bridge between Islam, democracy and neoliberalism (Uzgel & Duru, 2010), as expressed in “the gradual Islamization of the AKP’s discourse and policies” (Boratav, 2016: 6). Though Turkish news outlets make claims of being ‘objective,’ from the outset, they have been a state organ and “characterised by ‘opinion’ articles rather than news and information” (Kocabaşoğlu, 1993: 96). Turkey has a politically oriented press and high political parallelism in journalism with the state playing a significant role as owner, regulator and funder of media. At the same time, it oversees a high degree of ideological diversity and conflict in society. Turkey’s media are dominated by state-run TRT and five private media conglomerates, a result of state policies which aim for an easily manageable/controllable near-monopoly (Özgüneş and Terzis, 2000: 10). Turkey’s media experience heavy censorship and state control (Christensen, 2005: 182), being ranked 157th out of 180 countries in Reporters Without Borders’ world press freedom index. Turkey has more jailed journalists than most countries, with 70 journalists being prosecuted as of March 2016 for ‘insulting’ President Erdoğan since his 2014 election to office.
European governments and organisations deem Turkey’s media “not free” (Freedom House, 2017) and President Erdoğan “an enemy of democracy” (Reporters Without Borders, 2016). Due to this repressive atmosphere, almost all mainstream media are government-friendly. ‘Oppositional’ views are silenced or stifled. Any opposition from news outlets is subtle whilst they promote political perspectives advantageous to their owners (Way and Akan, 2017; Way, Karanfil, and Ercifci, 2018). News about Brexit reflects these conditions. Like domestic news, foreign news events are represented in ways which benefit news outlet owners and their associated interests (Özgüneş & Terzis, 2000; Way, 2015; Way & Akan, 2017; Way & Kaya, 2015). Britain’s EU referendum received mixed media reactions, depending on where news outlets fall in Turkey’s deeply polarised political landscape. There were two types of Brexit stories: hard news cut-and-paste offerings from news agencies with accompanying photographs and opinion pieces. Opinion pieces are far more abundant in Turkish media than in Western news. They are an integral part of readers’ news experience, where columnists hold celebrity status for writing from a ‘homegrown’ perspective. In our case study, we analyse both opinion pieces and photographs accompanying hard news.
Sample of news selected for analysis To gain an insight into the range of views on Brexit, we examine two leading Englishlanguage news websites, “Daily Sabah” (DS) and “Hurriyet Daily News” (HDN). DS openly supports AKP. It is owned by Zirve Holding, a subsidiary of the Kalyon Group (BBC, 2013), whose founder is a friend of Erdoğan and helped the establishment of the AKP (Biyografi, 2008; Demirkaya, 2013). HDN claims it is “the leading news source for Turkey and the Region” and positions itself as oppositional. At the time of Brexit, HDN was
Analysing news discourse part of the Doğan Media Group, owned by Aydin Doğan. He is a staunch Kemalist and was very powerful in Turkish political life before the reign of AKP (Way et al., 2018). HDN reflected these views by being an outspoken critic of AKP. However, it has since been sold, and has become much less critical whilst still maintaining a Kemalist position. Since the period covered by the case study, HDN too has become government-friendly. Both publications (online and not) aim to inform and influence non-Turkish-speaking domestic and international stakeholders. These publications articulate similar discourses to their widely read Turkish-language counterparts (Way et al., 2018), allowing us to relate the findings to the media experience of both Turkish and non-Turkish speakers. To acquire our sample, we typed “Brexit” into DS’s and HDN’s search engines. We chose to examine news coverage from a month before and a month after the referendum (May 23rd to July 23rd 2016) when Brexit was newsworthy in Turkey. The search produced 252 and 88 pieces, respectively. Of these, there were 52 opinion pieces in DS and 38 in HDN, none with photographs other than shots of columnists. We chose to analyse, on the one hand, the written text of opinion pieces to gain a Turkish perspective on Brexit (unlike the cut-and-paste hard news stories) and, on the other hand, photographs accompanying hard news stories. Though a quantitative analysis of the 52 and 38 stories would generate valuable insights, we chose to do a deep analysis of a smaller sample in order to provide insights into exactly how particular discourses are articulated in the coverage of Brexit. So, in the spirit of critical discourse analysis, we do an in-depth analysis of five photographs and eight stories (four from each news outlet). Photographs selected represent the three most common social actors in the stories: Turkish politicians, British politicians and British protesters. Throughout the analysis, we refer to “our
sample” and “the wider sample.” “Our sample” refers to the eight stories and five photographs used for our in-depth analysis. Occasionally, we refer to “the wider sample” to contextualise the findings regarding “our sample.” The wider sample is not analysed in-depth and consists of the 52 and 38 opinion pieces discussed previously and all the photographs that accompany hard news stories. We believe these samples represent the online experience of Brexit news offered to readers.
Analysis 1: Hurriyet Daily News Throughout the wider sample from HDN, Britain is represented positively, whilst Brexit is rendered negatively. In our sample, we find “Britain” is commonly collocated with positive lexica such as “an advanced democracy,” “historically a strong friend [of Turkey]” and “a good example for Turkey to follow.” Alongside this, Brexit is collocated with a “risky decision,” “the persistent demand of the right-wing [UK]” and “falsely based assumptions,” while headlines include “The Brexit Challenge” and “Brexit: The Apocalypse.” A positive view of the United Kingdom is part of a Kemalist discourse which sees Turkey and its future closely aligned to a strong and healthy Europe, while the idea of Brexit indicates the possibility of a crumbling political entity. Praise towards the United Kingdom and criticisms of Brexit are often linked to criticisms of AKP and Erdoğan. Consider this extract, which comes from a piece in our sample written around Prime Minister David Cameron’s resignation after the referendum: “one of the features of advanced democracies is that there is a functioning in-party democracy and there is no domination by the leader.” Here, Britain is named as an “advanced democracy,” one which Turks should strive to achieve. Though one may debate whether indeed resigning after a political loss is an indicator of an advanced democracy, this
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Darren Kelsey and Lyndon Way is presupposed. The piece includes Cameron saying the UK needs “fresh leadership and . . . a new prime minister.” Here, the piece recontextualises his actions in terms of putting one’s party before one’s career. This takes on great significance in Turkey. At this time, Erdoğan was clearing the political path for his long-coveted presidential system. He forced Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu to resign because of his lack of enthusiasm for a presidential system. As such, the story rearranges recent events in such a way as to put Erdoğan’s actions in stark contrast to Cameron’s. This contrasting is further elaborated upon when politicians from advanced democracies do “not regard their party as their property, their child, or their army; when necessary the leader withdraws.” Recontextualised as such, negativity towards AKP and Erdoğan is articulated whilst the West is praised, in line with Kemalist discourses. Here, then, is a first example of how language is used to construct particular worldviews, as noted by CL and CDA. But it is through MCDA that we can examine how Kemalist discourses, including representations of the UK as
Image 6.1 Civilised protesters
an advanced democracy, are articulated multimodally. Let us consider images of protesters. Throughout the wider sample from HDN, protesters are represented as ‘normal’ people, whether they are voting to leave or stay. Image 6.1 is a group shot of leave protesters. Unlike protest imagery of balaclava-clad youths throwing Molotov cocktails at police, here we have middleaged voters passively holding up signs. They hold hand-bags, have their hands in their pockets and arms in slings and stand with a relaxed posture. This is an “offer image” (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2001: 124) where participants do not symbolically look at viewers, omitting contact and power, offered as information available for scrutiny. Viewers can scrutinise ordinary and non-threatening protesters, connoting British civility. This suggests confidence in British democracy, one being able to protest without the threat of police intervention, something experienced regularly if one dares to protest in AKP’s Turkey. A common criticism in HDN stories is Erdoğan’s authoritarian tendencies. We see both indirect attacks such as, “There is growing concern . . . that human rights
offer image
Analysing news discourse and freedoms are seriously challenged by creeping authoritarianism” and more direct attacks such as reference to an “increasingly authoritarian president and his supporters.” In both indirect and more direct criticisms of Erdoğan, clear agency is missing, possibly as a defence against joining the hundreds of other journalists in Turkish jails. Consider the following from our HDN sample: Given the manner in which Turkey is regressing democratically under the rule of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, though, Sarkozy needn’t have tweeted this at all. If Turkey’s EU membership is “unthinkable” today, Turkey is as much to blame as anyone else. Though Erdoğan is implicated in the act of “Turkey is regressing democratically,” he is not given agency. Instead, he is represented in a prepositional phrase beginning with “under,” a grammatical strategy used to de-emphasise and represent an actor with less power (van Dijk, 1993). In the second sentence, Erdoğan is excluded from the sentence, again disempowering him, though he is to “blame” for EU membership being “unthinkable.” These types of sentence structures disempower and de-emphasise Erdoğan whilst surrounding him with negativity. Events recontextualised as such are in the interest of Kemalists who would like to see Erdoğan out and replaced with politicians closer to their political position. Erdoğan is not attacked visually. In fact, his image does not appear in any Brexit stories throughout the wider sample from HDN. Instead, a handful of Turkish politicians are represented, including oppositional ones, something not seen in DS. Image 6.2 accompanies a story in which opposition politician Devlet Bahçeli, leader of the Nationalist Movement Party, criticises British Prime Minister David Cameron for claiming Turkey will not join the EU soon. For a Kemalist news outlet like HDN,
Cameron’s statement goes against its goal of being close to Europe. Much of this is connoted in Image 6.2. Bahçeli is shown in a close-up, giving viewers a point of identification and connoting intimacy with him and his views (Machin & van Leeuwen, 2005: 132). Though Bahçeli looks off camera, his face and facial expressions of displeasure are in full view of readers. Camera height puts him at eye level with viewers, suggesting commonality, though the white shirt, black jacket and an out-of-focus flag suggest authority and legitimacy. In contrast, David Cameron looks ashamed, rejected. Most striking is the choice to darken his profile to the point where it is a silhouette; darkness with universal connotations of wrong-doing, lies and evil. This moral tone is accentuated by the absence of any obvious background, connoting that the image is symbolic rather than descriptive (Machin, 2007: 34). Cameron does not face the camera, omitting symbolic interaction between himself and the reader, connoting isolation and disempowerment (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2001: 124). Shame is suggested by his head tilted down, and his mouth indicates he is stressed or unhappy. The two images placed together with no borders suggest the two are related to each other (van Leeuwen, 2005: 13). In this case, it is a powerful and honest Bahçeli who is telling Cameron off for his comments. As such, Cameron and his comments which go against Kemalism are represented negatively. AKP’s affiliations with Islam are also criticised in the stories in our sample. Namings play a role: AKP and its supporters are named as “ ‘our Islamists,” and reference is made to “rising religious extremism” and to those who are “running after establishing an Islamist regime based on one man.” AKP and Islam are represented as backwards. Consider: they want this [EU] membership to be on their subjective terms, not on the
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Image 6.2 Shame
basis of the EU’s objective rules. They consider these rules, especially with regards to pluralistic democracy, to be unsuitable for the Turkey they hope to create based on their Islamist outlook. Here, AKP is named as “they,” distinct from “us” Kemalists (van Dijk, 1993). While the EU (and Kemalists) are “objective,” “they” (AKP) are “subjective,” find democracy “unsuitable” and “hope to create a society with an Islamist outlook.” Here, Kemalist and AKP desires are polarised, one represented as “objective” with the other “subjective.” The subjective position is Islamic and does not want a secular democracy. Such additions criticise AKP through the prism of Kemalism. Stories about the referendum in our sample also represent Erdoğan and AKP as manipulative, with Brexit playing into AKP’s un-liberal ideals. AKP statements which claim they want to join the EU are “simply dishonest” because “the EU link is thought to weaken their political power.” Here, and in the following excerpt, AKP actions are recontextualised in ways which make them seem dishonest. Consider:
In fact, the truth is that as the anti-EU mood rises in governing party circles, the president and his party are glad that the EU is facing dissolution itself. The EU has been a liberal project of supra-national politics and founded on the idea of the compatibility of universal values like human rights and multicultural richness. It is presupposed here that there is a rising anti-EU mood in AKP. This extract also recontextualises AKP’s reactions to Brexit abstractly as being “glad,” a mental process, again difficult to substantiate (Fairclough, 1995). EU policies are contrasted with those of AKP: The EU is “a liberal project” compatible with “universal values like human rights and multicultural richness.” These are lofty ideals, though many in the EU such as UKIP, Geert Wilders and Germany’s Alternative for Germany party all seem to question this representation. However, recontextualised as such, this story suggests Erdoğan is against such actions and values. In fact, elsewhere in this same piece, “Erdoğan and his Islamist/nationalist followers” who “are enjoying Brexit”
Analysing news discourse “feel powerful” because they “think” the “EU is facing dissolution.” This means AKP “feels powerful enough that they don’t need to pretend to be democrats who believe in universal values.” Not only do namings link Erdoğan with religious non-thinkers (“followers”); actions such as “enjoying,” “feel” and “think” are abstract, mental processes that contribute to a discourse of AKP being manipulative, authoritarian, Islamic and non-European, all reflecting Kemalist criticisms. AKP foreign as well as domestic policies are criticised through HDN representations of Brexit. At the time, Turkey was embroiled in Syria and Iraq in the fight against Islamic State; at odds with Russia over Turkey’s downing of a Russian jet and disagreeing with Israel, the EU and the United States over a number of issues, including infringements on human rights and press freedoms. These confrontational relations run counter to Kemalism, which notes the importance of being a good non-interfering neighbour (Mango, 1999). However, in our sample, AKP’s foreign affairs are recontextualised as “Turkey’s foreign policy is ailing,” with Turkey “now considered to be a country with a significant lack of impartiality in its foreign policy conduct.” The addition of “now” emphasises the idea that this was not always the case but is a result of AKP policies. Domestic policies are also criticised, as in “Turkey’s domestic politics is shattering.” Here, “shattering” is abstract, though later in the piece, Turkey’s ongoing fight with its Kurdish population which has “devastated the country but also increased the polarization” within Turkey is identified. There is further criticism aimed at the migrant policy AKP had agreed upon with the EU. Under the deal, in return for Turkey receiving ‘irregular migrants’ crossing from Turkey into Greece, the EU would resettle Syrian migrants from Turkey, ease visa restrictions for Turks wanting to access the Schengen passport-free zone, offer €3bn of financial aid to Turkey to
help migrants and ‘re-energise’ Turkey’s EU membership bid. However, the deal was linked to 72 conditions, some of which AKP was unwilling to concede, such as its anti-terrorist laws, which do not live up to EU standards. One story in our sample claims the deal is “stumbling.” In another story, “the migrant agreement appears to have done more harm than good,” though no details are forthcoming as to why. However, in all mentions of the migrant deal, it is AKP which is represented to be at fault, it being “an increasingly undemocratic Turkish government” which “refuses to address the issue” of amending its laws. In sum, the HDN representations of Brexit verbally and multimodally articulate discourses of criticism aimed at AKP from a Kemalist perspective.
Analysis 2: Daily Sabah Unlike HDN, in the wider sample, DS recontextualises Brexit in ways which support AKP, Erdoğan and their policies. Through images and written text, discourses supportive of AKP are articulated, reemphasising the need to consider the multimodal nature of modern news texts. In the written texts, generic, impersonal namings are key to articulating support for AKP. Instead of “Britain” being associated with positive attributes and “Brexit” with negativity as seen in HDN, in our sample from DS, “Britain” and “Brexit” are used interchangeably and represented negatively. Consider: People who know how Britain has exploited the EU for its national interests, but turned its back on the shared currency and the Schengen agreement, were not at all surprised [about Brexit]. Machin and van Leeuwen (2005: 133) note how naming social actors impersonally, using generic names such as “Britain,” can homogenise groups, ignoring differences between individual actors.
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Darren Kelsey and Lyndon Way This strategy allows DS to “symbolically remove [UK citizens] from the readers’ world of immediate experience, treated as distant ‘others’ rather than as people ‘we’ have to deal with in our everyday lives” (van Leeuwen, 1996: 48). This othering is further connoted if we consider the represented actions (Kress, 1989: 134). Britain “has exploited the EU for its national interests.” No details are provided to explain how this exploitation has occurred. However, “exploit” is abstract, used to de-legitimise Britain, a common trait in generalisations (van Leeuwen, 1995: 99). Britain also acts metaphorically in “turned its back” on the Euro and the Schengen agreement. A metaphor is “a functional mechanism which affects the way we think, act and experience reality” (Lakoff and Johnson in Flowerdew & Leong, 2007: 275). Here, a metaphor simplifies complex issues regarding national identity, immigration and economics in order to articulate a discourse of Britain being uncooperative and hostile. At this time, the Turkish government was hoping to gain visa-free travel to Europe for its citizens as part of the refugee agreement. Representing Britain as such allowed AKP to blame the West and not itself for travel controls, something the EU said was being stalled by Turkey not abiding by its side of the agreement. Not all namings of Britain are impersonal. Some UK politicians are named, though represented in ways which connote AKP legitimacy and strength. This is evident in representations of ex-Prime Minister David Cameron. Four weeks before the Brexit referendum, Cameron said it would be the “year 3000” before Turkey joined the EU and, “It would be decades, literally decades, before this had a prospect of happening and even at that stage we’d still be able to say no” (BBC, 2016). This statement was in response to the Leave campaign’s argument that Britain needed to take control of its borders. Cameron’s statement is represented in our sample without context and described and
collocated with “hypocritical,” “racist,” “faulty,” “inconsistent,” “unfruitful” and “based on stark lies and fallacies” which “hurt Turks who felt deceived,” drawing on an anti-Britain discourse. In the wider sample, news of Cameron’s statement occurs repeatedly in stories which announce him stepping down as prime minister. This voluntary action four weeks after the utterance is recontextualised as retribution for being against AKP’s Turkey. Such rearrangements of events are a characteristic of recontextualisations where ordering choices “relate to the interests, goals, and values of the context into which the practice is recontextualised” (van Leeuwen & Wodak, 1999: 97). Here, it is used to connote AKP’s strength and legitimacy. For example, “he eventually learned his lesson” and “Mr. Cameron got what he deserved. The rule that honesty is rewarded and that you have to pay a price for dishonesty in dealing with the Turks has worked again.” In this last recontextualisation, it is presupposed that retribution is a common consequence of “dishonesty,” evident in the use of the present tense in the second sentence and in the last three words “has worked again.” To be in a position to be in the right and to be able to witness retribution presupposes power. In this case, it is AKP’s Turkey that holds the power. Another politician personally named is Boris Johnson, again represented in images and written text in ways which draw upon anti-Western discourses. In our sample, he is collocated with “isolationist,” “disharmony,” “insults,” “not taken seriously,” “a hated figure,” has “little respect for democracy, human rights and rule of law” and “interested in ‘Putinism’ and pragmatic alliances with China and old-style autocrats.” In Image 6.3, he appears with two other right-wing Western populist politicians: Marine Le Pen and Donald Trump. The very thin white spaces between each suggests they are distinct yet share commonality (van Leeuwen, 2005): The common quality, or rhyme, of the pictures is
Analysing news discourse darkness connoting evil, wrong-doing and lies. Johnson’s suit and tie suggest power, as does his gaze, which symbolically addresses the reader (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2001: 127–128). But symbolic interaction is limited by his eyes being almost closed. Furthermore, he is in shadow except for a strip of brightness down one side of his face. These choices, alongside a camera angle which looks down on Johnson, suggest he is untrustworthy, evil. He is not a legitimate politician to be trusted. DS’s anti-Western discourse also targets the EU, represented as “hypocritical,” “wrong,” “disintegrating,” “racist” and not “democratic.” These lexica delegitimise the EU and are used to forward AKP’s political agenda of basing Turkish identity on Islam rather than Europe. Some representations of Europe serve to legitimise AKP policies. Consider: With the EU in disarray and facing an uncertain future, the anti-Turkey and anti-Erdoğan rhetoric that has been on the upward swing for several months will die down and those who have been plotting against Turkey by helping
Image 6.3 Johnson delegitimised
PKK terrorists will have to concentrate on European internal affairs. Though there is evidence that the Western press has become more critical of Turkey (Louis, Magued, & Mzhavanadze, 2018), deleted here is who has been critical of Erdoğan’s AKP and what these criticisms are. By naming critics as “those who have been plotting against Turkey by helping PKK terrorists” in the same sentence as “the EU” and “European,” Europeans are implicated in cooperating with “terrorists.” In fact, this turn of phrase is commonly used by Erdoğan, ultranationalists and AKP to describe (mostly European) politicians and activists who are sympathetic to Kurds. Negative EU representations, such as these, within the context of Brexit representations, not only draw upon anti-Western discourses but also support AKP policies, including its aggression towards Kurds in the name of Turkish nationalism. Images also connote negativity towards Europe. Unlike the image in HDN of a civilised British protest, Image 6.4 articulates a hostile Europe. The headline
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Darren Kelsey and Lyndon Way “Anti-EU sentiment bubbles up, far right gains ground in Europe” and the caption “Far-right supporters hold up a banner reading: ‘Stop the flood of asylum seekers’ ” identify protesters as part of a farright, racist, disintegrating Europe. Here, a large group of protesters is represented, numbers and postures suggesting aggression. Red and black banners and flags dominate, red being the colour of anger and blood as opposed to more subdued colours of purple and brown in the HDN image. The protesters are almost all young white men, many looking at the camera, suggesting power and also menace (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2001: 127–128). It suggests that Turkish identity is not in Europe. Unlike the EU and Britain, stories in our sample represent AKP and Erdoğan positively. Binary oppositions are used to do this, as in “Turkey is far more democratic than many EU countries” and the heading “Retreating Tory Britain vs progressive Turkey.” Will Wright (1975) notes how social concerns coupled with a lack of comprehension about society can be shaped into simple oppositions, where
Image 6.4 Hostile Europe
individuals or groups represent two sides. Such basic structures point to wider issues and anxieties present in society at particular times. In the examples just mentioned, there is a simplification not only of Britain as “retreating,” but of Turkey being represented as “progressive,” though “progressive” is not defined. In the past, both nations shared a commonality, being “two key NATO allies with crucial importance in [the] security [of Europe] on contrasting ends of the European Union.” Presented in a list and collocated with “NATO allies,” the commonality of Turkey and Britain is connoted, both being of “crucial importance” to the EU. However, in the present, Britain has “drift[ed] away from European values and institutions at an ever increasing pace.” This narrative draws upon a discourse that Britain is far from progressive, though many of these claims, such as “drift[ed] away from European values” are hard to substantiate, especially considering that these “values” have not been explained here or anywhere in our sample. In contrast, Turkey is represented with reference to “improving relations with neighbors
Analysing news discourse and regional powers,” “normaliz[ing] relations” with others, whilst Erdoğan’s statements “created a vibrant debate.” These are very positive recontextualisations of AKP policies, though deleted are the many conflicts Turkey is involved in with its neighbours whilst world human rights groups condemn Turkey as not free and the atmosphere during these times as “fearful.” AKP’s Turkey is represented throughout the wider sample from DS as strong, echoing the AKP slogan “Great and Strong Turkey” (Büyük ve Güçlü Türkiye). Consider: Turkey has clearly expressed that it will no longer put up with EU policies, which cast Turkey aside and flirt with the outlawed PKK and the PYD terrorist organizations. People in Turkey are rightfully tired of the hypocritical policies of the EU. Here, Turkey is in a position to “no longer put up” with EU policies and actions. Strength is further emphasised with Turkey “clearly expressing” this. Some Euro-
Image 6.5 Knowledgeable Erdog˘an
peans’ criticism of AKP’s treatment of Kurds is recontextualised as “cast Turkey aside and flirt with the outlawed PKK and the PYD terrorist organizations.” Not agreeing with AKP becomes casting Turkey aside, connoting disloyalty, whilst expressing concern for legal Kurdish political entities and citizens becomes “flirting” with “outlawed” terrorist groups. But it is not only “Turkey” which is strong. Erdoğan is also represented with power. In our sample from DS, he is named with honorifics and represented far more than any other individual, indicating importance. He is active in most sentences, engaging in authoritative actions such as “declared,” “announced” and “explicitly stated.” Caldas-Coulthard (1994: 304) points out that speaker selection reflects power structures, perceived importance and the cultural beliefs of producers, giving voice to some speakers who can shape events in ways which suit them. It is in reported speech where readers learn Erdoğan “has the full support of the 78 million Turkish citizens.” Though indeed this is the population of Turkey, in recent elections, which are
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demand image
Darren Kelsey and Lyndon Way considered by many unfair and not free (Klimek, Jimenez, Hidalgo, Hinteregger, & Thurner, 2017: 5), he only managed to attract about half the vote (for example, in the constitutional referendum 2017). However, being able to represent himself as such, his actions and policies are legitimated. This same discourse of a strong Erdoğan is also articulated in photographs. Unlike HDN’s Brexit coverage, which had no Erdoğan images, he is the most photographed Turkish politician in DS. He is also represented in ways which connote power, such as being surrounded by Turkish flags and symbols of the Turkish presidency and in the company of other international politicians. In Image 6.5, Erdoğan is represented as powerful. He directly addresses the camera in a demand image, engaged in symbolic interaction and connoting power (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2001: 127–128). The camera looks up to him, in a suit, shirt and tie, further connoting power. He looks knowledgeable, situated at a lectern, addressing a large crowd, as indicated by a microphone. His one arm and finger outstretched, the other tightly gripping the lectern and a serious facial expression all suggest knowledge and importance. Here, as we have seen throughout DS coverage, AKP discourses of strength and legitimacy are articulated.
Summary Foreign news is not prioritised on Turkish online news outlets. It is domestic affairs which dominate Turkish news in terms of volume and web-site position. Hard news stories are dominated by photographs, and written text is cut-and-paste affairs from news services, though indeed what is cut and what is pasted and how it is shaped is also of significance. Opinion pieces are well read and authored by well-known Turkish writers. These offer a more ‘home-grown’ perspective on foreign affairs. In this chapter, we have examined opinion pieces and photographs in Brexit
news in order to gain an insight into the shape of news stories about Brexit. Both news websites use news as a way to propagate their political perspective. Hurriyet Daily News recontextualises Brexit stories in ways which criticise the AKP government. This is done through the prism of Kemalism, a political perspective shared by its owners, who bene fitted greatly from such a perspective in the past. Daily Sabah uses Brexit stories as a chance to praise AKP, its policies and President Erdoğan. This is of direct benefit to its owner, a close friend and ally of AKP, who benefits from AKP patronage. By emphasising their political agendas in news stories, both of these news outlets are guilty of not informing Turkish readers about the referendum and its implications for Turkey. Readers are left ill informed in both cases. By using such events to articulate discourses beneficial to the news outlets’ owners and controllers, this is no more than preaching to the converted. This, in turn, does little to better inform the public on international matters which deeply affect Turkish life and the world around them.
CONCLUSION This chapter has provided a rigorous, interdisciplinary account of literature and past studies in news discourse research. However, it is by no means exhaustive, and we encourage readers to seek broader reading beyond this chapter. What readers can take from this chapter is, hopefully, an introduction to discourse-analytical approaches to qualitative methodologies. But readers should also note those acknowledgements early in the chapter where we provided examples of synergies between quantitative and qualitative frameworks. Readers’ own research might benefit from quantitative insights that often guide, justify and strengthen the scope of qualitative research. That said, we have shown how qualitative methods can provide valuable insights as
Analysing news discourse standalone methods, provided that analysts acknowledge the contextual para meters of their research – without making quantitative claims beyond the legitimate scope of their findings and analysis. By starting with critical linguistics, this chapter showed what laid the foundations for critical discourse analysis. The eclectic account of approaches we covered in our attention to CDA shows how dynamic and innovative this field has become. Readers should feel encouraged to draw on those toolkits that are most suited for the analysis they need to conduct and should not feel prohibited by the scope or application of any particular approach. They should find ways to synergise, adapt, expand and continue to innovate the field. As this chapter has shown, CDA is not a monolithic school or approach. Rather, it evolves over time due to the complexities of communication that require adaptive frameworks to respond to cultural and technological change. Hence, this chapter expands its scope to account for multimodal frameworks that allow discursive analysis to account for more than language in news and other media texts.
Digital technologies and cross-cultural contexts of research have required multimodal frameworks to respond to transnational and non-western perspectives on news discourse and current affairs. Our case study provides an example of those multimodal tools applied to digital news media in the context of Turkish news media. Applied to contemporary technological and cultural contexts, multimodal toolkits differ from those typically applied to traditional media such as newspapers in the earlier days of critical linguistics and CDA. Our case study further provides insights that should be of interest to readers who might be less familiar with Turkish news on the more familiar topic of Brexit. The cultural and technological diversity of contemporary news media that researchers have access to should continue to enrich and expand the contextual and analytical scope of qualitative research within and beyond discursive and semiotic approaches. We encourage our readers to take a lead in these expansions as innovators in their own research endeavours.
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7 • • • • •
Mediated fiction Kay Richardson
An account of fiction and its interpenetration with the real world A review of the contexts for examining media fiction: the different embodied and technologically mediated modes of fiction and the contexts of scholarship about fiction Exploration of mediated fiction as a matter of form, with particular reference to narrative and genre at the macro level of analysis and style at the micro level Exploration of mediated fiction as a matter of content, with particular reference to crime and violence Sherlock Holmes as an illustrative case
INTRODUCTION Fact and fiction
knowledge and/or pleasure
The two chapters in this section of the Handbook speak to the ambiguous but important distinction between ‘fact’ and ‘fiction’ within contemporary media scapes. The idealisation suggests that texts (TV news reports, documentaries) which aspire in the first instance to contribute to the production of knowledge will privilege ‘facts,’ whilst others, with pleasure as their principal goal, will include such fictional modes as feature film, TV drama, theatrical productions and novels. Factual and fictional genres, however, are both held accountable to the ‘real’ by audiences and readerships but on somewhat different terms (Corner, 2011: 70–74). In relation to a TV drama, a viewer or critic might ask ‘how realistic is this representation of 21st century London life?’
By contrast, news footage from London in the aftermath of a terrorist incident would not be judged on the basis of realism; instead, suspicious minds might speculate on whether the footage was ‘genuine.’ This is a very different kind of evaluation, and it sits alongside a primary concern with ‘truth,’ focused on the spoken verbal elements of the news report. To put the distinction in these terms is not to ignore the fact that researchers have worked with different conceptions of ‘truth’ as well as of ‘reality.’ To take an example relating to this chapter’s later focus on crime as fiction, in 1983, Clutterbuck combined documentary and drama, contrasting both with news and current affairs: The documentarist, and even more so the dramatist, can claim that he tells the truth . . . by picking out the essentials and exaggerating them, he
realism and/or truth
Mediated fiction is presenting the truth in the way the brain is accustomed to receiving it from the eye. (Clutterbuck, 1983: 75)
documentary
Selectivity and distortion, at least on the visual plane, are presented here as serving the interests of truth, not undermining it, and not just in texts which are avowedly fictional. The boundaries between ‘fact’ and ‘fiction’ are certainly permeable in practice. In relation to documentary genres, this has long been recognised as potentially problematic (Kilborn, 1994; Petley, 1996). Explicitly fictional works create less controversy. Screenwriters, like novelists, set their stories in real places, and directors control whether and to what extent the recording will take place on location. But locations are not always what they seem to be. A story set in London might require action on a suburban street; if no London street is visually suitable, a Liverpool one might be. Meanwhile, the development of computer games has allowed theorists yet another distinction, leading scholars to observe that some game environments may be ‘imaginary’ but not ‘fictional,’ on account of the real practices and investments to which they give rise for participants: Norrath . . . exists in the ‘massively multiplayer’ role-playing game EverQuest, developed by Verant and owned by Sony. There are 300,000 to 400,000 people who play (and work) in Norrath on a regular basis; some spend more than half their current lives there. The economy is driven by the production and trade of useful items, such as spells, weapons, armor, and entire avatars, bought and sold for real money at places such as playerauctions.com. verbal and visual representation – Chapter 2, p. 40 computer games, p. 146
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Since you also can buy the Norrath currency at these places, it becomes a real currency, and the Norrath economy becomes a place in which real people can make a real living. (Aarseth, 2004: 361) Media scholars appreciate the point that along with other forms of entertainment media, fictional texts participate in the creation of social, cultural and political understanding, even whilst those texts are purveying plots with imaginary events and characters so as to deliver appropriate entertainment value. To undertake research on such texts is to view them as potentially contributing in their own distinctive ways to the circulation of meanings and values within society. For example, if mediated political discourse with an entertainment remit, including fiction, is consistently sceptical about the political establishment, this emerges from, but also has potential to reinforce, popular sceptical dispositions in the wider culture:
political discourse
Forms of storytelling, fantasy, farce and satire provide powerful and rich indicators of the relationship between a national political system and a national political culture, acting as both expressions of, and as resources for, the wider play of imagination. (Richardson, Corner, & Parry, 2013: 1) The themes and motifs in works of imagination can exploit creative possibilities not open to more sober factual reportage, whilst being potentially more engaging. Another way of thinking about fiction in the media is to focus on the scope it offers for extensionality. Within particular fictional works, in any medium, characters are created, relationships established, maintained, ended, and events take place in environments that are spelled out to a greater or lesser extent. We see, hear or read what the current storytelling
extensionality
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transmedia story-telling
Kay Richardson enterprise requires – and that’s all there is. But it does not have to be. The rhetorical and ironic question ‘How many children had Lady Macbeth?’ is a famous one in English literary criticism, mocking inappropriate speculation on character traits and properties beyond the parameters of the text (Knights, 1946). But texts cannot help but be generative engines of such speculation on the part of their consumers. One rather basic level of ‘realism’ is the one which requires little more than conditional belief in the continuities of lives in time and space, equivalent to the continuities of real lives. We, as readers and viewers, have to presume a hinterland of virtual existence, supporting the specific activities which the fictional narrative requires us to know about. We also ‘fill in’ unspecified detail from what we already know of the real world. Some of this knowledge takes the form of frames or “social schemata” (Culpeper, 2001: 76–79), a route by which our pre-existing stereotypes can enter into the construction of textual meaning. Extensionality, in exceptional cases, takes a literal form, with fans purporting to treat characters as real people. Sherlock Holmes has long been treated in this way, a trend which continues (see Duffy, 2017). This line of thought leads towards an expanding literature on imaginary and transmedia worlds and characters (Perkins, 2005; Rosendo, 2016; Wolf, 2013).
Form and content Along with the concepts of fact and fiction, communication research also requires us to think about the distinction between ‘form’ and ‘content.’ If ‘form’ refers to properties of realisation in a particular medium, such as colour palette in the case of a film or TV drama, then ‘content’ refers to such things as subject matter or theme. The use of ‘content’ and ‘form’ in this way can be controversial in theoretical terms. A primary objection to this kind of separation is that
both terms are used in too wide a variety of ways across different branches of textual analysis and theory to be of much practical use; some of this range will become apparent later in this chapter. In literary analyses, ‘subject matter’ may not be at all ‘manifest’ in the way that, for example, quantitative media content analysts often view it. For literary and film critics, inferable thematic properties of whole texts (‘memory’; ‘infidelity’; ‘exploitation’) may be of more interest than ‘manifest’ depictions of policemen, time-travellers, students, etc. Another objection is that the identification of ‘content,’ may be wrongly presented as an objective practice requiring no interpretation on the analyst’s part. A third objection focuses on the inseparability of form and content: the latter is only present at all through its formal manifestation. In some studies, the concept of ‘discourse,’ with its focus on the cultural sharing of meaning, offers a way to circumvent the difficulties of this binary distinction. As Corner (2011: 50) argues, “the uncertainty [of the form/content distinction] does not inhibit analysis but acts as a useful reminder of the interplay and fusions at work in communication.” (See also Bordwell et al., 2016: 52–54.) Despite these challenges, ‘content analysis’ may still be made to work within communities of academic practice with shared epistemologies: different analysts affiliated to the same sub-branches of research are likely to agree, or at least to accept each other’s categorisations for practical purposes, and to appreciate the fact that they generate numerical data which can be evaluated for scale and significance across large corpuses. The terms ‘content analysis’ and ‘quantitative analysis’ are often used as near-synonyms, yet it is clear that textual forms as well as contents can also be quantified (Neuendorf, 2016: 33). Neuendorf explains that quantitative content analysis – Chapter 13, p. 273
textual blanks – Chapter 9, p. 190
discourse analysis – Chapter 6
frames – Chapter 8, p. 169
epistemology – Chapter 16, p. 331
Mediated fiction
media- dependent form, media- independent content
Sherlock Holmes
content attributes are those that transfer readily between different media, whilst form attributes are those which are specific to the particular medium. For current purposes, the character of ‘Sherlock Holmes’ can be regarded as a medium-independent content attribute. There is even legal authority for the free re-use of the character by creators other than those authorised by the Conan Doyle estate (Hurley, 2014). There are many ways to approach research on mediated fiction as text – different types of fictional texts/artefacts/ activities to study, different academic purposes, different approaches or methods employed. To help in mapping the territory, the next section of this chapter provides an initial framework. One subsection considers technologically mediated fiction in relation to fictional discourse more generally, and a second subsection discusses how different research traditions have approached the study of fictional texts. In both subsections, ‘Sherlock Holmes’ will be called upon as a fictional creation that continues to sustain seemingly limitless, trans-national imaginative discourse across modes, media and platforms, for pleasure and for profit. In 2012, it was reported on the Guinness World Records website that Sherlock Holmes had earned the distinction of being “the most portrayed literary human character in film and TV” (Guinness World Records News, 2012). There is a correspondingly vast amount of academic research: Ever since the publication of the first Sherlock Holmes text, A Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle which appeared in Beeton’s Christmas Annual in 1887, the character of Sherlock Holmes has captured the imagination of readers and sparked the creativity of writers the world over. In addition to the four novels and fifty-six short stories created by Doyle (referred to as the canon), there has been produced over the years a bounty of stories and novels, films, radio dramas, television
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series, magazines, plays, Internet fanfiction, computer games, and other forms of adaptation, with astonishing success and popularity. (Naidu, 2017: 1) The chapter is not intended as a systematic review of ‘Sherlock Holmes’ scholarship; examples are selected for illustrating key points about fiction in the media, using, where possible, published work that is relatively recent. Observations about either theory or methodology in the abstract are of little value unless we understand how these are used in empirical textual research.
CONTEXTS OF COMMUNICATION Modes of mediated fiction The title of this chapter, “Mediated Fiction,” might seem to imply that there are fictional texts which are ‘unmediated.’ The dominant concept of ‘media’ in media studies itself has been one that refers to mass-circulation print media, broadcasting and film (and more recently their online counterparts). The domain of the ‘unmediated’ would then refer to fiction created in face-to-face interaction or circulated in written form within closed social networks. This distinction effectively equates ‘mediated’ and ‘unmediated’ with ‘public’ and ‘private,’ respectively, but the equation is not very satisfactory, for two different reasons. First, the arrival in the late 20th century of computer-mediated interaction by the general public, and the subsequent rise of social media, has brought into sharper focus the challenges of separating ‘public’ and ‘private’ and the changed demarcation lines between the two. For instance, ‘fanfiction’ (fans creating additional texts of their own, based on characters from existing published works) would once have circulated fairly narrowly within communities of enthusiasts. In the age of the internet, such fiction is published online. The scale of the potential readership is coextensive with
technological mediation
fanfiction
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discursive mediation
Kay Richardson internet access, but little is known about the actual audiences for such materials. On just one of the fanfiction websites (fanfiction.net) in the autumn of 2018 as I was writing this chapter, there were 154 pages of Sherlock Holmes fanfiction with about 25 entries per page, of varying lengths, uploaded between October 2000 and November 2018. Second, the term ‘mediation’ can be used more inclusively, to include all of the ways in which fictional subject matter is designed for its readership, audience or players, acknowledging the varying affordances (Gibson, 2014) of different media, modes and platforms (Ravelli & Van Leeuwen, 2018), including face-to face performance. In this wider sense, to mediate is to articulate in discourse. The creation and telling of stories (not necessarily fictional) to known individual recipients, in private circumstances, involves design just as much as the production of the latest James Bond feature film, even if the storytellers are not professionals of the kind studied by, for instance, Lwin (2017) but just ordinary conversationalists (Norrick, 2000). The element of embodied and envoiced performance in traditional oral storytelling (Finnegan, 2006, 2017) is a key point of similarity with the dramatized narratives made available on stage, screen, radio and online, differentiating these from storytelling in written and printed discourse. Some of these considerations will be revisited in the section on form, as they are more appropriately discussed with a firm focus on the design, specifically, of fictional narrative.
Contexts of scholarship Communication research has itself responded to its changing historical contexts, interpreting and reinterpreting the social role of scholarship. The study of affordances – Chapter 1, p. 5
mediated fiction in audio-visual media has undoubtedly been influenced by the study of fiction in its written, literary forms. Literary criticism, focused on canonical works in national and trans-national literatures, occupies a well-established place in Western humanities education and scholarship. But the philosophies and social structures which originally sustained it were subject to multiple pressures in the second half of the 20th century. Part of the response in university English departments and elsewhere was the development of literary theory, where attempts were made to put criticism on a more systematic footing and/or on a footing which would make the enterprise defensible in the face of objections from more obviously ‘useful’ branches of knowledge (Eagleton, 2008; Klages, 2006). Another, related development involved critiquing the ‘canon’ itself (e.g., from feminist perspectives [Spender, 1997]) and creating space for the inclusion of a much wider range of written materials, and, indeed, of materials in other media such as film. Contemporary scholarship seems to have retained from the humanist legacy the element of subjective engagement between the critic and the text (Corner, 2007). At the same time, textual critics today will commonly substantiate their readings with reference to wider sociocultural and/or theoretical perspectives. These wider perspectives have implications for the ‘methods’ of criticism and also contribute to a blurring of the boundary between criticism (humanities discourse) and qualitative social research (social science discourse). Furthermore, current studies may abandon any explicit prerequisite that the objects of criticism should be agreed as manifesting artistic excellence. The ambiguity of the English word ‘criticism’ needs to be acknowledged here. Criticism as used in humanist disciplines means something like ‘assess, analyse, explicate’; its other principal
oral storytelling – Chapter 1, p. 6 double hermeneutics – Chapter 20, p. 411
literary criticism – Chapter 2, p. 41
critique of the literary canon
criticism as subjective engagement
Mediated fiction
criticism as explication
individual texts
meaning is ‘find fault with.’ In traditional textual (literary) criticism, finding fault could have been a component of the assessment, but the backdrop to the whole enterprise was usually the presupposition of the artistic merit, not deficiency, of the works being studied. Criticism, in the ‘explicate’ sense, whether of plays, novels, films, operas, ballets, paintings, sculptures, TV dramas or other works of art, often focuses on the exploration of specific individual texts or productions. Those texts, further, can be understood in relation to a wider set or ‘corpus,’ such as other works by the same artist, other exemplars of the same genre, other work in the same timeframe and so on. Individual works may be put forward for investigation because they are in some way special, unusual, significant in a given sociohistorical or aesthetic context; because they are exemplars of some more general phenomenon; because they are new (or previously overlooked); because writers want to draw attention to features that previous critics have missed or because they allow the development of new theoretical positions. In comparison, qualitative ‘case study’ approaches – where social-scientific ‘(discourse) analysis’ and humanist/posthumanist ‘criticism’ converge – tend to gravitate to an understanding of their objects of analysis as ‘representative.’ The project of social science, in media studies as elsewhere, is more apt to recognise the importance of being able to offer generalisations. Humanistic scholars may also be more inclined than social scientists to constitute themselves as cultural historians and to focus on texts/productions regarded as belonging to ‘the past’ and as such holding inherent interest and value without needing to be concerned about their current relevance. The idea of fictional narrative as performance, briefly touched on in the previous qualitative case study approaches – Chapter 14, p. 291
section, can be taken in a concrete or an abstract sense. In its most concrete sense, as noted, it connects specifically with the stage, the studio and the location setting as places where voices and bodies physically enact their stories. The abstract sense is one developed originally in literary studies, applicable as much to written literature as to that which is heard by audiences. The approach proposes to conceptualise creative works within the terms of speech act theory as a branch of the philosophy of language. John Austin and John Searle are the key sources of speech act theory as it applies to language use in general (Austin, 1962; Searle, 1969). Richard Ohmann (1971) and Mary Louise Pratt (1977) are amongst those who have attempted to apply this specifically to works of literature, with Ohmann claiming a distinctive status for literary texts as imitations of ‘real’ speech acts. Eagleton (2008) offers a useful review of this approach but does not discuss its extension to other kinds of creative works such as those represented by film and TV drama. Indeed, the linguistic (verbal) bias of the approach acts as something of an obstacle to such an extension. Also the idea of using theory to sustain boundaries around the ‘fictional,’ verbal or otherwise, can be considered problematic in the light of the varying layers and forms of interpenetration between the real and the imaginary which have been outlined in this chapter.
Sherlock Holmes as Work and Text To see the role that literary theory plays in analytical practice, using Sherlock Holmes scholarship, we may consider the contribution of McClellan (2017) to that scholarship. McClellan begins by invoking Barthes’s (1977b) distinction between ‘Work’ and ‘Text’: “If Works are singular and monolithic, Texts are heteroglot, plural, a stereophony of echoes, speech act theory – Chapter 1, p. 15
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fiction as performance
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Kay Richardson citations, references” (Barthes, 1977b: 7). For McClellan, this theoretical proposition allows her to read (interpret) the BBC drama Sherlock (BBC, 2010–2017) as Text and to give particular attention to its playful, foregrounded, self-conscious use of ‘texts.’ The drama makes extensive, intertextual use of written language on screen, along with other forms of intertextuality, including visual ones. Such on-screen text sometimes functions to represent for TV viewers SMS messages appearing on characters’ mobile phones. At other times, it represents quotations from John Watson’s blog: John, Sherlock Holmes’s assistant, is meant to be narrating there his experiences with Sherlock as case histories. Sometimes there is no explicit reference to Watson as the source of the writing, and it is understood as conveying the thoughts of the detective himself. But this extensive ‘Textuality’ is, for McClellan, realised so as to reinforce the older idea of a textual artefact as a Work (of Art), where the Work is the original Conan Doyle canon, not the derivative Sherlock. This realisation involves repeated allusions throughout the television drama, in multiple forms, to the canonical works: “Ultimately, Sherlock’s text(s) end up undoing their own inter/textuality until all that matters is the Work” (McClellan, 2017: 8). McClellan’s account is offered here as an example of scholarly work which articulates a textual interpretation using particular aspects of literary theory and method, specifically, concepts which were developed in the 1960–70s. Structuralism and semiotics had a strong position at that time, but in McClellan’s version, the Work/Text distinction is pulling away from that approach and beginning instead to emphasise the interdependence of texts, even to the point of their instability as self-sufficient artefacts. Yet even in 2017, the humanist legacy is still evident in the
originality of McClellan’s argument; her focus on a specific set of texts (productions), namely the audio-visual Sherlock series and her unsystematised analysis, as this might be judged in more social scientific variants of media study. An element of trust is required of the reader that all or most of the on-screen written language is accounted for by the analysis and perhaps an assumption that her readership comprises a ‘critical community’ (Corner, 2007: 365) who share her familiarity with the textual materials and her (film-) critical scholarly enculturation. One example of a study which emphasises a corpus of texts over the individual text is that of Field (2013). Her primary corpus comprises 340 print advertisements for a variety of products, produced between 1900 and 2000, all of which deploy images of Sherlock Holmes, using him as a fictional celebrity easily recognisable from three or four distinctive visual tropes: the deerstalker cap, Inverness cape, pipe and magnifying glass. Field draws more lightly on semiotic interpretation: the deerstalker implies someone who will patiently ‘hunt down’ their quarry; the pipe indicates a man given to thoughtful contemplation; the magnifying glass represents someone for whom close observation is a key skill. Together, they also suggest a nineteenth-century man. (Field, 2013: 20) Because the corpus is relatively small, Field is able to look at every advertisement without having recourse to a quantitative approach. In fact, no generalisation is really possible at the manifest content level: the advertised products vary too widely. As well as such image-related goods as tobacco, Sherlock Holmes “has also been employed to sell biscuits, liqueurs, tea, tyres, toffee, jam, car manuals, finance, shirts, mouthwash, bread,
intertextuality – Chapter 10, p. 200 structuralism and semiotics – Chapter 2, p. 42
interpretive communities – Chapter 9, p. 190
Mediated fiction
Sherlock Holmes as a brand
computers, pharmaceuticals, moth-proofing, packaging, double glazing, and many more consumer and industrial products” (Field, 2013: 22). Field’s argument is that Holmes has become a brand in his own right, and it is the qualities of the character as these are understood by audiences which advertisers are appropriating: in some cases, the key quality is ‘expertise,’ in others it is ‘close observation.’ Field is as interested in the logic/rhetoric of the pitch as she is in its semiotics, so general observations about the ‘type’ of pitch are illustrated through discursive analysis of particular examples. The exercise of interpretation on the author’s part is very much in evidence; the exercise of evaluation is absent, speculative or couched in terms of ‘effectiveness’ as an advertising message to target consumers, as in this example: one wonders about the effectiveness of the 1960s advertisement for Erinmore tobacco in which a woman in a low-cut Victorian dress stands under a gas-lamp in the street. . . . Standing with his back to her is a Holmes in deerstalker and Inverness cape, smoking his pipe and taking no notice. The headline reads ‘nothing can tempt you away’ and the implication is that the taste of Erinmore tobacco is finer than any other experience that might be on offer. Holmes is frequently used in tobacco advertising, alluding to his pipe-smoking and monograph on the different kinds of tobacco ash, but his well-known imperviousness to women means that the brand value on which Erinmore is attempting to draw has been turned upside-down. (Field, 2013: 32) The social significance of the overall argument lies in its demonstration that Holmes, despite being a fictional character, works as a cultural icon in the sense articulated by Holt (2004: 2): “anchors
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of meaning continually referenced in entertainment, journalism, politics and advertising.” Thus, the Holmes icon contributes to the maintenance of a shared cultural imagination with considerable longevity.
FICTION AS FORM This section foregrounds approaches to the study of fiction which have a particular interest in matters of form, using Neuendorf’s (2016) version of the form/ content distinction: media-dependent form, media-independent content. In relation to film, one influential apparatus (Bordwell et al., 2016) uses the concept of ‘form’ in a narrower sense. ‘Form,’ for them, refers to “the way parts work together to create an overall effect” (p. 70), and this is where they discuss ‘narrative,’ whereas ‘style’ is concerned with the deployment of medium-specific creative choices, or techniques, in the domains of mise-en-scène, cinematography, editing and sound (p. 130). The present chapter treats both overall organisation and style as matters of form in Neuendorf’s sense whilst recognising the value of separate attention to ‘macro’ (narrative, genre) and ‘micro’ (setting, lighting, performance etc.) considerations.
Narrative Attempts to define and understand narrative originate with Aristotle in classical times, but for contemporary scholarship, the work of the Russian formalists in the 1920s, especially that of Vladimir Propp (see Erlich, 1980), marks the start of a continuous research enterprise, summed up as narratology. In literary theory the work of Gerard Genette (1997) is a key point of reference; for linguists, that of William Labov and Joshua Waletzky (Labov & Waletzky, 1997) has touchstone status. Seymour Chatman (1980) Russian Formalism – Chapter 2, p. 41
narratology
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Kay Richardson was one of the first to think about storytelling across media, along with Claude Bremond and Roland Barthes: Literary critics tend to think too exclusively of the verbal medium, even though they consume stories daily through films, comic strips, paintings, sculptures, dance movements, and music. Common to these artifacts must be some substratum; otherwise we could not explain the transformation of ‘Sleeping Beauty’ into a movie, a ballet, a mime show. (Chatman, 1980: 1)
telling and/or showing
It is not clear that there is any agreedupon definition of the term ‘narrative’ amongst theorists. One recent publication proposes the following definition: “Narrative is somebody telling somebody else, on some occasion, and for some purposes, that something happened to someone or something” (Phelan & Rabinowitz, 2012: 3). Phelan and Rabinowitz claim to have adopted this definition so as to be maximally inclusive, recognising that other scholars have more specific proposals. Their inclusiveness, however, seems to be on the side of content: ‘something happened to someone or something’ and context: ‘on some occasion, and for some purpose’ and not on the side of manner or mode. Narratives, for Phelan and Rabinowitz, are ‘told’: we know this is not inclusive, since many narratives – all film, all stage drama, all broadcast drama – are (also) ‘shown.’ We can of course treat ‘telling’ in this quotation as including all modes of narrative presentation, but the authors themselves do not clarify this. Instead, they use the verb ‘telling’ as something that takes place through the medium of writing, not speech, and their examples are almost exclusively literary. To approach fictional narrative from a formal perspective it is appropriate to start from the widely accepted distinction between ‘story’ as a sequence of events, and ‘discourse,’ the way the events are put
together by storytellers (Chatman, 1980). The terms ‘fabula’ and ‘sjužet,’ from the Russian formalists, are also used to express this distinction. Chatman’s abstract substratum in the earlier quotation is the Story; the realisation of that story is its Discourse, or ‘Plot’ in some accounts (see Shen, 2005b). ‘Discourse,’ however, has become a concept used in a wide variety of ways, with potential for confusion. I will ignore this particular narratological usage from here on and instead, where narrative is concerned, talk about the ‘Plot’ as far as possible and appropriate. I will also capitalise the words Story and Plot when using them with their specific narratological meanings. Chatman uses structuralist principles to argue that Stories are indeed structures in a theoretically defensible way: their dispensation of existents (e.g., characters) and events (e.g., actions) is principled, even before any realisation of such properties in a Plotted account. According to Neuendorf’s (2016) definitions of content and form, this would make Stories (including major characters) matters of ‘content,’ whilst Plots would fall on the side of ‘form.’ We can apply this understanding to the world of Sherlock Holmes. A Sherlockian Story, with events in a determinate causal-chronological sequence, starts with a crime, followed by the discovery of that crime, the bringing of that crime to the attention of the detective, then the detective’s investigation, and finally his uncovering of the crime’s causes, including identification of the perpetrator. The Plot typically starts from the third event in this sequence, with or without preceding ancillary events. We can see exactly this relationship in The Hound of the Baskervilles (canonical version). There is a crime (Sir Charles Baskerville is killed). The crime is discovered (initially by the butler). Sherlock Holmes learns about it (James Mortimer, the heir, calls on him in Baker Street), investigates, discovers the truth (rival heir Rodger Baskerville under
story and discourse fabula and sjužet
plot
Mediated fiction
mimesis and diegesis
the name Jack Stapleton killed Sir Charles in order to inherit the estate). The published novel begins with ancillary material (some character analysis by Holmes focused on a cane left at 221b Baker Street by James Mortimer) but quickly moves into Mortimer’s narration of events so far as he knows of them at first or second hand. When the BBC produced its most recent adaptation, ‘Hounds of Baskerville,’ as part of the Sherlock series, the Plot of this dramatization begins in much the same way. But the application of the Story/Plot distinction is not straightforward. An alternative account of Conan Doyle’s Story might want to begin with the events that precede the crime, (e.g., Stapleton moving to Devon) and/or the actions taken by Stapleton in a failed attempt to eliminate his second rival, Mortimer, actions which run in temporal parallel with the detection of the initial crime. The duality of narration in crime fiction (the story of the crime and the story of its detection) was recognised by Todorov in 1966 (Todorov, 1977) and in subsequent scholarship. Applying the Story/Plot distinction to fictional narratives involving Sherlock Holmes is further complicated by the fact that the canonical, already-Plotted, Conan Doyle stories exist as points of reference for all other versions. This means that the later adaptations may be assessed not only by reference to their treatment of the Stories but also by reference to the Plotting of the originals, without necessarily needing to make this narratological distinction explicit in the commentary. The terms ‘mimesis’ and ‘diegesis’ as used in literary and film theory should be treated with care and not equated too straightforwardly with ‘showing’ versus ‘telling,’ such that all audiovisual drama would be regarded as essentially mimetic and all prose fiction essentially diegetic (Shen, 2005a). Prose fiction is composed of narratological material plus dialogue which represents the speech of characters in the story. In some approaches,
the narratological material is regarded as diegetic and the dialogue as mimetic. The mimetic character of the dialogue then becomes stronger when a performer embodies and envoices the words, and the visual setting contextualises the delivery: this is probably the default case for audiovisual mediated fiction. The term ‘diegetic’ is applied these days to audiovisual drama just as much as to written fiction but with a somewhat different meaning. If (realist) movies and dramas set out to depict a world in which the participants, the characters, think and act, then the diegetic level is all of what the audiences see and hear within the ‘frame’ of that imagined world. Anything seen or heard from outside that frame (the musical soundtrack, for example) is extradiegetic, whilst still making a meaningful contribution to the semiotic whole. Narratological properties, general or specific, may feature in accounts which seek to bring out the sociocultural significance of media fictions. At the most general level, there are critiques which suggest that traditional narrative orients too much to the particular, so that the circumstances of individuals, and audiences’ empathetic appreciation of those circumstances, act as an obstacle to the development of a progressive political understanding on the part of audiences. Accordingly, disruptive, ‘difficult’ narrativity would be preferred over more comprehensible variants, in the interest of raising consciousness, despite (or because of) the risk to popularity. One well-known version of this modernist position, favouring Verfremdung or alienation, is associated with the work of Bertolt Brecht in Germany, Scandinavia and the United States in mid-20th century theatre; another, more film-related, critique has been directed at the ‘classic realist text’ (MacCabe, 1974). Also accounts of specific texts or productions, in various media, may reference characteristics of storytelling within Verfremdung – Chapter 2, p. 44
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Kay Richardson attempts to interpret these artefacts in relation to broader sociocultural contexts. Some Sherlock material has come in for this kind of attention. Neil McCaw writes: because Holmes adaptations are perhaps the most palimpsestuous [multi-layered] of all popular-cultural reworkings, the interaction with socio-cultural contexts is often multitextured, with adapted texts appearing to both reinforce and challenge the prevailing status quo in a host of ways, sometimes within the same text. This is certainly the case with the focus of this chapter, the televisual imagining of Sherlock Holmes during the 1980s and 1990s in the UK, which has a complex relationship with the ‘Thatcherite’ political rhetoric and ideology of the period. (McCaw, 2013: 36) McCaw’s analysis points to aspects of historical setting in his contextual reading. For Thatcherism, McCaw suggests, the respectful evocation of the Victorian period was to be valued in Britain on account of that era’s imagined moral, political and economic order, resonating with the 1980s’ own valorisation of the conservative and the traditional. But narrative also plays a part: The earlier Granada stories in particular work to soothe the anxieties of the national present with narratives in which England is ultimately manageable and comprehensible; it was not until the ninth episode broadcast that anyone is actually murdered, for instance. (McCaw, 2013: 37)
narrative closure
The productions McCaw is discussing are here represented as being unthreatening in content (no murders) and as having a reassuring formal tendency towards satisfactory narrative closure. There is an
additional layer of reassurance in the fidelity of the 1980s episodes to the canonical original stories, including but not limited to this closure. In the area of game studies, a productive approach to theorization has involved contesting the application of concepts like ‘narrative’ drawn from the study of more traditional fictional genres. This was one of the issues discussed in the launch issue of Game Studies in 2001, now a key journal for this research field (Juul, 2001; see also Aarseth, 2004; Jenkins, 2004). Subsequent scholarship pitted ludologists against narratologists. On the one hand, the ludologists thought it is misguided and retrograde to analyse interactive games in narratological terms. On the other hand, the narratologists (who may not accept that designation) concur that game design expands the territory of creativity and that holistic linear narratives as found in print literature and feature film are not to be found in games. Here, the player rather than the author, writer or director dictates event sequences, which vary on every new encounter with the game. But the narratologists have resisted throwing the baby out with the bath water. There can be micronarratives in game play, encounters among players can be story-like, and the Story/Plot distinction can be relevant to the analysis of games as well. One final point worth making on form in relation specifically to audio-visual narrative fiction, especially feature films, concerns the interruption of the Plot by moments of spectacle. The work of Tom Gunning (1990, 2006) on the cinema of attractions is especially relevant here. Moments of spectacle are to be enjoyed or appreciated for their audio-visual excess, despite making no contribution (or only a minimal one) to the Plot. The song-anddance numbers in musicals exemplify the role of the spectacle, but action sequences, car chases and so on may also have spectacular properties, combining a Plot-relevant element of jeopardy with a more visceral invitation to the viewer.
ludologists and narratologists
Mediated fiction Genre Another macro-level analytic concept is that of ‘genre.’ Genres can be regarded as templates for the production of texts (whether written, spoken, or audiovisual) in recognisable forms, according to conventions that are established over time. Creating text in accordance with a generic format can facilitate the work of textual producers and of textual consumers, the former by providing structures which they can populate with appropriate material, the latter by guiding them in what to expect (Bordwell et al., 2016: chapter 9). For fictional discourse, these processes may perhaps indicate a cost to creativity, where the template itself is regarded as carrying much of the text’s significance, leaving producers little scope to be original. Yet the existence of a generic format also facilitates that kind of creativity which involves ‘breaking the rules’ (one form of defamiliarization, in the idiom of the Russian formalists). Narrative genres in the world of print fiction include such things as ‘science fiction’ and ‘romance.’ Television has given us ‘soap opera’ and ‘situation comedy.’ Genres come into existence in different ways, they can change over time, and they can be hybridised with one another. The defining characteristics of genres vary, too, so that even within one medium, like that of fictional feature film, some are defined by their subject matter or theme (e.g., science fiction movies), some by aspects of presentation (e.g., musicals), some by the kind of plot they use (e.g., detective films) and some by their intended effects (e.g., comedies) (Bordwell et al., 2016: 328). Generic categorisation in TV (and radio) also traditionally underpins scheduling, with particular genres (including, but not limited to, the fictional ones) occurring at predictable times in the daily schedules of the broadcasters. The sociocultural significance defamiliarization – Chapter 2, p. 42
of scheduling has waned with the rise of streaming services on internet platforms and television channels dedicated to particular types of content (news, film, sport, etc.), although Steward (2014) devotes some attention to the scheduling significance of Sherlock (BBC, 2010–2017) in its first airings, including its deployment in a 9 p.m. Sunday evening slot on UK television, typically reserved for ‘quality’ period drama and also associated with murder mysteries. The Conan Doyle canon of Sherlock Holmes stories came into existence, some as novels, some as short stories in The Strand magazine, with the growth of a much wider (fiction) reading public in the UK from late Victorian times onwards, which was a consequence of state support for mass literacy. What has fascinated scholars is the re-inscribing of ‘Sherlock Holmes,’ ‘John Watson,’ ‘Moriarty,’ ‘Lestrade’ and their activities into different generic packages, whether this re-inscribing counts as adaptation (Cutchins, Krebs, & Voigts, 2018) of the canonical stories (the Granada TV series of the 1980s and 1990s would be an example of this) or their appropriation as new texts or artefacts. Sanders (2015), for example, usefully discusses Sherlock as an indicative example of creative work which takes Victorian prose fiction and reinscribes it into 20th- or 21st-century contexts: neither ‘adaptation’ nor ‘appropriation’ entirely fit the process in these cases. Poore (2017) talks about Sherlock stories on the 21st-century live stage. Watt and Green (2016) are interested in written parodies and pastiches. Duffy (2017) is interested in those Sherlockian fan creations which involve cosplay and roleplay: cosplay involves adopting the dress and personae of fictional characters by fans. The process attempts a corporeal reproduction of the chosen fictional character, and an engagement with the literacy – Chapter 2, p. 27
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Kay Richardson fictional character as if he or she were a living being. Similarly, roleplay – the collaborative writing of narratives in which fans-as-authors take on the roles of fictional characters – constitutes an adaptation of fictional characters that is premised on inhabiting, and elaborating on, those characters as if they were real people. (Duffy, 2017: 101) Cosplay shares with everyday, conversational storytelling its face-to-face embodied character and, normally, its impermanence, and it is generally improvised by two or more ‘in character’ interacting performers. Roleplay may result in the development of new narratives as artefacts (Duffy, 2017: 111; see also McClellan, 2013). Meanwhile, in more traditional media studies, the concept of genre is still proving a useful tool for exploring new Sherlock Holmes productions. Bull (2016) takes her point of departure from the recognised existence of a crime subgenre: that of ‘forensic crime’ as exemplified, inter alia, by CSI. She argues that, since forensic methods are now mainstream, Holmes as a forensic detective in Sherlock lacks the ‘exceptional’ status that he would have enjoyed in Victorian times or can be portrayed as having in adaptations which do not update the detective for modern times. It is Holmes’s ‘cerebral’ method which “marks him as different from the generic fictional forensic scientist on contemporary television” (Bull, 2016: 326).
Style Whereas the previous section foregrounded considerations of form at the level of the whole text, this section involves more fine-grained, micro analysis, without losing sight of the fact that such analysis is not usually an end in itself but is put into the service of some larger aesthetic or cultural argument about texts, corpuses or contexts (or some combina-
tion of these). Scholars with a linguistic training are likely to approach audiovisual drama via work on social semiotics (Hodge & Kress, 1988), multimodality (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2001) and discourse analysis (Matheson, 2005: chapter 4). Those with backgrounds in film studies are more likely to call upon earlier semiotic approaches (Barthes, 1977a), on psychoanalytic and other theory-driven appropriations of semiotics and structuralism (e.g., Mulvey, 1997), on ‘film art’ concepts (Bordwell et al., 2016 and earlier editions from 1979) and/or on cognitive approaches (e.g., Bordwell, 1989b). The idea that different media have affordances which foster or inhibit particular realisations is useful here (Gibson, 2014). What can be attempted in live stage drama will differ from what can be attempted on screen, in print or in a fictionally grounded videogame. An important methodological point is that there are no absolute form-meaning pairings that are valid in all contexts: aspects of form work in combination to achieve their effects: Does a canted frame mean that “the world is out of kilter”? Making and watching movies would be a lot simpler if framings carried such hard and fast meanings. But the individual films would lose their uniqueness and richness. In fact, framings don’t carry absolute or general meanings. . . . to rely on formulas is to forget that meaning and effect always stem from the film’s overall form and the immediate context. (Bordwell et al., 2016: 190) The primary significance of any shot of a character in a movie is its denotative reference to that character. Yet in Sherlock, as elsewhere, characteristics of that shot multimodality – Chapter 6, p. 121 affordances – Chapter 1, p. 5
Mediated fiction
film and/vs. television
may carry additional semiotic value, in the combinatory way here suggested by Bordwell et al. Before the credits at the start of “His Last Vow,” one of the Sherlock episodes, we see and hear a character who we will later come to understand is the villain of the episode, Charles Augustus Magnusson. But there are plenty of clues to his status in this opening sequence. One clue lies in his quiet speech style, in a foreign accent and his less-than-helpful answers to questions posed by an array of characters facing him from behind a table across an enclosed space. His dialogue in this context comes across as somewhat menacing, and this is aided by two non-contiguous closeup shots, where Magnusson is presented facing directly towards us, from the perspective of his inquisitors. But only one side of his face is in shot (a different side in each case). The half-face shot does not have intrinsic ‘threat’ value: the ‘threat’ meaning derives from the combination of these shots with the configuration of the space, the content of the dialogue and its delivery by actor Lars Mikkelsen. It may be true, as Cardwell (2005: 179) has argued, that close stylistic analysis of television fiction had until quite recent times been much less common than that of film – due allowance being made for the longer history of film as a medium, television was characteristically of more interest to social scientists than to critics (see also Corner, 2007). That said, recorded audio-visual media share a basic kit of resources for fictional creations, whilst the internet-based convergence of media and platforms has facilitated the rise of streaming media like Netflix, independent of both cinema and broadcasting distribution. In partial overlap, TV drama’s so-called second golden age (arguably from Hill Street Blues, which launched in 1981, to ER in the 1990s – see Thompson, 1996) drew attention to particular denotation and connotation – Chapter 2, p. 37
productions as worthy of critical attention. Thus the ‘TV aesthetics’ literature has expanded since 2005 (see Peacock & Jacobs, 2013). Hewett (2018) uses three TV versions of The Hound of the Baskervilles to demonstrate the changes in TV acting, from the 1960s studio realism to the 2010s location realism. In the former, for example: “Use of voice and body are ‘scaled down’ from the level of projection required for the stage, but still feature a greater degree of projection than would be employed in real life” whereas in the latter (exemplified by the BBC Sherlock): “Body and voice are used on a scale similar to that employed in real life” (Hewett, 2018: 16). Sherlock for Hewett has exemplary status: it stands for 2010s location realism. But it can also be regarded as offering something untypical and innovatory not just in terms of setting (modern day rather than the more customary 19th century) but also in terms of cinematography. It employs a range of non-naturalistic formal choices, including its use of written text on the screen (see discussion previously). These are devices which break the ‘fourth wall’: they are visible and meaningful to the viewer but not to the participants in the diegetic world.
FICTION AS CONTENT This section foregrounds the social significance of subject matter, whilst not forgetting that different narrative structures, genres and stylistic choices may variously inflect the meaning potential. ‘Crime’ as a subject matter offers considerable scope for this approach, alongside others: war, education, medicine, law, politics, romance, family life and so on. ‘Violence’ is not a topic in the same way as crime, but depictions of violence occur across media within many different fictional genres, and it has attracted popular as well as critical attention because of its potential effects. Many Stories progress through violent actions and events, and it is important in
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Kay Richardson many Plots that those actions and events be enacted rather than verbally reported, often because of their value as spectacle within the representation. For some digital games, a defining feature is the player’s involvement as a protagonist in violent encounters.
Crime Crime content is exemplary for the purposes of this chapter, since crime fiction is ubiquitous; comes in many different forms; is subject to considerable academic attention, especially on TV (see, e.g., the 2016 special issue of the New Review of Film and Television Studies), and is significant in its relations with normative social values. In relation to European television (heavily influenced by TV in the United States), Bondebjerg et al. (2017) put it like this: For television, crime drama – as with crime novels and crime films – is clearly the most popular genre across Europe. Crime drama takes us out of normal, everyday reality, out of our comfort zone and the routines that often dominate contemporary drama – although they too can show the underside of a peaceful reality. Crime drama is about life and death, law and order, morality and ethics and the breaking of those basic rules and norms upon which our society is built. (Bondebjerg et al., 2017: 223) Turnbull (2014) takes a similar view: Far from being all about reassurance, the television crime drama has often played a critical role in bringing current social issues and anxieties into the public domain, thereby unsettling what may once have been taken-for-granted assumptions about law and order. And far from the convenience of solving the problem in one hour, television crime drama may now take many hours to solve a crime without ever being able
to find a solution to the social issue it represents. (Turnbull, 2014: 2) Turnbull’s reference to reassurance here points to her questioning of the view that most crime drama resolves crimes and brings criminals to justice, providing narrative closure and reinforcing normative authority at the same time. Crime fiction is rightly understood as popular entertainment, a source of pleasure for its audiences and readerships. This no doubt includes illicit gratifications, enjoyed whilst stories unfold, as much as normative ones. As Turnbull (2014) and others are also careful to point out, the generic roots of fictional crime on TV reside in earlier and concurrent media (print, film, radio, the live stage), with variable debts to actual criminal cases and/or the real-world environments and experiences of crime fighting. Both Turnbull and Bondebjerg focus primarily on television, observing that crime as lawbreaking is the basis of a range of different TV genres, or variations on a genre – so-called police procedurals like Hill Street Blues that span the professional and private lives of police officers, forensic series like CSI, detective series like Sherlock. We can add that crime elements also occur in fictional TV texts which fall under quite different generic categories. A considerable amount of criminal activity takes place in soap operas, for example. Furthermore, a focus on crime as content allows connections to be made with nonfictional representations of crime elsewhere in the mediascape, including factual TV genres, where entertainment values may influence the mode of representation and where more or less imaginative dramatic reconstructions (i.e., fictionalised and enacted components) may play a part, as in the UK’s Crimewatch, or 999 (Kilborn, 1994: 64). Crime fiction is not exclusive to broadcasting nor inevitably tied to the perspectives of crime fighters. In a ‘gangster’ film like The Godfather, the focus is on
reassurance and/vs. pleasure
factual genres
Mediated fiction organised crime and primarily on the criminals rather than the agents of criminal justice. In a police procedural TV drama, the focus is on the working lives of the police, often weaving together personal storylines with work-related ones. Detective movies, detective TV shows, detective novels have certain properties in common, specifically the investigation of crimes by police officers or private detectives. Exemplars of these genres are characteristically driven by the ‘whodunnit’ character of the Plotting, with some exceptions. TV dramas typified by the 1970s US Columbo series lack this whodunnit attribute – the fascination is in following this detective’s forensic and social skills in bringing already identified culprits to justice.
Quantitative and qualitative analysis of fictional crime There has been a considerable amount of quantitative research on television fictional crime. Early on, Dominick (1973) was able to establish that fictional law enforcers on American television at that time – the police – were overwhelmingly (87%) depicted as law-abiding themselves, thus modelling normative social values. While this may tell us something about mediated popular culture in the United States of the 1970s, television’s place in the media landscape has changed, generic frames have shifted, and the socio-political context is very different. Similar reservations apply to Surette (2014), first published in 1992, with attention to TV shows from that era. Taken together, however, the two studies indicate a trajectory towards more critical portrayals of the police in TV fiction, as Surette found that 30% of the police characters were represented as incompetent or corrupt. In Eschholz, Mallard, & Flynn (2004), the focus was on the use of violence, violating civil rights, in NYPD Blue, establishing that such violations occurred at least once in each episode and were presented in that show as essential to effective policing.
Often, critical/qualitative research on crime fiction in the media takes seriously the attempts made in TV crime fiction to mediate current sociopolitical concerns through narrative (plot and character), and style. For example, Brunsdon (1998) offered an account of televised British police procedural fictions of the late 1980s and early 1990s (with particular reference to Prime Suspect, Inspector Morse and Between the Lines), arguing that, in this period: “Television crime fiction . . . – and particularly the police series in its various manifestations – has been a privileged site for the staging of the trauma of the breakup of the postwar settlement,” that is, the undermining of the classic welfare state by neoliberal policies (Brunsdon, 1998: 223). More recently, The Wire has proposed a nihilistic view of policing the disempowered, mostly African American, urban underclass in the USA of the 21st century: What we see is a war zone: a side of America that appears extreme – at times incomprehensible – in a representation that is intellectually and morally challenging. The series appears to eschew any episode-based resolutions . . . preferring instead to offer larger narratives, juggling a Shakespearian cast of dozens of individuals, some of whom have names for us, some of whom are recognized or perhaps only partly recognized by their faces. Five seasons, each of which coheres as a unit, together form a super-narrative that shows the progress of time in a fictionalized Baltimore, but not any clear moral or narrative advance. Faces change, characters enter our awareness or drop from view, but the drug problem (which may be seen as the series’ principal concern) persists. There is change rather than advance: whatever closure offered is, painfully, only temporary. (Potter & Marshall, 2009: 9)
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Kay Richardson What the interpretations offered by Brunsdon and by Potter and Marshall have in common is that they treat the programmes as belonging to very specific countries at very specific times in their history, although Brunsdon is looking back from the late 1990s to an earlier period (1984 to 1992), whilst Potter and Marshall are treating their material as current. The producers of both were, in the first instance, speaking about national concerns to their national audiences, incorporating into their fictions themes and tropes already live within current discursive contexts such as the punitive ‘law and order’ discourse under Conservative governments of the 1980s and early 1990s (Brunsdon, 1998: 225). It is true that The Wire was able to find other markets besides its national one: arguably audiences in Britain and elsewhere enjoyed the experience of witnessing distant crimes from a ‘bystander’ position, to use a term from Erving Goffman’s theory of communicative participation frameworks (Goffman, 1981).
The issue of violence
violence as spectacle
Also outside of crime fiction, violence is a key topic in debates about media effects, addressed elsewhere in this Handbook. Discussion of violent textual content in academic research is therefore likely to occur as a preliminary to considerations of influence on audiences, but there are exceptions. Lichtenfeld (2007: 55–58), with his critical interest in the emergence of the American action movie genre, has interesting things to say, for example, about The Warriors (1979), recognizing the role of violence as spectacle: The plot is simple: the Warriors, a New York gang, is framed for the murder of a messianic gang leader and has one violence and effects research – Chapter 8, p. 156
night to fight its way through rival gangs and the police, from the Bronx back home to Coney Island. The Warriors is not reserved when it comes to style; indeed, it is the excessiveness of the costumes, of the fight choreo graphy, and of Andrew Laszlo’s cinematography that somehow enables the film’s grab bag of generic referents to hold together [. . .] Other than hands, the weapons most stressed by the film are the baseball bats wielded by the Baseball Furies, a frightening tribe whose face-painted members dress like the New York Yankees. The Furies perform feats with their bats that border on the acrobatic, but the Warriors manage to turn the bats against their owners. Both gangs twirl and strike with the bats as if they were staffs in a kung fu film. (Lichtenfeld, 2007: 55) Hall and Whannel (2018, first published 1964) were amongst the first to discuss the relevance of form for the understanding of violence in British TV drama: we must go on to draw the more complex distinctions between different kinds of violence: between, say, the violence of the BBC series of Shakespeare history plays on television, Age of Kings, and that of 77 Sunset Strip, Wagon Train, Whiplash and Gunsmoke. Such distinctions are impossible without some attention to questions of style and treatment: we shall have to understand the different qualities expressed in these programmes, trying to decide how they work as dramatized experiences, and what their psychological impact is. (Hall & Whannel, 2018: 110–111; see also Corner, 1999: 104–105) Critical/qualitative analyses of fictional violence involve paying explicit attention to matters of textual structure and style,
Mediated fiction
film classification
recognising both its ubiquity and the widely diverse forms of representation, from cartoons through to movies and games. Industry organisations like the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) themselves consider certain questions of textual form when certifying films for general release:
in each series. Thirty-five of the 90 violations took the form of verbal disrespect, 20 took the form of unwarranted violence, 10 were cases of trespassing (p. 45). They also found considerable levels of justification for these violations in different forms, allowing them to conclude that:
Classification decisions will take account of the degree and nature of violence in a work. Works which feature the following are likely to receive higher [more restrictive] classifications:
most of these violations were found to be based on the police officer’s desire to get the job done. The police officers thus violated rules of proper police conduct to make sure they could catch the ‘bad guys’ and protect the social moral order. Police officers were also shown to break the rules when they were confronted with very serious offenders, like serial killers and paedophiles. As with the violations committed out of a desire to stamp out crime, we believe these violations did not undermine, but rather confirmed, police officers’ position as protectors of society’s moral structure. (p. 49)
• portrayal of violence as a normal solution to problems • heroes who inflict pain and injury • callousness towards victims • the encouragement of aggressive attitudes • characters taking pleasure in pain or humiliation • the glorification or glamorisation of violence. (BBFC, 2019: 13) The forms through which violence is fictionally mediated are relevant to interpretation, which in turn is relevant to potential effects. Dirikx, Van den Bulck, and Parmentier (2012) is by design a quantitative study, whilst being sensitive to some aspects of textual form. The authors sampled 20 episodes from each of four representative US police dramas: CSI Miami, NCIS, The Mentalist and Without a Trace. They coded violations of conduct in five major categories: basic violations (e.g., stealing), civil rights violations (e.g., unwarranted violence), abuses of power, violations of police procedure and verbal disrespect towards citizens. Violence was subcategorised into three: threat of violence, light physical aggression, severe physical aggression. They also coded the presence/absence of justifications, reactions and consequences. The authors found an average of 1 violation per episode, with between 30 and 15
Questions of textual form are somewhat repressed here, in order to produce the quantitative data, but the categorisation of violence in the study works alongside the analysis of the terms of its justification in narrative context. The transgressions (not all of them involving violence) themselves are variably Story and Plot dependent (so not unequivocally matters of content or of form, according to the earlier discussion in this chapter). If police are shown to engage in trespassing, their trespasses are likely to be a matter of Story as a causal event sequence. Dialogue in which they perform verbal disrespect towards citizens is more likely to belong to the Plot and/or constitute an element of textual style, if the underlying Story would be the same with or without the verbal disrespect. Physical violence could be a matter of both Story and Plot. Measures of inter-coder reliability are offered inter-coder reliability – Chapter 13, p. 273
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Kay Richardson by the authors to give readers confidence in the robustness of the categorisation. This is a procedure which privileges intuitive intersubjective accord over explicitness about textual logic. Coders know that they agree; they may not consciously appreciate why. Video game violence introduces the parameter of (digital) participation into the framework of analysis. A shoot ‘em up game positions the player as someone who shoots ‘enemy’ characters in the game. Viewed in terms of abstract formal parameters, such games are just target practice tests for players, rewarding fast reaction times. More concerning for ‘effects’ research are games aiming for a high degree of graphic realism, including, in recent years, the 3D immersive experience offered by, for example, Grand Theft Auto III. Where violence is concerned, textual research that is distinct from effects research is difficult to find, perhaps because, graphics aside, games are too similar:
(canonical) Sherlock Holmes’ investigative methods, rather than any concern for how these methods work as part of literary artefacts:
Take away the game-world, and what is left is literally the same game skeleton, give or take an algorithm. . . . Science fiction futurism, medieval fantasy, or 20th century noir, the formula is the same: kill, explore, kill some more. (Aarseth, 2003: 4)
As regards forensic methods, there are influences in both directions between the imaginary and the real: it is well attested that Conan Doyle based aspects of the Holmes character, in part, on the Edinburgh doctor Joseph Bell, with his expertise in diagnostic medicine. A modern-day fictional diagnostician was the character played by Hugh Laurie in House (Fox, 2004–2012). Although critical/qualitative textual analyses of Holmes fiction in literary and media/film/theatre studies are common (some under the auspices of adaptation studies), specific attention to the crime content as such is much less so, except as mystery which has to be solved and which has to result in an appropriate denouement. Cawelti’s (1977) treatment of formula-driven popular fiction references the Conan Doyle stories as following the formula of the ‘classical detective story’ and observes that they have a tendency “to make the denouement simply bear
There is no entry for ‘violence’ in Aarseth’s influential book on game analysis (1997).
Sherlock Holmes and crime Embarking, finally, on an account of what media research has made of Sherlock Holmes as mediated crime fiction, it is interesting to pick up on this chapter’s introductory exploration of the deep interpenetrations of the real and the imaginary, by drawing attention to the existence of some scholarly work outside literary and media studies. Criminologists have ‘real world’ reasons for their interest in
Sherlock Holmes made the study of tobacco ashes his hobby. It was a new idea, but the police at once realised the importance of such specialised knowledge, and now every laboratory has a complete set of tables giving the appearance and composition of the various ashes . . . mud and soil from various districts are also classified much after the manner that Holmes described . . . poisons, hand-writing, stains, dust, footprints, traces of wheels, the shape and position of wounds . . . the theory of cryptograms, all these and many other excellent methods which germinated in Conan Doyle’s fertile imagination are now part and parcel of every detective’s scientific equipment. (Ashton Wolfe, 1932: 270; see also Berg, 1970)
Mediated fiction out the detective’s solution rather than give the reader a more complex interest in the criminal’s predicament” (Cawelti, 1977: 21). Sherlock Holmes generally features in synoptic reviews of TV crime fiction. In Turnbull (2014), Holmes fiction is discussed in a chapter on ‘The Detective as Hero,’ with Holmes figured as an exemplary amateur sleuth. Bondebjerg et al. (2017) place dramas based on the Sherlock Holmes canon within a ‘heritage’ brand of a distinctively English/British kind, in which the socio-geographic context, the location, is at least as important as the crime itself. Usually, with Holmes, this is the retro location of Victorian London. The BBC Sherlock is untypical in bringing Holmes into a 21st-century London, one which we are (were) asked to parse as ‘here and now.’ Like The Wire, Sherlock has been internationally successful, and pleasurable spectatorship from a
bystander, tourist perspective must be part of that pleasure for many viewers.
CONCLUSION In this chapter, I have presented an account of mediated fiction which attempts to honour the varieties of fictional discourses across genres, modes, media and platforms, up to and including games and cosplay. The incentive for doing this is to underline the ubiquity of fiction in everyday life whilst resisting easy generalisations about its social and cultural significance. An element of bias to mainstream and traditional media, especially television, and to Anglo-American examples, will be apparent, reflecting my own experience and expertise but also the dominance of American fictional products worldwide. Mediated fiction is not, or not only, a distraction from real life but a way of helping us to understand it.
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8 • • • •
Media effects Quantitative traditions Klaus Bruhn Jensen
a brief history of research on media effects a review of the main traditions of audience and user studies, which have focused on different stages of the process of communication a presentation of additional work on the steps and contexts in which media serve to socialize individuals and to institutionalize society an example of studies of broader sociocultural lifestyles as they relate to media and communication
INTRODUCTION
‘effects’ – short-term cognitive and behavioral impacts on individuals
the dominant paradigm
If any one issue can be said to have motivated media studies, it is the question of ‘effects.’ From the perspective of policy-makers and the general public, the field could be expected to provide evidence of what media do to individuals and, by implication, to society at large. From an academic perspective, the field has gained legitimacy and attracted funding by proposing to explain what specific difference the media make for modern culture, politics, and economy. Effects have mostly been addressed in the sense of relatively short-term cognitive and behavioral impacts of media and their contents on the members of mass audiences, as examined by quantitative methodologies. Especially in this area, it is appropriate to speak of a dominant paradigm of research (Gitlin, 1978; Webster & Phalen, 1997), even if that mainstream has been critiqued and complemented by a qualitative substream (Chapter 9, this volume).
The present chapter reviews the main varieties of quantitative audience studies and the stages of the communicative process that they each focus on. Whereas contemporary research commonly distances itself from a conveyor-belt model of communication, each tradition is defined, in part, by its orientation toward a particular moment in the interchange between media and their users. An overview of the various stages in sequence, further, helps to indicate the scope of each tradition and to specify areas of contact or overlap between them. To anticipate an argument underlying this and the two following chapters, each tradition can be said to examine a social context of interaction between media and users. For example, an ‘early’ stage or context is examined through measures of media exposure, such as the number of contexts of communication – Chapter 10, p. 198
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Media effects visitors to, and the number of minutes they spend on, a given website; a ‘late’ context has been studied in terms of the so-called knowledge gaps that the use of websites and other news media may, in fact, serve to deepen rather than close (Tichenor, Olien, & Donohue, 1970). In each case, an interchange occurs that has implications for the user’s orientation to and action in social contexts. The act of surfing the web is a specific use of time and a choice of one communicative activity over another; having access to certain forms of public knowledge via one’s media diet is a necessary condition of political and other social participation. Figure 8.1 lays out the main stages, as defined by different research traditions. Before examining each tradition in turn, the chapter briefly reviews the history of effects research. This history bears witness to surprisingly shifting assessments of the nature and scope of media effects; it also suggests variable notions of what it means to be an audience, a user, or a public. The following sections describe and illustrate each research tradition, with special reference to its theoretical assumptions and preferred methodologies. A more elaborate account is given of research on lifestyles, which relates media and communication studies to broader issues of
cultural identity and social structure, and which has been one interface between quantitative and qualitative studies of media use.
HISTORIES OF EFFECTS RESEARCH Because media effects have attracted so much public and scholarly interest, it is one of the largest and most differentiated areas of communication research; it is also an area with an identifiable history. As summarized by Denis McQuail (2010: 455–462), four phases of effects research can be singled out: • Phase 1: all-powerful media. From around 1900, when an identifiable specialization in communication research was emerging (Simonson & Peters, 2008), to 1940, mass media – press, film, and radio – were widely thought to be able to shape both opinion and behavior through propaganda (e.g., Lasswell, 1938). However, this view was based not on scientific investigation but on awe at the possibilities for mass persuasion that seemed to open up and on observation of the enormous popularity
Knowledge gaps Gratifications sought Diffusion of innovations
MEDIA
Gratifications obtained
Institutionalization Cultivation
Campaigns
Lifestyles
Agenda- setting Consumption Recall
Contexts of media use
Decodings
Framing
Media in social action
Figure 8.1 The stages of communication, as defined by audience research traditions (Note: The qualitative traditions, indicated below the line, are reviewed in Chapter 9)
Socialization
SOCIETY
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Klaus Bruhn Jensen of these media that intruded into many aspects of everyday life as well as public affairs. (McQuail, 2010: 456) • Phase 2: theory of powerful media put to the test. With a consolidation of academic media studies from the 1930s onwards, research came to suggest that, in most instances, at least no direct link could be established between media stimulus and audience response. Klapper (1960) presented an influential digest of findings supporting this conclusion. • Phase 3: powerful media rediscovered. The 1960s witnessed a return to hypotheses about the power of media, partly supported by a reassessment of earlier evidence (see Chaffee & Hochheimer, 1985; Delia, 1987). Such hypotheses were also prompted by other developments, both in research and in the media themselves: more studies of cognitive rather than of attitudinal or behavioral effects; a resurgence of critical social theory and political economy; and, last but not least, the arrival of television. • Phase 4: negotiated media influence. Since around 1980, a further differentiation in the understanding of media impact – and of relevant theoretical and methodological approaches – has been in evidence both with the growth of qualitative reception studies and with the coming of digital media. The very category of ‘effects’ may require significant reconceptualization if the field is to account for the implications of networked forms of communication in the case of mobile, ubiquitous, and pervasive media. As these phases suggest, effects research and media studies as such have been intimately connected with other social and ubiquitous and pervasive media – Chapter 1, p. 9
historical developments through a process of double hermeneutics – two world wars, the rise of television as a centerpiece of popular culture, and the coming of a digital media environment. The founding of the field in an era of mass media – with few centralized senders and many dispersed recipients – helps to explain why the overwhelming emphasis of research has been on individual users: they were the members of what a 1950 volume conceived as The Lonely Crowd (Riesman, 1950). A recent volume summarizing effects research made a special point of signaling in its title what may be the beginning of a reorientation from (media) effects to (communicative) processes: The Sage Handbook of Media Processes and Effects (Nabi & Oliver, 2009). In their introduction, the editors referred to “the full range of media effects processes, which are often complicated, fluid, and interactive” (p. 4 – emphasis added). It is precisely the question of what “effects processes” might mean – whether and how effects could and should be studied as processes rather than products or events – that has continued to challenge the field in both theoretical and empirical terms.
MOMENTS OF IMPACT: FROM DIFFUSION TO CULTIVATION Diffusion of innovations In order to serve their communicative purposes, media must be both materially available and discursively accessible to a significant part of the population in question. On the one hand, the availability of a medium presupposes its invention, development, distribution, and relative affordability in a given historical and cultural context. On the other hand, its accessibility depends on whether users will perceive its likely applications as attractive and whether they have (or are able to acquire) the relevant cognitive and cultural competences. double hermeneutics – Chapter 20, p. 411
material availability
discursive accessibility
Media effects
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Figure 8.2 Adoption of black-and-white and color television in the United States, in percent over time
While the diffusion-of-innovations framework thus lends itself to a whole range of media – from writing and literacy to social network sites – it should be noted that the research tradition has addressed innovations in a far broader sense: information with an instrumental value in agriculture, healthcare, family planning, and so on. An important background to this particular research tradition was development communication – post-1945 attempts at modernizing developing countries through innovative practices and institutions of communication. The general theoretical model of diffusion – of ideas as well as technological innovations – was presented by Everett M. Rogers (1962); his seminal volume appeared in five editions (Rogers, 2003) development communication – Chapter 11, p. 223
and has been widely influential in communication studies and beyond. The basic idea is that new information will be disseminated in a gradual and staggered fashion throughout a social system: Users can be divided into innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, and laggards (the last term implying that information as well as innovation are, normally, good for people and should not be resisted). The adoption process constitutes five stages: knowledge, persuasion, decision, implementation, and confirmation. The ‘ideal’ S-curve moves from a slow and unequal start, via an accelerated diffusion, to a plateau where the medium is available to practically everybody. Evidently, diffusion will vary, not least by people’s economic means, also in rich societies, as illustrated by Figure 8.2 displaying the historical adoption of black-and-white and, later, color television in the United States.
innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, laggards
knowledge, persuasion, decision, implementation, confirmation
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symbolic diffusion
Whereas various communication technologies were found to be important in the first stage of diffusion (knowledge), personal contacts and individual experience, importantly, would prevail in later stages. In addition, studies of the diffusion of news suggested that the higher the proportion of a population that knows about an event or issue, the higher the proportion that learnt about these from an interpersonal source (Greenberg, 1964). This presents a useful reminder also regarding the role of one-to-one communications in a modern media environment. The internet and mobile media simultaneously accelerate and differentiate the diffusion of information by multiple media and communicative practices. (The mobile phone itself has had the fastest rate of adoption historically of any communication technology on a global scale [ITU, 2018].) The most common approach to studying the diffusion of innovations has been survey methodologies, as accumulated in national and international statistics as well as market research. Such evidence, further, lends itself to secondary analyses that extract additional patterns of diffusion and use from existing data sets. These approaches produce indispensable baseline information by comparing and contrasting the availability and accessibility of media and communication services among different social and cultural groups. In comparison, diffusion research has given less attention to the interpretive processes by which individuals and groups adopt and ‘domesticate’ an unfamiliar technology – what has been referred to as symbolic diffusion (Jensen, 1993a).
Gratifications sought It is the user’s approach to media that has been the focus of attention in the second embodied communication – Chapter 1, p. 5 multistep flows of communication – Chapter 10, p. 194 domestication – Chapter 9, p. 191
tradition – uses and gratifications (U&G) research. The tradition is often summarized in Elihu Katz’s call for research that asks not only what media do to people, but also what people do with media (Katz, 1959). Following pioneering studies during the 1940s (Berelson, 1949; Herzog, 1944), the tradition was revitalized from the 1960s, partly in response to the contemporary conclusion that media had ‘no effects.’ The ambition of U&G was to relate the uses and consequences of media to audiences’ psychological needs and social conditions, including, importantly, the alternatives to media use. The research program referred to a whole series of steps in a communicative process: “(1) the social and psychological origins of (2) needs which generate (3) expectations of (4) the mass media or other sources which lead to (5) differential exposure (or engaging in other activities), resulting in (6) need gratification and (7) other consequences” (Katz, Blumler, & Gurevitch, 1974: 20). U&G became widely influential during the 1970–80s (Blumler & Katz, 1974; Rosengren, Wenner, & Palmgreen, 1985). For one thing, studies began to outline various typologies of the media-audience nexus. The relationship between general human needs and specific media affordances and offerings was conceptualized as functions, a classic concept in sociology from Émile Durkheim to Talcott Parsons. Studies identified three main functions of media: information-seeking, diversion, and the maintenance of personal identity (Blumler, 1979; McQuail, Blumler, & Brown, 1972). For another thing, U&G addressed the complex question of whether the public perceives particular media and genres as sources of distinctive gratifications (Katz, Gurevitch, & Haas, 1973). U&G soon came in for theoretical criticism on at least two fronts. On the one hand, critical theorists argued that the entire approach was compromised by classic sociology – Chapter 3, p. 56
uses and gratifications research what people do with media
functions of media use
Media effects
dysfunctions
its functionalism, specifically the premise that the functions of media might serve general and common interests – in a society with fundamental conflicts of interest (Elliott, 1974). When references were made in the U&G literature to dysfunctions (Lazarsfeld & Merton, 1948; Wright, 1959), these were conceived as deviations from a norm rather than as indicators of structural antagonisms. On the other hand, work in cultural studies found that communication understood as active participation in cultural processes could not be captured by this framework (Carey & Kreiling, 1974). In addition, empirical studies questioned the explanatory value of the key concept of gratifications. Lichtenstein and Rosenfeld (1983), for example, found that both heavy and light viewers of television, and fans as well as non-fans, tended to agree about their gratifications; they concluded that respondents may reproduce generally accepted views of media and content types, at least when questioned according to U&G methodologies. Indeed, a central point of contention has been methodology. Despite occasional qualitative or experimental studies, studies have relied primarily on surveys to examine diverse levels and aspects of the audience experience of media. As such, U&G has contributed systematic accounts of the public’s perception of and expectations from various media and genres. In comparison, the tradition has been less suited to documenting audience interpretations and contextual uses of media, a criticism advanced by qualitative reception studies from the 1980s (Chapter 9). The U&G approach to these aspects is taken up in the section subsequently on gratifications obtained, as distinct from the gratifications sought and expected in advance of media use. Some work in the tradition has related the category of gratifications to other aspects of media use, for example, the nature of audience activity before, during,
and after media exposure (e.g., Levy & Windahl, 1985) and the relationship between personality and media gratifications (e.g., Conway & Rubin, 1991). U&G research, from the outset, also had sought to integrate its concepts and approaches with other traditions, including ‘uses-andeffects’ research (Rosengren & Windahl, 1972) (anticipating later deliberations concerning ‘effects processes,’ as noted in the introduction to this chapter). With digital media, the category of gratifications is, again, open to discussion: the functions of digital media may be different in kind, given their interactive functionalities. When studies have found that the “uses and gratifications of befriending candidates” for political office on a social network site (MySpace) emphasize “social interaction with other like-minded supporters” rather than information-seeking or entertainment (Ancu & Cozma, 2009: 567), that would seem entirely unsurprising, but it raises the question of how this experience compares to more traditional social-interaction gratifications associated with family television viewing (Lull, 1980) or to para-social interaction (Horton & Wohl, 1956). As part of a critical stock-taking, accordingly, Sundar and Limperos (2013) called for an updating and revision of the standard typologies of gratifications commonly employed in empirical U&G studies (see further Tefertiller & Sheehan, 2019).
gratifications obtained, p. 163
para-social interaction – Chapter 9, p. 183
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Consumption A staple of media studies has always been measurements of who attends to which media, for how long, in which combinations and sequences; it is, without question, the type of audience research to which most resources are devoted overall, although the majority of studies remain proprietary and unpublished because of their commercial value. In systematic terms, such studies document the moment of exposure: the concrete
media exposure
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the audience commodity
secondary media use
Klaus Bruhn Jensen interaction between a medium and a user, without which there would be no interpretation or effect – no communication. The time and/or money spent by diffe rent socio-demographic groups on diffe rent media and genres represent necessary baseline information, even while both the categories of measurement and the social uses of findings may be subject to debate. The critical political economist Dallas W. Smythe (1977), for one, argued that the primary product of media is not contents, but audiences. Media deliver audience attention to advertisers – audiences pay attention – above and beyond the money that they pay for certain media products and cultural experiences. The definition of what constitutes attention is, at once, a highly philosophical and a very concrete issue. Media users will interrupt their attention, either because of other events in the immediate use context or because media products and services fail to hold their attention, through a commercial break in a television series or across all top stories of an online news site. As part of multitasking (Székely, 2015), media users will also divide their attention, so that viewing, listening, or reading become secondary activities (even if it can be difficult to establish which activity is primary, secondary, tertiary, and so on – eating breakfast, having a conversation, reading a newspaper (on paper or screen), listening to a newscast [broadcast or streamed]). Social contexts, including the experience of coviewing, may be more important than specific motivations for attending to a particular media content (Mora, Ho, & Krider, 2011; Wonneberger, Schoenbach, & van Meurs, 2011). Whereas classic studies found that television viewing is often a secondary activity (Robinson & Converse, 1972) (see also Comstock, Murray, & Rubinstein, 1971; Szalai, 1972), the internet and digital media that are “always on” (Baron, 2008) present additional challenges when it comes to measuring (and understanding)
media consumption and the relationship between communication and other social interaction. Digital devices alter the characteristic experience of television viewing (McCreery & Krugman, 2015), and they afford the possibility of communicating further about the experience on social media (Wohn & Na, 2011). To address the methodological difficulties involved, audience studies have gone through several generations of measurement technologies (Gunter & Machin, 2009; Webster, 2014), in addition to combining quantitative and qualitative approaches. The general shift has been from in-person techniques, such as faceto-face interviewing and diaries, toward semi-automatic measurements, particularly for broadcasting and the internet. From the mid-1980s, peoplemeters had replaced the original television meters measuring whether a set is turned on and to which channel it is tuned; peoplemeters rely on respondents to push a button to identify themselves as ‘viewers’ and, in some systems, to indicate their level of appreciation of programs. On a smaller scale, studies have videotaped viewers in front of television sets to assess their attention and activity (Bechtel, Achelpohl, & Akers, 1972; Borzekowski & Robinson, 1999; Schmitt, Woolf, & Anderson, 2003). Overlapping with the field of human-computer interaction (Jacko, 2012), research has also employed eye-tracking to determine exactly what the users of screen media look at and how they interact with different elements of content and form. With digital media, which are, in part, self-documenting, large auto-generated data sets lend themselves to detailed analyses of use patterns and user profiles through data mining. Whereas data mining is far from replacing data collection, data that thus are ‘found’
television- and peoplemeters – Chapter 13, p. 270 data mining – Chapter 15, p. 314
viewing the viewers
eye-tracking
Media effects lend themselves to combination with data that are ‘made’ (Jensen, 2012b).
Gratifications obtained
expectancy value
Uses-and-gratifications research has had little to say, as noted, about the contextual and interpretive aspects of communication. Its preferred survey methodologies are especially suited to capturing conscious and familiar aspects of media use. The contingent and incidental nature of much media use can be more difficult to recall or recognize. Nevertheless, to capture the concrete gratifications of media – pleasurable experiences and relevant information – U&G came to distinguish between expectations of what will be provided (gratifications sought – GS) and the resulting satisfactions (gratifications obtained – GO). GS is, in part, the outcome of a user’s past experiences with particular media and communicative practices; GO constitutes feedback to the user on which gratifications to seek in the future, from which media. This processual perspective has been summed up in a formal expectancy value model, which may explain and predict media uses and gratifications (Palmgreen & Rayburn, 1985). The problem is that the methodologies employed may not provide any valid or adequate description of the processes in question. One study (Palmgreen, Wenner, & Rayburn, 1980), for example, collected responses to two sets of statements, presented in telephone interviews immediately after each other. GS was operationalized as, “I watch television news to keep up with current issues and events.” GO, next, was reformulated with reference to the program that the respondent in question would ordinarily watch: “CBS News helps me to keep up with current issues and events” (p. 171). However, whatever correlations obtain between the two sets of statements, the empirical design does not warrant conclusions about the data – found and made – Chapter 16, p. 334
viewer’s experience or gratification in any specific sense. Both the GO and the GS statements were presented in one interview session in equally abstract formulations and without any concrete point of reference to an actual (set of) broadcast(s) or a context of viewing. Instead, the findings provide insight into the public profile of one news program or organization, compared to other sources of news. An alternative approach is the so-called experience sampling method (ESM), which grew out of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s (1975) work on mental states of immersive flow, and which has been applied to television (Kubey & Csikszentmihalyi, 1990). The basic idea is to prompt respondents through a portable device at random times; each time, they complete a self-report on what they are doing, and how they feel, through scales as well as open-ended questions. The data can be used to explore the relationship between media use, other simultaneous activities, and the respondent’s state of mind. The approach offers one means of securing immediate feedback from media users in comparatively naturalistic circumstances. With the ubiquity of mobile media, and the availability of open-source software (www.experiencesampler.com, accessed November 15, 2020), ESM presents itself as a useful complement to more widely applied methodologies (Hektner, Schmidt, & Csikszentmihalyi, 2007).
Memory One favorite measure of audience research has been memory or recall – media users’ ability to reproduce items of information, normally within a relatively short time span after exposure (for overview, see Shapiro, 2008). Regarding both fact and fiction, memory can be taken as an indication of what audiences find important for present or future purposes. It is also a preparatory condition of some later uses and consequences of media, from factual learning, to informed political
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experience sampling method
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Klaus Bruhn Jensen participation, to aesthetic appreciation. Although the perceived relevance of an item of information evidently plays a key role, in addition to repetition and other contextual factors, studies of different types of users have concluded that recall is positively correlated with audiences’ prior knowledge and hence their educational and other social status. The more you already know, they more you will remember, as elaborated in the knowledge-gap hypothesis. Regarding different types of media, research has rejected the common saying that ‘an image is worth a thousand words.’ Whereas modalities – text, image, sound – have different communicative affordances, audiovisual media, for instance, are not inherently superior to, or more efficient than, print. Instead, narrative, text-image integration, and message structure in general guide comprehension and recall across media types. Memory is not so much the effect of a message but rather the product of several interrelated communicative and cognitive processes, which can be tapped by a variety of methodologies (Hollander, 2014). Print and digital versions of newspapers may be recalled differently by readers with diffe rent degrees of digital literacy (Neijens & Voorveld, 2018), and Facebook posts may be remembered more easily than book sentences because of the spontaneous context of social-media communication (Mickes et al., 2013). While the question of memory applies to practically any communicative practice, two bodies of research suggest some wider implications for the understanding of media uses and effects. First, research has examined media as resources of learning for the general public. As such, media enter into both formal and informal education, being classroom, workplace, and leisure technologies. In European public-service broadcasting
organizations, studies of how to promote the comprehension, recall, and active uses of news and other information have been conceived, in a sense, as product development in the public interest (Findahl, 1985; Gunter, 1987a). A characteristic feature of such studies has been the close analysis of content in conjunction with audience responses, thus anticipating reception analysis as audience-cum-content studies. A second larger and more heterogeneous body of research has been motivated by commercial aims of establishing the extent to which consumers remember and otherwise respond to advertising, public relations, and marketing generally. Given their concrete goals, such communications lend themselves to an exploration of whether different stages of communication are indeed related. A classic elaboration of the basic stimulus-response model (McGuire, 1973) identified six stages of persuasion: presentation, attention, comprehension, yielding, retention, and overt behavior. In fact, this seemingly logical order is not commonly borne out by empirical research, as recognized by applied communication studies (Windahl, Signitzer, & Olson, 2009). A consumer may have no explicit recall of a product and yet may buy it on sight. Studies of memory and recall have relied especially on experiments and surveys (Gunter, 2000: 215–225). Like several other effects research traditions, however, such studies have faced the methodological difficulty that so much media-related behavior is preconscious or practical (Giddens, 1984), in addition to being context-driven. This may help to explain why, over several decades, research has repeatedly hypothesized and examined additional or intervening stages to account for (the absence of) effects. Another strategy has been to reinterpret findings with reference to alternative
knowledge-gap hypothesis, p. 168 modalities of communication – Chapter 6, p. 121; Chapter 7, p. 139
audience-cum-content studies – Chapter 8, p. 184
stages of persuasion
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Media effects
ontological security
theoretical frameworks: Even if specific items of information about events in the world are not recalled as such, they may contribute to a general sense of ontological security (Giddens, 1991). With reference to early studies finding that people watch, and hence seem to want, television news, yet recall little or nothing, Kaarle Nordenstreng (1972) concluded that “the main thing retained from the news is that nothing special has happened” (p. 390).
Agenda setting
media tell people what to think about
One of the most noted contributions to the understanding of media effects as a multistep and multilevel process has been agenda-setting research. Its insight is summed up in the formulation that, while media may not tell people what to think, they can tell people what to think about. Agenda-setting research, thus, joined gratifications research in differentiating the question of what media do to people into what people do with media and what, as a result, they may think about. (The history of this wording suggests a more general point, namely that research traditions and national literatures can be rather selfcontained. In US scholars’ publications, the formulation is almost always credited to Cohen [1963], but before him, two British researchers, Trenaman and McQuail [1961: 178] concluded, “The evidence strongly suggests that people think about what they are told but at no level do they think what they are told.”) The background to agenda-setting studies is political communication. Accordingly, the unit of analysis has been ‘issues,’ as compared to ‘information’ in a broader sense within, for instance, memory studies. Because media are key arenas of public debate, it is of considerable interest to compare their agenda – the events and topics that media give priority in terms of the frequency and quantity of coverage – to other agendas, specifically those of voters and of political organizations and candidates. Which political interests and
concerns gain a voice in different media, and what segments of the public come to accept which agendas? Whereas early classics in communication studies, such as The People’s Choice (Lazarsfeld, Berelson, & Gaudet, 1944), had noted that media, among other things, serve to structure political issues for public debate, the research tradition as such has developed during the last 50 years. The agenda-setting effect was given its name in foundational work by Maxwell E. McCombs and Donald L. Shaw (1972). Their study of a small North Carolina community during the 1968 US presidential campaign found that, although different news media would represent political topics differently, there was a significant correlation between issues that were defined as important by voters and by the media overall: “voters tend to share the media’s composite definition of what is important” (p. 184). In methodological terms, the study was a prototypical example of hypothetico-deductive research. Subsequent research has extended the approach, both methodologically and theoretically. It is common to distinguish three kinds of agendas – those of the media, the public, and political institutions (Dearing & Rogers, 1996), which raises additional questions of how issues and priorities flow from the public to the media and/or politicians, and vice versa, in a more or less ideal political process. One suggestion has been that more empirical attention should be given to a gradual agenda building in the institutional interplay between media and political interest groups (G. E. Lang & Lang, 1981). Moreover, because both the media and the audience sides of the equation have mostly been examined in a delimited setting and as aggregate measures through surveys and content analysis, there has been comparatively less attention to The People’s Choice – Chapter 9, p. 179 hypothetico-deductive methodology – Chapter 16, p. 338
media, public, and policy agendas
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parallel content analysis
priming
second-level and third-level agenda setting
changes over time. One long-term study, 1946–2004, examined the three-way interaction involving the media, the public, and the US Congress (Tan & Weaver, 2007). Another program of parallel content analysis has been outlined, which would examine the ‘content’ of both media and public opinion over longer time periods (Neuman, 1989). Social network analysis has been applied to examine the interrelations of elements within media and public agendas (Guo, 2012). And big-data field studies have identified agenda-setting and activating effects for both general policy areas and specific issues (King, Schneer, & White, 2017). Research has continued to indicate an agenda-setting function of traditional news media (Djerf-Pierre & Shehata, 2017; Luo, Burley, Moe, & Sui, 2019) amidst the intervening role of social media (Boynton & Richardson Jr., 2016). Findings have also suggested that there may be little difference in this regard between media types, such as print or electronic, and public service or commercial (Strömbäck & Kiousis, 2010). The tradition shares family resemblances with several other approaches, including experimental studies of how the media may perform a priming of audiences as to which issues are decisive in assessing political candidates (Iyengar & Kinder, 1987). Research has gone on to identify both a second-level agenda-setting (Kim & Scheufele, 2002; McCombs, Lopez-Escobar, & Llamas, 2000), which concerns the perception of detailed attributes of political issues or candidates, and a third-level agenda-setting involving combinations of issues as well as attributes (Guo, 2012). Finally, even though agenda-setting research has focused on news and political communication, it lends itself to the study of other genres (Dearing & Rogers, 1996: 98), including fiction and entertainment. Users may approach comedy shows such as
The Daily Show as equal to other sources of political information (Feldman, 2007). In this regard, the agenda-setting tradition has affinities with Newcomb and Hirsch’s (1983) proposal that media be studied not as a distribution system but as a cultural forum to which matters of public interest can be brought, articulated, and debated.
Campaigns A significant proportion of contemporary communications is made up campaigns – the use of media as means of social coordination through strategic or planned communication (for overview, see Holtzhausen, 2008). While campaigns may be associated especially with business and politics, they are also key to the dissemination of public information (Rice & Atkin, 2001), for instance, in areas such as health. State agencies, corporations, and civil-society organizations all seek to inform, persuade, and engage their various stakeholders – as citizens, customers, members, volunteers, collaborators, and so on. Following early work on media as means of propaganda during wartime (Hovland, Janis, & Kelley, 1953), studies have diversified to address political, economic, and cultural campaign activities. In digital media, campaigns more easily rely on several steps of communication, perhaps in viral structures. Networked communication extends or delegates communicative agency beyond campaigners as traditionally understood. In a classic overview, Rogers and Storey (1987: 821) noted four common features of campaigns – “(1) a campaign intends to generate specific outcomes or effects (2) in a relatively large number of individuals, (3) usually within a specified period of time and (4) through an organized set of communication activities.” On this media as cultural forum – Chapter 1, p. 14
social network analysis – Chapter 15, p. 320
propaganda studies – Chapter 9, p. 180
strategic communication
Media effects
promoting or preventing change
basis, the authors identified variations along three main dimensions of a campaign, as laid out in Figure 8.3. First, campaigns can have more or less ambitious objectives, from informing or persuading to mobilizing a group of people to act in particular ways. It should be noted that the aim of a campaign may also be to prevent change, in addition to promoting a change of behavior. In both public and commercial campaigns, planners
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need to consider different strategies for introducing, maintaining, and repositioning a product, a brand, or an idea. Second, the intended effect – the locus of change – may lie at the individual, group, organizational, or social level. Although the information will be received and interpreted by individuals, a campaign typically seeks to sway entire segments of a population, such as smokers or car owners, as addressed by tobacco and
LEVEL OF OBJECTIVES To mobilize (promote or prevent behavior change)
Receiver
LOCUS OF CHANGE (Level of analysis) Individual
Society
Sender LOCUS OF BENEFIT
To inform Figure 8.3 Dimensions of campaign objectives and effects
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Klaus Bruhn Jensen car manufacturers, health authorities, and environmental groups. Also, before digital media, campaigns, like other communications, moved in several steps, including key components of interpersonal communication. It is along this dimension of change that the effects of a campaign are studied empirically. Third, campaigns differ with regard to their (primary) beneficiary. It is important here to note the relative and relational nature of benefits. While commercial advertising occurs on behalf of the company in question, the communication, arguably, also holds informational and economic value for the consumer. And, whereas health campaigns are designed to prevent disease among the general public or industrial accidents among employees, they likely may save money for corporations, health care systems, and taxpayers. Given the great diversity of strategic communications and campaigns, they have been studied through a variety of methodologies – surveys, experiments, focus groups, observation, and so on – each of which may tap a moment of impact. A special consideration is what might happen in the absence of campaigns and other continuous communication efforts. A saying attributed to the American industrialist John Wanamaker was that “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ John_Wanamaker, accessed November 15, 2020). Also later advertising professionals and researchers have recognized that it is “almost always impossible to estimate the impact of advertising on sales volume” (cited in Schudson, 1984: 17). Whereas it may thus be difficult to document certain specific effects of campaigns, it is testimony to the constitutive role of communication in society that stakeholders across different sectors and levels find it necessary to maintain a presence in the
marketplace of attention that is the media (Webster, 2014). Campaign studies share their focus on multiple media and moments of communication with studies of intertextuality – the textual webs that make up the discourses of communication – despite fundamental theoretical and methodological differences between the two approaches. The marketing strategies of current media can be understood as an instance of strategic intertextuality, for example, the recycling of fictional characters and themes across media, artifacts, and theme parks. In the case of digital media, intertextually inflected communications may promote software as well as hardware. As a brand and a provider of interconnected services, Google represents a central point of access to digital communication for the ordinary user; Apple, in its turn, represents an intertextual configuration of both devices and services, supported by a market-leading design and extended by imitation among its competitors.
three-step flow of communication – Chapter 10, p. 194
intertextuality – Chapter 10, p. 200
Knowledge gaps The great differences that, undeniably, exist between those with easy access to information – which is refined in communication and applied as knowledge – and those with little or no access to either, might intuitively suggest that the solution is more communication, whether in a social-structural or an intercultural perspective. This is also a common argument in much public debate and the position of many educators and media practitioners. Diffusion research has found that new information spreads, sometimes at an accelerated pace, even if it may not reach every last individual. In contrast, research on knowledge gaps has suggested that such inequalities are cumulated over time and reinforced by other forms of social inequality. In short, the knowledge-gap
diffusion of innovations – p. 158
Media effects knowledge-gap hypothesis
interest and/ or knowledge gaps
hypothesis asserts that the flow of information in society via media tends to widen, rather than close, existing gaps between the information-rich and the information-poor (Tichenor et al., 1970). Like some other research traditions examining complex or long-term effects, knowledge-gap studies have tended to produce suggestive rather than conclusive evidence. This follows, in part, from the preexisting inequalities in the distribution of informational and other resources among different social segments, of which the media can only be one source – or remedy. Still, by examining knowledge of specific public events and issues that received extensive media coverage during a particular period, relying on survey methodologies, studies concluded that better-educated people were better able to the assimilate the information widely on offer (Donohue, Olien, & Tichenor, 1987; Tichenor et al., 1970) (for additional experimental findings, see Grabe, Lang, Zhou, & Bolls, 2000). Elaborating on the implications, the original group of researchers noted that the media may indeed serve to close gaps in connection with social conflict when public information becomes more directly applicable and learnable (Donohue, Tichenor, & Olien, 1975). Other studies have countered the general hypothesis, finding that level of interest may be more important than level of prior knowledge when it comes to gaining information (Genova & Greenberg, 1979). It has also been suggested that different media may work in specific ways, so that television, which reaches a higher proportion of the population than print media, and whose formats do not privilege the well-educated, might help to close knowledge gaps (Neuman, 1976). Overviews of the literature conclude that, at the very least, media appear not to be closing or narrowing gaps between socioeconomic groups (Gaziano, 1997; Viswanath & Finnegan, 1996), which in itself may be disconcerting in view of
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the role of media as resources in so many areas of economic, political, and cultural activity. This is in spite of the fact that studies have found it difficult to measure developments over time within groups and for individuals (Hwang & Jeong, 2009); in line with the original findings by Donohue et al. (1975), Hwang and Jeong (2009) also noted that knowledge gaps appear to be greater for international than for local and personally relevant topics and greater for general social and political matters than, for instance, for health issues (although, even in crisis situations, ethnicity and gender may contribute to knowledge gaps [Spence, Lachlan, & Burke, 2011]). Additional work has found links between knowledge gaps and other aspects of media users’ cognitive dispositions, such as a disaffection with politics (Fredin, Monnett, & Kosicki, 1994). In summary, the evidence indicates that knowledge gaps remain a structural feature of contemporary society and that media may contribute to reproducing or reinforcing such gaps. The implications of informational and communicative gaps have attracted renewed attention in research and policy with reference to digital divides – within societies and between different regions of the world.
Framing The concept of a frame suggests that an item of information – whether arising from one’s perception of the environment, from other people, or from media technologies – only makes sense once it is placed in a context of additional information (for overview, see Borah, 2011; D’Angelo et al., 2019). We select some information from potentially endless masses of information; we bracket that information in a particular way, which constitutes a frame. Frames are, at once, mental and social categories – the outcome digital divides – Chapter 20, p. 415
frames – mental and social
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Klaus Bruhn Jensen of both interpretation and interaction, a product as well as a process of framing. Compared to studies of memory and knowledge gaps, research on frames shifts the focus from information as entities and toward the worldviews that orient audiences’ actions – in the context of media use and beyond. Compared to agenda setting, which produces a temporary set of priorities, a frame represents a more permanent orientation or disposition. As such, frames are of special interest for the understanding of how media and society are coupled in communication. Research on framing has taken inspiration from quite diverse sources and represents a meeting place of theoretical positions that have otherwise been treated as alternatives or antagonists. A review of the area (Scheufele, 1999) noted the contributions both of experimental social psychology, particularly Fritz Heider’s (1958) attribution theory, and of qualitative microsociology in the form of Erving Goffman’s (1974) Frame Analysis. In addition, cognitive science has contributed to the area, including the insight that the frames or Metaphors We Live by (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980) are so-called basic-level categories (Lakoff & Johnson, 1999), whose yardstick is the human body in everyday space and time. Also in a methodological respect, work on frames and framing has bridged diffe rent positions, combining qualitative and quantitative approaches. In an exemplary study employing in-depth interviewing, surveys, content analysis, and experiments, Neuman, Just, and Crigler (1992) showed how news audiences would rely on categories that were derived largely from personal experience in order to make sense of the frequently unfamiliar events and issues of news media – interpretive frames that differed significantly from those relied on by journalists. This is consistent, further, with the lessons of qualitative reception studies, which have
found that audiences employ generalized and common-sense super-themes in order to establish meaningful links between the world of news and that of everyday life (Jensen, 1988b, 1998). Framing holds an additional potential for more comparative studies of the relationship between media production and reception. On the one hand, journalists and other professional communicators such as film directors and talkshow hosts are constantly engaged in framing content and in anticipating how their message may be interpreted by audiences (Ettema & Whitney, 1994; Gans, 1957). On the other hand, media users depend on interpretive frames that are shaped and reshaped over time, partly with reference to media (Gamson, 1992; Graber, 1984). Users, in their turn, have different levels of awareness that both media professionals and their sources have a stake in what is being communicated and how it is being framed. In this last regard, framing studies have theoretical affinities with Stuart Hall’s (1973) seminal work on processes of encoding and decoding, including oppositional frames of interpretation. In his review, Scheufele (1999) made the further point that agenda-setting and framing represent different but interrelated aspects of media effects.
basic-level categories – Chapter 1, p. 10
oppositional decoding – Chapter 9, p. 185
While the process of issue selection or agenda-setting by mass media . . . needs to be a conscious one, framing is based on subtle nuances in wording and syntax and therefore . . . most likely [has] unintentional effects, or at least effects that are hard to predict and control by journalists. (p. 19) Regarding the steps and stages of communication, framing has introduced an important differentiation in the understanding of effects: While agenda setting influences what issues to think about,
super-themes
production and reception as framing
Media effects
how to think about issues
“framing influences how audiences think about issues” (p. 19). In later work on secondary or attribute agenda-setting, the same author made a similar point, namely that if basic agenda-setting concerns ‘what,’ secondary agenda-setting has to do with ‘how’ people think about issues (Kim & Scheufele, 2002) – even while still treating framing and agenda-setting as two separate research questions. Despite the need to precisely operationalize one’s object of analysis, the phenomena of framing and agenda setting appear so evidently interdependent as to call for more joint theory development, in addition to complementary methodologies. It has also been argued that research in the area has tended to neglect power as an aspect of framing (Carragee & Roefs, 2004): Much more than perceptual or descriptive categories, frames are cognitive and, arguably, hegemonic constructs that may serve particular social interests.
Cultivation theory
cultural indicators
The further studies move away from the concrete interface between medium and user, the more circumstantial the evidence may seem and the more debatable the conclusions. One of the most debated types of media effects studies has been cultivation studies, which have examined the extent to which media – with television as the centerpiece – shape their users’ worldviews (for overview, see Morgan, 2008). Part of a wider cultural indicators research program, begun in the late 1960s by George Gerbner, the aim of cultivation studies has been, from a critical position, to document, in quantitative detail, the extent to which the media serve to maintain and reinforce the social status quo. To provide indicators, the research program has also included analyses of program content and of television as an institution – a cultural industry subject
hegemony – Chapter 2, p. 51
to powerful internal as well as external interests. The cultivation hypothesis suggested that television had acquired such a central place in post-1945 American culture that it constituted a symbolic environment in and of itself. As such, it could be seen to shape viewers’ conceptions of reality, competing with and, to a degree, substituting other sources, including personal experience, everyday conversation, and other media. To test the hypothesis, cultivation methodology combines surveys and content analysis, comparing the representation of social reality in television content (not least violence, crime, and other risks) with viewers’ awareness of and attitudes towards such concerns. (Some studies have employed experimental methodologies [e.g., Shrum, 1996].) The conclusion of the original group of researchers was that such cultivation of knowledge and attitudes does indeed occur (Gerbner & Gross, 1976). ‘Heavy’ viewers are more likely to give ‘the television answer’ to survey questions, for example, about risks to them personally but also about issues such as ethnicity, gender, or poverty. Criticism has been directed especially at the cultivation hypothesis, more so than the wider research program, and has taken three main forms. First, cultivation researchers have been attacked on their own turf through a reanalysis of the original data sets. In brief, critics have argued that, if sufficiently stringent statistical controls are introduced, the cultivation effect disappears (Hirsch, 1980, 1981). Second, researchers with a background in humanities and cultural studies have questioned the theoretical rationale behind the entire effort (Newcomb, 1978), suggesting that the approach neglects cultivation in the sense of variable interpretations of complex narratives. Third, a number of studies in other countries than the United States have not found support for the cultivation hypothesis (Gunter, 1987b). Cultivation research has continued to attract some interest (Morgan &
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cultivation hypothesis
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Klaus Bruhn Jensen Shanahan, 2017), and the tradition has examined diverse aspects of cultivation, including other media than television (Shanahan & Morgan, 1999). In a positive summary, “television makes a small but significant contribution to viewers’ beliefs about the world” (Morgan, 2008: 1094). Less generously, the evidence presents itself as mixed at best, particularly if one considers the original scope and critical ambition of the research program (Potter, 2014). A central question is the status of ‘television’ as the key reference point of the cultivation tradition. While it is true that much of the available media content remains the same, despite new technologies of distribution and access, it is not clear that cultivation theory and methodology will be suited to capture interactive, multimodal, and mobile media and communicative practices after ‘the age of television.’ A study of online computer gaming, in addition to extending earlier methodological criticisms, found that cultivation may be a very specific outcome of playing games with certain characteristics rather than a general effect of the kind hypothesized by Gerbner and his colleagues (Williams, 2006). More generally, other research has suggested that any cultivation effects appear to depend on the genre as well as the platform in question (Harmon, Fontenot, Geidner, & Mazumdar, 2019). For a contribution arguing the continued relevance of cultivation studies for the digital media environment, in addition to recovering aspects of Gerbner’s biography and the formation of the tradition, see Ruddock (2020).
SOCIALIZATION BY MEDIA The communication theorist Paul Watzlawick made the point that humans “cannot not communicate” (Watzlawick et al., 1967: 49): As embodied beings, we cannot not see, hear, and interpret
each other in local space and time. Given the present pervasiveness of media technologies across space and time, most people cannot not be affected to some considerable degree, literally from cradle to grave. Consequently, technologically mediated as well as face-to-face communication cannot not play a significant role in the process of socializing individuals as members of particular societies and cultures – even if research has found it difficult to ascertain the specific nature and degree of such long-term effects. Faced with these difficulties, media and communication studies have pursued several strategies. Before describing two central approaches that are in line with the theoretical and methodological conception of ‘effects’ as presented in the present chapter, some other main strategies should be noted. First, qualitative empirical reception studies, as examined next in Chapter 9, have provided complements to quantitative studies since the beginnings of the field. Second, research has turned to historical approaches in order to contextualize media in relation to other cultural, political, and economic developments; from the 1990s, media history has attracted increased research interest. Third, partly overlapping with the historical reorientation of research, partly with studies of ‘new’ digital media, research has sometimes turned to ‘grand’ theories of communication and society, including medium theory and theories of modernization. Within studies of ‘effects,’ one recurring issue has been the impact of media on children and youth. First of all, a distinction must be made between primary and secondary socialization – children learning basic knowledge and norms, typically from their parents, as compared with children, youth, and adults maintaining history of media and communication – Chapter 12
humans cannot not communicate – Chapter 1, p. 15
medium theory – Chapter 2, p. 26 modernization – Chapter 11, p. 216
primary and secondary socialization
Media effects
lifestyle and life forms
and adjusting their knowledge and norms throughout life through reference to information and communication technologies, in addition to schooling, professional training, leisure activities, and so on. Historically, the latter institutions have been gaining importance as socializers, in quantitative terms of the time spent on formal education and technologically mediated leisure and in qualitative terms of where individuals’ conceptions of the society that they belong to come from (Beck, Giddens, & Lash, 1994). Also, the line between primary and secondary socialization has increasingly been blurred, as examined by a long line of research on media in young people’s lives – from the Payne Fund studies on film during the 1930s, via early classics on television such as Himmelweit, Vince, and Oppenheim (1958) and Schramm, Lyle, and Parker (1961), and later studies by Rosengren and Windahl (1989) and Livingstone and Bovill (2001), to research about kids online (Livingstone & Haddon, 2009). A second approach to the relationship between media and socialization comes from research on lifestyles and, more broadly, the life forms and everyday practices of different socioeconomic groups. Studies in this area have been a rare meeting ground, theoretically and methodologically, between critical social theorists in university settings and marketing professionals. The two sectors have been brought together by an ambition to understand the complex interrelations between cultural practices and social structures. Academic research has been influenced by a renewed interest, in recent decades, in the role of human agency and reflexivity in the ongoing structuration of society, specifically through the work of Pierre Bourdieu (1984) and Anthony Giddens (1984) – following a stand-off Payne Fund studies – Chapter 9, p. 179
between structural functionalism and Marxism in post-1945 social sciences. During the same period, the marketing sector has been challenged to refine its tools of planning and prediction in competitive markets with highly selective consumers. An important means to this end has been a better understanding of how consumers make sense of products, and of themselves, to a significant extent through media and communication. Analysis Box 8.1 presents an example of lifestyle research and relates it to some of the theoretical sources of the area. Figure 8.4 illustrates the methodology and its characteristic way of displaying findings.
INSTITUTIONALIZATION BY MEDIA Research on the effects or consequences of media use, as noted, has focused overwhelmingly on individuals as the point of uptake and the site of measurement. As presented in other chapters in this volume, additional research traditions have examined such consequences at the level of social structures, practices, and institutions. In the borderlands of individuals and institutions, media participate in the ongoing process of institutionalizing society – the shaping and reshaping of states, markets, families, communities, and so on. From various perspectives, at least four bodies of research have examined these ‘late stages’ of communication. • Natural experiments on the introduction of media. Particularly for television, which coincided with the development of media studies as a field, the first introduction of the medium into a community or culture provided an opportunity to assess structural changes, for example, in the use of time and the role of the new medium as a reference point for conversation or
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ANALYSIS BOX 8.1 CORRESPONDENCE ANALYSIS OF LIVING CONDITIONS, LIFESTYLES, AND MEDIA USE In order to relate people’s living conditions to their own interpretations of those conditions, a common strategy is first to ask them a complex set of survey questions regarding their fundamental values in life in addition to information about their demographic background – age, gender, education, occupation, cultural activities, and so on. Next, both sets of information are analyzed and compared through the multivariate technique of correspondence analysis (Greenacre, 2016). Such analysis serves to establish the extent to which different answers are correlated as well as the patterns of the correlations; the outcome is a segmentation of the population in question according to social positions and cultural values. The configuration of values for a given segment thus may be interpreted as a worldview of sorts that orients the economic, political, and cultural practices of individuals. Because the approach normally relies on large samples, lifestyle research can produce robust findings. And, because it is longitudinal, tracking shifts and trends in the general public’s orientations and preferences, it offers an approximation of the Zeitgeist of a given historical period and social setting. By entering media into the design, studies suggest how media uses and communicative practices relate to the demographics and values of different audience segments.
Figure 8.4 1995 chart of values among Danish media users cont.
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Media effects
In technical terms, the various responses constitute data points in a multidimensional mathematical space; they are normally displayed in a two-dimensional model, as in Figure 8.4. The two dimensions of the model are the two axes that best account for the distribution of data; as such, they have no inherent meaning. As they relate to the values and orientations in question, however, they represent two explanatory principles that can be stated in the vocabulary of social theory, and which have become a standard in studies of this kind. Figure 8.4 exemplifies a configuration of values with reference to a study of everyday life and political participation in Denmark, conducted in 1994–95 (Schrøder, 1999). The vertical dimension indicates a relative orientation toward a ‘modern’ (top of the figure) or a ‘traditional’ (bottom of the figure) life form as related, for example, to levels of education and to a global or local outlook on the world. The horizontal dimension distinguishes between a pragmatic and an idealistic worldview, as associated, in a European context, with the left-right spectrum of national politics (slightly confusing in terms of the model itself, with leftwing views toward the right and rightwing views toward the left of the figure). At issue along these dimensions, then, are the ‘big’ questions of economy, politics, culture, technology, and ethics. One example from the European context arises from different types of broadcasters. While the original public-service monopoly in the Danish study has its stronghold in the upper, ‘northern’ part of the chart, especially its ‘eastern’ segment, a preference for the commercial broadcasters that were added during recent decades is associated with the values clustered in the lower, ‘southern’ part, especially its ‘western’ segment. In commercial settings, the approach of the Research Institute on Social Change (RISC) has been broadly influential. “Since 1978, socio-cultural models have been developed by RISC in around 40 countries. . . . It can be compared in some respects with market research tools such as Semiometrie, Kompass and ValueScope” (Hujanen, 2008: 183). Another research program is the World Values Survey, which builds on the work of Ronald Inglehart about longterm social change at the level of generations (Inglehart, 1990, 2008), and which has emphasized a culturally comparative perspective (Inglehart, Basanez, & Moreno, 1998). Probably the most sophisticated framework was developed by the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu (1977, 1984/1979). Moving beyond classic categories of class and ideology, he emphasized both the many different kinds of social fields, such as art and education, in which specific norms and rules of interaction apply and the role of culture across such fields; he used the term habitus for the embodied and often preconscious dispositions that orient individuals’ actions in everyday life. In communication and cultural studies, reference is commonly made to Bourdieu’s several concepts of capital – scarce but accumulated resources – particularly the distinction between economic and cultural capital, sometimes operationalized as income and education. In terms of Figure 8.4, whereas the two upper quadrants generally have more resources at their disposal than the two lower ones, the top left quadrant will command relatively more economic and the top right quadrant more cultural capital.
play. Given the before-after situation, such developments have lent themselves to natural experiments. natural experiments – Chapter 13, p. 268
• Public events. A key role of modern media is that they present events and issues for public consideration. In doing so, they necessarily contribute to diffusion, presumably also to agenda
social fields habitus
economic and cultural capital
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media events
Klaus Bruhn Jensen setting and framing, and perhaps to the public’s memory of social and cultural markers. While some work has lamented that the media may create ‘pseudo-events’ (Boorstin, 1961), several classic studies (Dayan & Katz, 1992; K. Lang & Lang, 1953) have noted how the modern mass media have enabled public participation in events with society-wide implications, from national ceremonies to political scandals and international sports; media are among the primary conditions for, rather than secondary representations of, such media events. The historical variability and constitutive nature of media events is also suggested by the fact that, compared to Dayan and Katz’s (1992) influential volume, which had underlined their integrative role, later work has found that disruptive events that are not preplanned have gained new prominence (Katz & Liebes, 2007; Mitu & Poulakidakos, 2016). For a recent overview, including commentary by Dayan and Katz, see Sonnevend (2018). • Institutional practices. Media occupy a special position among other modern institutions because they constitute a common arena – a cultural forum – in which the ends and means, standards and priorities, of other social institutions may be presented and debated. This is especially evident for politics, which is subject to a specific public accountability through the news media and their normative functions. In comparison,
private economic enterprise is exempt from detailed public control, and high forms of culture are still commonly conducted and covered in separate arenas and media. The more specific sense in which individuals and social groups are structurally dependent on media has been examined by the tradition of media system dependency theory (BallRokeach & Jung, 2009). • Cultural formations. Most generally, media and communication contribute to making certain discursive and cultural forms dominant in society, as also suggested by medium theory. Earlier work argued that a ‘media logic’ (Altheide & Snow, 1979) could be seen to invade other social domains; some recent work has suggested that, in a process of ‘mediatization,’ the media as an institution may be reshaping expressions and interactions in other institutions, such as politics, leisure, and education (Lundby, 2009). In conclusion, this chapter has reviewed the main traditions of quantitative audience research, each of which can be seen to identify and examine one stage in the longer and wider process of communication. While the theories and methodologies addressing the various stages are complementary, they also call for supplements from qualitative reception studies, which have focused on the everyday contexts of media use and on some of their long-term cultural implications. Qualitative audience research is the topic of the next chapter.
cultural forum – Chapter 1, p. 14 normative media theories – Chapter 20, p. 413
medium theory – Chapter 2, p. 26
media system dependency
9
Media reception Qualitative traditions Klaus Bruhn Jensen
•
a presentation of the established ‘milestones’ of quantitative audience research, along with seminal qualitative contributions • a review of the main topics of reception studies: everyday contexts of media use, decodings of media content, and media as resources in social action • an assessment of media ethnography as a methodological position • a discussion of the place of media discourses and other empirical evidence in reception studies
MILESTONES REVISITED One way of encapsulating the field of study has been through systematics, such as Figure 8.1, which identified the main stages of the process of communication and the audience research traditions associated with each. Another way of taking stock has been to identify historical milestones – studies that defined influential ways of conceptualizing and empirically examining various stages of communication. By way of introduction, this chapter revisits some of the milestones of audience studies, as received – and sometimes overlooked – in later research. Figure 9.1 lays out 14 milestones, as defined by Lowery and DeFleur (1995) through three editions of their textbook, and adds a number of candidates from outside the dominant paradigm of quantitative social science. In the case
of the established US ‘Milestones I,’ it is apparent how several contributions were shaped by their historical and social contexts – from wars to public or policy demands for evidence about the effects of media, for example, on children. Also ‘Milestones II,’ which introduce European, critical, and qualitative perspectives, bear witness to the importance of social context for research practice, including the events of ‘1968.’ Those circumstances, far from disqualifying either set of milestones, provide a background for assessing their explanatory value, also in a future perspective. To further contextualize the milestones, it should be noted, first, that the listing only considers publications after 1900. Before there was a field of media and communication research, most scholarship about human communication and its effects
historical and systematic approaches to research – Chapter 1, p. 20
historical origins of media research – Chapter 20, p. 416
the dominant paradigm – Chapter 8, p. 156
‘1968’ – Chapter 11, p. 221
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Payne Fund (1933 35)
–
The Invasion from Mars (1940)
Radio gratifications (1944) The People’s Choice (1944) Diffusion of innovations (1943)
Film experiments on American soldiers (1949)
–
Surgeon General (1971)
Personal Influence (1955) Television in the Lives of our Children (1961)
Communication and Persuasion (1953)
Agenda setting (1972)
TV and Behavior (1982) 2000
1900
Mass Observation (1937ff.)
Violence and the Media (1969)
Project Revere on leaflets (1952 54)
Myth Today (1957) The Work of Art in the Age of Technical Reproduction (1936)
Language and Cinema (1971) Constituents of a Theory of the Media (1970)
TV: Technology and Cultural Form (1974)
Reading the Romance (1984)
The “Nationwide” Audience (1980) The Social Uses of TV (1980)
The Export of Meaning (1990) TV Culture (1987)
Figure 9.1 Milestones of media and communication research
was undertaken within the humanities – in rhetorical and aesthetic traditions of inquiry. Second, because the field largely established itself through journals, conferences, and other institutions originating in the West, both sets of milestones reflect work originating in either Europe or the US; intercultural perspectives on communication are addressed in Chapter 11. Third, much previous communication research – qualitative as well as quantitative – has examined audiences and messages in comparative isolation from each other. Whereas the treatment of contents as discourses has often been rudimentary in quantitative research traditions, humanistic and other qualitative scholars, for a long time, largely neglected the empirical users of media. The two groups of ‘milestones’ are noted here for the record as a point of departure for theoretical and methodological comparison across traditions and the consideration of additional and later candidates for rhetorical and aesthetic effects – Chapter 2
milestone works. This is important, both for young and interdisciplinary researchers entering the area and for the field as such; traditions are still handed down in selective fashion in doctoral programs, journals, and reference works. Providing a symbol of such selectivity, the second edition of Lowery and DeFleur’s (1988) ‘milestones’ volume had made reference to an emerging “meaning paradigm” (p. 455), which presumably would admit some humanistic milestones. Only seven years later, however, in the third edition (Lowery & DeFleur, 1995), this hint at convergence had been replaced by a return to multiple parallel “focused theories,” each of which would be mobilized to explain “some set of events or phenomena that has clear boundaries” (p. 397). The family resemblances are many, for instance, between the early Payne Fund and Mass Observation research programs and between more recent approaches to the framing and the decoding (Hall, 1973; Morley, 1980) of media representations of reality. Cantril’s (1940) milestone,
intercultural communication research – Chapter 11, p. 223
framing – Chapter 8, p. 169
179
Media reception
MILESTONES I
MILESTONES II
• Payne Fund. This first substantial media research program in the US examined the effects of movies on children and youth through a variety of content, survey, experimental, and other methodologies, arising from and feeding into contemporary concerns and debates (for overview, see Jowett, Jarvie, & Fuller, 1996). • The Invasion from Mars. Hadley Cantril’s (1940) multimethod study of how the American public responded to Orson Welles’ radio dramatization of the War of the Worlds, suggested, among other things, how to combine qualitative and quantitative methodologies for a concrete research purpose. (For a critical assessment, see Rosengren, Arvidson, & Sturesson, 1978.) • Diffusion of Innovations. Following 1940s studies on the adoption of agricultural techniques, diffusion research expanded to address other kinds of innovations and their place in processes of social change, including media and their dissemination of information generally (Rogers, 1962). • The People’s Choice. In certain respects the inaugural work of US communication research, this study examined the place of media in a presidential election process, relying on panels and other state-of-the-art survey methodology (Lazarsfeld et al., 1944). At least in its reception history, the study has been taken to suggest that media reinforce rather than change people’s opinions, and that, overall, media serve political democracy (for a classic critique, see Gitlin, 1978). • Radio Gratifications. Among the contributions of the first generation of US communication researchers were some of the seminal ideas that were later redeveloped in uses-andgratifications research. Apart from its inherent qualities, the work by Herta Herzog (1944) was unusual in focusing on a genre addressed to women, namely daytime radio serials.
• Mass Observation. The mass observation studies in the United Kingdom, from the 1930s onward, documented various aspects of ordinary people’s lives, including cinemagoing and other media use (for overview, see Richards & Sheridan, 1987). Comparable in certain respects to the American Payne Fund program, the studies represent an early approach to the place of media in everyday life, including qualitative insights into the reception and experience of media. • The Work of Art in the Age of Technical Reproduction. This title (sometimes translated ‘mechanical’ reproduction) refers to Walter Benjamin’s (1977/1936) early attempt to conceptualize what was distinctively new about the cultural forms being disseminated by technological media. Taking ‘medium theory’ (see Chapter 2) to the level of concrete textual analysis, this work identified, on the one hand, the loss of ‘aura’ in media, compared to traditional artworks, and, on the other hand, the democratic potential for public participation in politics and culture facilitated by mass media. Like other critical social theory of the 1930–40s (e.g., Adorno & Horkheimer, 1977/1944), Benjamin’s work was, in part, an intellectual response to fascism – a response that was different in kind from US milestones relating to the war effort, but which engaged similar historical circumstances. • Myth Today. Following the rebuilding of postwar Europe, new societies (and research institutions) were taking shape, in which the definition of ‘culture’ was again at issue not only in debates over the ‘Americanization’ of European culture but with reference to popular culture as such (Webster, 1988). One of the seminal early influences on research in the area was Roland Barthes’ (1973/1957) work on modern ‘mythologies,’ as disseminated aura – Chapter 1, p. 7
cont.
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• Film experiments on American soldiers. As part of the US involvement in World War II, a series of experimental studies were conducted of Frank Capra’s Why We Fight films, exploring to what extent they might not only provide information but also shape attitudes (Hovland, Lumsdaine, & Sheffield, 1949). • Communication and Persuasion. Departing from this and earlier experimental research, and from theories about the selective influence of media on individuals, the Yale Program of Research on Communication and Attitude Change proposed to generalize this perspective; however, studies were only able to document especially short-term changes in attitudes (Hovland et al., 1953). • Personal Influence. Elaborating, in part, on the (serendipitous) finding of Lazarsfeld et al. (1944) that media take effect not least by being mediated further in interpersonal communication involving opinion leaders, Katz and Lazarsfeld’s (1955) volume helped to establish the twostep flow of communication as a generally influential model. • Project Revere. At the height of the Cold War, and with the Korean War still being fought, this project (1952– 54) was funded by the US military to explore the use of airborne leaflets to replace, or circumvent, other channels of communication (for overview, see DeFleur & Larsen, 1987). • Television in the Lives of Our Children. This first major study of television’s effects on children in the United States was characterized partly by the diversity of issues (and methodologies) included, partly by a renewed uses-and-gratifications perspective (Schramm et al., 1961). A close (and earlier-born) European cousin, not recognized among the ‘milestones’ by
in large part by mass media. Particularly his essay, “Myth Today,” introducing the distinction between denotation and connotation into analyses of how meanings are offered by media and taken by audiences, shaped an understanding among the first generation of European critical media researchers of how media take effect and shape both individuals and societies. • Constituents of a Theory of the Media. Hans Magnus Enzensberger’s (1972/1970) article returned to Bertolt Brecht’s (1993/1932) original point regarding radio during the 1930s, namely that the equipment for receiving programs could as well be used for sending messages and participating in a society-wide dialogue, thus suggesting the critical potential of media (as well as the constitutive role of media in social systems). In addition to his period-specific ideological message, Enzensberger’s theoretical message anticipated later work on ‘active’ audiences and on the interactivity of digital media. • Language and Cinema. The title of one of the main publications by the film theorist Christian Metz (1974) suggests the ‘milestone’ nature of a larger body of theoretical work during the 1960– 70s in France and other European countries, exploring the distinctive characteristics of verbal and visual vehicles of communication and their modes of addressing the audience. The central question – whether cinema and other non-alphabetic communication might be studied as ‘languages’ (and if not, then how) – was given one of its most elaborate treatments by Metz and other European works on semiotics and structuralism. • TV: Technology and Cultural Form. Raymond Williams’s (1974) definition of broadcasting (radio and TV) as a historically unique denotation and connotation – Chapter 2, p. 37 film semiotics – Chapter 2, p. 44
cont.
Media reception
MILESTONES I
•
•
•
•
Lowery and DeFleur (1995) (but duly noted in the preface to Schramm et al., 1961), was Himmelweit et al. (1958). Mass Media and Violence. Growing out of US government and public concern over social unrest during the 1960s, this report (Lange, Baker, & Ball, 1969) summarized earlier research and presented new evidence and conclusions, particularly on the effects of violence in entertainment programs, relying on approaches which were extended in cultivation research. Surgeon General. Traditionally referred to as the “Surgeon General’s Report on Television and Social Behavior,” the relevant work (Comstock et al., 1971) is, in fact, a multi-volume collection of studies that informed this report. Following up on several previous ‘milestones,’ this time on a grand scale, the publication addressed issues and presented findings that were oriented toward social problems and policy issues. Agenda setting. Since the 1970s, agendasetting research has been influential in reorienting the focus of political communication research, from the changing of attitudes to the setting of agendas, reminding research of the multistep and multilevel nature of effects (McCombs & Shaw, 1972). Television and Behavior. Explicitly following up on the “Surgeon General’s Report,” this last ‘milestone’ took stock of research ten years on, but included a wider range of research questions (Pearl, Bouthilet, & Lazar, 1982). While no new research was commissioned, the integrative reviews of the massive research output since 1971 provided an authoritative overview, with special reference to television.
MILESTONES II
•
•
•
•
•
‘flow,’ rather than a collection of ‘works,’ identified a central aspect of much technologically mediated communication and anticipated aspects of digital media and networked communication. (See also Ellis, 1982.) The Nationwide Audience. Drawing on both discourse analysis and gratifications research, David Morley’s (1980) volume was the first major publication to bring together socialscientific and humanistic perspectives on the audience in a qualitative empirical study of television news reception; it is reviewed in detail subsequently, together with other foundational works in reception studies (by, among others, Lull and Radway). The Social Uses of Television. In the same year as Morley, James Lull (1980) went beyond the individual focus of gratifications research to study the social uses of television in the family, relying on a qualitative methodology and reemphasizing the explanatory value of microsociological traditions. Reading the Romance. Janice Radway (1984) presented a comprehensive study of the institutions, texts, and audiences of the print romance genre; the audience fieldwork especially provided a model for further reception studies. Television Culture. As part of a textbook on television studies, John Fiske (1987) offered an operational approach to intertextuality beyond the immanent analysis of narrative structures and textual modes of address. The Export of Meaning. This qualitative study of the experience of the Dallas television series among different cultural and ethnic groups (Liebes & Katz, 1990) was one of the first internationally comparative reception studies (see also Jensen, 1998).
cultivation research – Chapter 8, p. 171
broadcasting as flow, p. 192
agenda-setting research – Chapter 8, p. 165
intertextuality – Chapter 10, p. 200
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Klaus Bruhn Jensen employing a non-sectarian mix of qualitative and quantitative methodologies, still stands as an early messenger about the potential of convergence between traditions. An exemplary volume, Canonic Texts in Media Research (Katz, Peters, Liebes, & Orloff, 2003), which brought together broader ‘schools’ of media research within the covers of one book, beginning with the Columbia School of Paul Lazarsfeld and the Frankfurt School of Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, suggested that canons – whether explicit, implicit, forgotten, or repressed – should be articulated and recognized for what they offer: premises and benchmarks that will continue to be challenged by developments both in research and in the media themselves. Whereas the next chapter turns to some fundamental challenges to canonic conceptions also of audiences or users that are presented by digital technologies, the rest of the present chapter reviews the contributions of qualitative audience research to the field. While being late starters, these traditions have produced new insight into at least three different moments of the process of communication: the everyday contexts of media use, audience decodings of media content, and the uses of media as resources in a variety of social contexts. One section discusses ‘ethnography’ as an influential methodological position in reception studies. Finally, the chapter returns to the role of texts or discourses in the study of media use. A distinctive feature of qualitative reception analysis is that it has addressed media contents as well as media a udiences – audience-cum-content analysis (Jensen, 1988a).
MOMENTS OF INTERPRETATION Everyday contexts of media use As indicated in Figure 8.1, one focus of qualitative audience research has been audience-cum-content analysis, p. 184
the concrete everyday contexts of media use. Although the topic had been taken up early on in the British mass observation studies of cinema (Richards & Sheridan, 1987), and later in video observations of television viewers (Bechtel et al., 1972), the seminal work by James Lull (1980) examined television viewing in naturalistic settings. The study drew on several undercurrents in the social sciences with a qualitative orientation: symbolic interactionism, ethnomethodology, and other ‘microsociology.’ In methodological terms, it relied on prolonged observations of television viewing in American households. Parting with the individual focus of other uses-and-gratifications research, the analyses developed a typology of the social uses of television in family settings. (However, the social uses of media in a political, economic, or cultural regard, or in public domains, were not considered.) The typology identified first the ‘structural’ uses of television in generating an environment or atmosphere in the home and in regulating, for instance, children’s bed times. Second, the study documented various ‘relational’ or interactional uses of television, for example, in facilitating (or avoiding) contact between parents and children or between spouses. During the 1980–90s, a variety of studies examined how media are integrated into everyday activities (for overviews, see Alasuutari, 1999; Ross & Nightingale, 2003). The focus remained on households and the dynamics of family life, with some additional reference to other social contexts of television viewing (e.g., Gauntlett & Hill, 1999) – and to media use in public places (Lemish, 1982), in quasi-public settings such as a prison (Lindlof, 1987), and in peer groups (Buckingham, 1993). The special focus on households and families is explained, in part, by the attention also given to television during this period in other media uses-and-gratifications research – Chapter 8, p. 160
microsociology
structural and relational uses of media
media use in public settings
Media reception
para-social interaction
research; for reception studies, the family represented a naturally occurring social and cultural unit whose interpretive and communicative processes could be examined in context and in detail. However, more recent studies have suggested the continued importance of rituals of family viewing in households with multiple sets or devices, particularly for genres such as soaps, series, films, and news (Courtois & Nelissen, 2018). Later studies have also considered, for example, audiences’ live commentary about, or ‘communication with,’ broadcasting (Wood, 2007); this is comparable to the classic finding regarding television viewers engaging in para-social interaction with program figures (Horton & Wohl, 1956), which is facilitated by both the medium’s mode of address and viewer empathy (Cummins & Cui, 2014). Radio, while examined, for instance, from a historical perspective (e.g., Moores, 1988; Scannell, 1988), has generally been underresearched in media studies (it was, in part, eclipsed by television as the field was being founded). Similarly, the reading of print media – from books to magazines to newspapers – has rarely been studied as a contextual activity. In the perspective of literary criticism and other arts, reading has been considered a solitary experience of certain aesthetic representations of reality. From a communicative perspective, however, print media are social and cultural resources, and reading has a range of contextual uses, for seeking or avoiding contact and for establishing and entering a social space in which one may be ‘absent’ even while physically present (see the discussion subsequently of Radway, 1984). Film, again, has been studied more as an art form than as a social practice, even though some research has examined, for instance, the inherently social act of going to the movies
and sharing and later remembering the experience (e.g., Gomery, 1992; Kuhn, 2002). Relatively fewer reception studies have explored how several media simultaneously enter into the everyday lives of individuals and families (e.g., Barnhurst & Wartella, 1998; Jordan, 1992). At the margins of the media field, studies have also considered other cultural institutions and practices, such as museum visits (e.g., Heath & vom Lehn, 2004), as communicative interactions. Observation, with variable degrees of participation, has presented itself as the methodology of choice for studies of media use in context. Like the original 1980 article and later work by Lull (1980, 1991, 1988b), studies have relied on participating observation to produce a fine-grained analysis of media and communication in a particular locale (e.g., Gillespie, 1995). In other cases, the main method of data collection has been qualitative interviewing, either individually or in groups (Gray, 1992; Hobson, 1980; Morley, 1986). While relevant for many purposes, interview methodologies depend on the respondents’ introspection, retrospection, and verbal recollection of past events and actions, which necessarily reproduces them from a present perspective. In some instances, interviewing may be preferred because observation is considered too intrusive or controversial in view of either the media users or the content in question. In any event, when planning as well as assessing studies of use contexts, it is particularly important to weigh the strengths and weaknesses of observation and interviewing. Observational studies, in their turn, have not commonly included analyses of media users’ response to particular genres or narratives. Indeed, Lull (1980) did not explicitly relate the various social uses of television, and their relative prominence, to different content genres. One way of summarizing two central decades of
literary criticism – Chapter 2, p. 41 film studies – Chapter 2, p. 43
participating observation – Chapter 14, p. 295
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museums as contexts of communication
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media in/as contexts
Klaus Bruhn Jensen qualitative reception studies, 1980–2000, would be to note that, despite multi-method combinations, observational studies have detailed the place of media in the everyday lives of different social groups, whereas interview studies have probed their decodings of a range of media texts and genres. It is fair to add that reception studies – of use contexts as well as of decodings – appear to have become fewer and less prominent in the field and its debates since 2000. In a sense, qualitative audience studies may have made their point – vis-à-vis both text-centered and behavior-focused colleagues – and have established themselves among the traditions studying the multiple levels and steps of media impact. Coincidentally, digital media and networked communications have presented a new range of research questions, at least some of which break the bounds of reception (and effects) studies as traditionally conceived. Multiplayer online gaming or the micro-coordination (Ling & Lai, 2016; Ling & Yttri, 2002) of everyday life via mobile telephones are rather different categories of social interaction than conversations around a television set. Similarly, the networked home presents new challenges of integrating and domesticating diverse digital technologies into everyday contexts and routines (Kennedy, Nansen, Arnold, Wilken, & Gibbs, 2015). The dividing line between media and their contexts has come into question; it is taken up in more detail subsequently in the section addressing media use in relation to other social contexts of action, and in Chapter 10.
Decodings Research on decodings – audience interpretations of media discourses such as television series, radio newscasts, or print fiction – accounts for the majority of qualitative reception studies (for over-
views, see Livingstone, 1998; Schrøder, Drotner, Kline, & Murray, 2003). The tradition emerged from literary and cultural studies with a dual motivation: exploring the classic humanistic question of how meaning is produced and shared and addressing that question in empirical terms with reference to how ordinary users – rather than critics and pundits – interpret media. The approach, in practice, has undertaken comparative analyses of media discourses and audience discourses – audience-cum-content analysis. As such, decoding research has had several sources: classic hermeneutics and phenomenology, as also developed in literary reception aesthetics (Holub, 1984; Wilson, 1993); the ritual model of communication; and, most influentially, cultural studies. Taking inspiration from semiotics (e.g., Eco, 1987b) and critical social theory (e.g, Parkin, 1971), the cultural-studies tradition has given special attention to the relative indeterminacy of meaning. Like wider cultural practices, micro interpretations of media may be considered sites of struggle; decodings can make a social difference. The concept of decoding was derived from Stuart Hall’s (1973) theoretical encoding-decoding model, which had suggested the less-than-perfect correspondence between media practitioners’ encoding of texts and the audience’s decodings, even if Hall took texts to have ideologically ‘preferred’ meanings. Questioning both critical work that assumed a more massive ideological effect of media and the individualist position of uses-and-gratifications research, David Morley (1980) applied Hall’s model in a seminal study of decoding television news. Employing a focus-group methodology, hermeneutics and phenomenology – Chapter 2, p. 31 reception aesthetics, p. 190 the ritual model of communication – Chapter 1, p. 13
games – Chapter 7, p. 146
cultural studies – Chapter 2, p. 51
audience- cum-content analysis
encoding- decoding model of communication
Media reception
dominant, negotiated, and oppositional readings
Morley identified a range of decodings of the ‘preferred’ meaning, which had been established through discourse analysis (Brunsdon & Morley, 1978) – from an accepting or ‘dominant’ reading, via a ‘negotiated’ reading, to a critical or ‘oppositional’ reading. Across the different focus groups, these readings were correlated not just with the socioeconomic status of the participants but also with their cultural or organizational involvement. For example, the combination of low social status with shop-floor union involvement produced some of the most explicitly oppositional readings (Morley, 1980: 141). Like some researchers, these media users could be seen to perform a hermeneutics of suspicion. More than the specific study and its findings, it was the general approach, linking the social-systemic and the discursive-interpretive attributes of media users, which became highly influential. Morley (1981) himself was among the first to criticize the one-dimensional conception of decoding as essentially a question of the (degree of) reproduction of a dominant ideology, pointing to the need to study, as well, basic comprehension and the pleasurable experience of watching news (see further Lewis, 1983, 1985). Later studies noted several varieties of oppositional decodings and suggested the difficulties that even comparatively sophisticated users may have in unpacking the implicit messages of media texts (Hacker, Coste, Kamm, & Bybee, 1991). Twenty-five years on, a reexamination of Morley’s (1980) original findings reemphasized the importance of social class as the key explanatory factor while also outlining an approach to quantifying decoding studies (Kim, 2004). Regarding different audience backgrounds, other studies have addressed both gender and class, including the interrelation between the two factors in the concrete experience of media (e.g., Press,
1991; Schlesinger, Dobash, Dobash, & Weaver, 1992). Ethnicity has also been examined, both as a source of variable decodings and with reference to different ethnic groups’ interpretations of each other, as represented in media (e.g., Duke, 2000; Lewis, 1991; Parameswaran, 1999; Park, Gabbadon, & Chernin, 2006). Age, perhaps surprisingly, has been given less attention as a theoretical category, in either reception or effects studies, except in the case of research on media and youth (but see, e.g., Bolin & Skogerbø, 2013). Regarding different media and genres, television, again, has been the preferred medium of decoding studies, with news and melodrama as preferred genres. Beyond the general focus of research on this medium, television invited critical reception studies, for example, in the European setting during the 1980–90s when deregulation introduced many more international, especially commercial, formats into national media cultures. Overlapping with such concerns were debates on the politics of popular culture. Much work in the area could be seen to rediscover pleasure, both as a source of audience empowerment and as a legitimate topic of research; television provided a good percentage of the pleasurable experiences had by the general public during the decades in question. However, also other media and genres have been taken up in qualitative reception studies, including books (Parameswaran, 1999; Radway, 1984), magazines (Hermes, 1995; Lutz & Collins, 1993), and advertising (Mick & Buhl, 1992; Schrøder, 1997). And while, traditionally, film studies as a field has not taken much of an interest in the empirical audience, reception studies have examined film as a central constituent of, and influence on, the rest of the media environment (Barker & Brooks, 1998;
hermeneutics of suspicion – Chapter 2, p. 33
film studies – Chapter 2, p. 43
the politics of popular culture – Chapter 20, p. 425
185
gender, class, ethnicity, age
television, news, melodrama
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think-aloud techniques
Klaus Bruhn Jensen Cooper, 1999; Stacey, 1994; Stokes & Maltby, 1999). Decoding research has also explored issues with specific social implications, for instance, a case of young Russians interpreting state television news and an oppositional blog (Toepfl, 2013) and the case of satire, identifying different ways of getting (or missing) a joke (Johnson, Rio, & Kemmitt, 2010). Recent studies, further, have extended the encoding-decoding model to the digital media environment to examine the multi-step circulation of journalistic texts (Bødker, 2016) and, with additional reference to the concept of affordances, how interactive media lend themselves not just to readings but to other types of social action, too (Shaw, 2017), as well as the audience experience of the workings of algorithms (Lomborg & Kapsch, 2020). Regarding methodologies, finally, interviews – either focus groups or in-depth individual interviews – have been, by far, the most widely applied approach to decoding studies. Interviewing has served as the generator of audience discourses to be compared with media discourses, so as to explore their interchange in meaning production. That interchange, mostly, has been examined in retrospect, with reference to media contents that users were recently exposed to; this is in addition to efforts, for instance, in Tamar Liebes and Elihu Katz’s (1990) ‘milestone’ study of the television series Dallas, to engage viewers in dialogue while viewing, and other attempts to elicit user interpretations live through thinkaloud techniques (Vettehen, Schaap, & Schlösser, 2004). One analytical issue has been how to examine the reception of television and other audiovisual media through the verbal accounts of audiences; this also presents a general difficulty for other kinds of communication studies and has been taken up through various visual methodologies. affordances – Chapter 1, p. 5 visual methodologies – Chapter 14, p. 297
Media in contexts of social action Studies of the third stage – the embedding and use of media in other contexts of social action – produced a relatively smaller body of research during the 1980–90s heyday of reception studies but have been gaining ground in the digital media environment. Digital media could be said to refocus the attention of research, from media as representations that call for decoding, and as conditions circumscribing local use contexts, to media as resources. As interactive and, increasingly, mobile entities, digital media represent a new type of resource across locations or contexts; users ‘import’ information that may reorient or enhance their local interaction – a purchase, a political discussion, a cultural event. Digital media also enable users to engage – or establish – distant contexts of interaction as they ‘export’ information, communicate, and act at a distance in relation to individuals and institutions, from partners and children to employers, banks, and political interest groups. Whereas Chapter 10 elaborates on these aspects of communication, this section presents some contributions of earlier reception studies to the understanding of media as social resources. Three types of studies – on different media and genres – illustrate the implications of research on communication as a constitutive element of contexts of social action: • In her study of print romances, Janice Radway (1984) showed how, in addition to producing a variety of interpretations of such texts, readers conceived of romances as resources in daily life. Romances were seen to provide at least indirect advice on married life; they also presented the women in the study with an occasion to insist on ‘my own time’ for reading. Thus, compared to decoding studies, the focus was shifted away from the text and its
media as representations, conditions, and resources
Media reception interpretation, toward the act of reading and its implications for gendered everyday practices. • In a study of American television news, the present author examined news stories from the viewers’ perspective, less as accounts than as resources for political and other social participation (Jensen, 1986, 1990a). The findings suggested that viewers may approach the news genre with a divided or ambiguous consciousness: While dutifully arguing for the inherent importance both of news as a political resource and of the citizen’s act of newsviewing, the respondents simultaneously suggested the limited practical value of any information in the news for voting in elections, debating particular issues, or similar concrete purposes. Other studies have suggested how the genre of reality television may trigger politically relevant deliberations in popular online discussion fora (Graham & Hajru, 2011). • Studies of fan cultures (Jenkins, 1992; Lewis, 1991) have shown how texts and other artifacts around which fandom develops – a feature film, the music of a rock band – may become resources for a wide range of cultural practices. Beyond their active engagement with and decoding of texts, fans have long redeveloped such texts in their own writing, music, or audiovisual production, also in analog media. A further question that has been suggested by digital media is whether, in the contemporary media environment, the once-distinctive practices of fan communities might be said to extend to media users generally as co-creators of a participatory culture (Jenkins, 2006). Nancy Baym’s (2000) study of television soap-opera viewers sharing information about and perspectives on their favorite series via the internet the act of reading – Chapter 16, p. 340 participatory culture – Chapter 10, p. 196
indicated how new media may afford new forms of interpersonal communication about mass communication. The common denominator of these otherwise heterogeneous studies has been their emphasis on media as resources in other social interaction, beyond the moment of either individual or collective attendance and appreciation. Media are resources for managing and challenging gender roles in everyday life; for accumulating real-world knowledge and stimulating political involvement; and for participating in and, possibly, extending the available range of cultural forms. With reference to traditional effects studies, such social uses of media share a number of family resemblances with processes of framing, socialization, and institutionalization. Research on media as resources in contexts of networked communication and social action is addressed in more detail in Chapter 10.
MEDIA ETHNOGRAPHY? As part of the development of qualitative reception studies, references to ‘ethnography’ became widespread during the 1980s and into the 1990s. The terminology could be understood as an attempt to specify the nature of an emerging hybrid of humanistic and social-scientific approaches to media and communication that would avoid both reified texts and decontextualized audiences. Early on, Radway (1988) had pinpointed the difficulty of how, concretely, to examine texts as well as audiences with simultaneous attention to contexts: Audiences . . . are set in relation to a single set of isolated texts which qualify already as categorically distinct objects. No matter how extensive the effort to dissolve the boundaries of the textual object or the audience, most recent studies of reception, including my own, continue to begin with
187
188
Klaus Bruhn Jensen the ‘factual’ existence of a particular kind of text which is understood to be received by some set of individuals. Such studies perpetuate, then, the notion of a circuit neatly bounded and therefore identifiable, locatable, and open to observation. (p. 363) Radway’s alternative was classic ethnographic fieldwork, as developed in the discipline of anthropology since the early twentieth century. She envisioned a project covering the cultural and other social practices, work as well as leisure, of an entire community: a collaborative project that would begin within the already defined boundaries of a politically constituted municipality and attempt to map there the complex, collective production of ‘popular culture’ across the terrain of everyday life. . . . a project that would take as its object of study the range of practices engaged in by individuals within a single heterogeneous community as they elaborate their own form of popular culture through the realms of leisure and then articulate those practices to others engaged in during their working lives. (p. 368) Radicalizing the call for contextuali zation, Ien Ang (1991) argued that ethno graphies rely on an entirely different epistemology than that of either qualitative reception studies or quantitative effects research. Rejecting both these positions, Ang suggested that the very category of ‘audiences’ represented a form of discursive violence against the complexity of users and their cultural practices: From this [ethnographic] perspective, ‘television audience’ is a nonsensical category, for there is only the dispersed, anthropology – Chapter 11, p. 224
indefinitely proliferating chain of situations in which television audiencehood is practised and experienced – together making up the diffuse and fragmentary social world of actual audiences. (p. 164) Even though it would seem unclear how, then, empirical studies might proceed, this general line of argument became influential in parts of media and cultural studies, resonating with postmodernist ideas. Also the less radical position of Radway (1988) presented problems of what would be the research questions and the concrete domains of data collection and analysis. Unless ‘media’ and ‘users’ could be delimited as legitimate objects of analysis, there would be little difference between media studies and other anthropological fieldwork. The record shows that media studies have rarely delivered comprehensive ethnographies of the communicative practices of communities. This is in spite of the fact that early sociological classics such as Middletown (Lynd & Lynd, 1929) had presented models for precisely this kind of fieldwork. Instead, there developed an unfortunate tendency, in qualitative audience studies, to describe assorted qualitative methodologies, including interview designs, as ‘ethnography.’ Lacking the required standards of data collection, analysis, and reporting, this practice generated debate and criticism, summed up in James Lull’s conclusion that “ ‘ethnography’ has become an abused buzz-word in our field” (Lull, 1988a: 242). In response, other researchers have sought to reclaim and justify the terminology, partly by acknowledging the scholarly requirements of the approach, partly, again, by suggesting that ethnography might constitute not just a specific methodology but a distinctive epistemology (e.g., Drotner, 1994, 1996; Schrøder et al., 2003). In media and communication postmodernism – Chapter 2, p. 45
Media reception
Audience 1 Medium / genre 1
Medium / genre
Audience 2
Medium / genre 2
Audience
Medium / genre 3 Audience 3
METHODOLOGICAL ORIENTATION THEORETICAL ORIENTATION
Figure 9.2 Two varieties of reception study
virtual ethnography
studies, the term might imply a focus not on media but on the social practices and gendered identities to which media contribute across contexts. However, it has remained unclear how such an approach would differ from the qualitative methodologies and constructivist epistemologies that have characterized the bulk of reception studies. In some instances, ‘media ethnography’ has appeared to imply an extension of the approach to the study of institutions and discourses as well. The terminology has also been applied to the internet with reference to “virtual ethnography” (Hine, 2000). It may be more informative and precise to refer to most self-described ethnographic media studies as relying on multi-method and, sometimes, multidisciplinary research designs. Inevitably, studies must limit themselves to empirical microcosms, even as they relate their findings to theoretical macrocosms. Figure 9.2 indicates two prototypical multi-method research designs – Chapter 16, p. 347
varieties of audience or user studies. One type of study will emphasize the characteristic uses of a given medium or genre by several different user groups; the other type explores how one particular group uses various media and genres. The methodological orientation, in both cases, is to the media: What difference do the media, rather than other institutions and practices, make for the users’ interaction in and with society and culture? The theoretical orientation, in turn, is toward the historical and social contexts embedding both media and users. In empirical terms, meaning flows from media to society and into history; in theoretical terms, meaning flows from, and must be interpreted with reference to, society and history.
MEDIA DISCOURSES AS INTERPRETED AND USED A continuous challenge for reception studies – as audience-cum-content a nalysis – has been how to conduct comparative research on media discourses and audience discourses that does not privilege
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interpretive communities
polysemy
semiotic guerilla warfare
either the text or the user. Whereas reception studies, from the outset, had rejected textual analysis as the final arbiter of what a given media content ‘really’ means, researchers in the area also worried that empirical audience studies might lose sight of the text altogether (e.g., Brunsdon, 1989). Such concerns were motivated, in part, by influential theoretical contributions that painted (media) texts as ‘empty,’ waiting to be filled with meaning by readers acting as interpretive communities (Fish, 1979). While some contributions have sought to specify the textual sources of polysemy (Boxman-Shabtai & Shifman, 2014), other interventions have seemed to exaggerate the openness and indeterminacy of the meanings that audiences might ascribe to media contents (Fiske, 1987). Umberto Eco (1976: 150) even suggested that audiences, both ordinary media users and researchers, might engage in semiotic guerilla warfare by interpreting the texts of the dominant media against the grain. Before outlining the different kinds of media discourses that have entered into empirical reception studies, this section briefly reviews some of the key concepts that have been applied to the text-audience nexus.
The audience in the text
reception aesthetics
A classic notion in literary criticism has been that of an implied reader, or an audience anticipated by the text. While reference had traditionally been made to the ‘point of view’ of a literary work or genre, twentieth-century theories made the more specific argument that texts ‘inscribe’ or involve readers into narrative and other discursive structures. The notion was given various formulations in different theoretical traditions – by 1960s structuralism and semiotics noting how texts ‘enunciate’ their messages to readers and perhaps most influentially by German reception aesthetics. In this last tradition,
Hans Robert Jauss (1982) developed the idea of a horizon of expectations within which readers encounter a text, whereas Wolfgang Iser (1978) identified structural blanks in a text – apparently missing components – as invitations for the reader to complete the text. Umberto Eco (1987b) distinguished between texts that are open and closed, respectively, in terms of their range of likely decodings; Eco, further, referred to interpreting a text along the lines suggested by its structure and using it for the reader’s more or less idiosyncratic purposes. In empirical reception studies, the idea of interpretive communities became particularly influential. An important redevelopment and operationalization of the concept has been that of interpretive repertoires (Potter & Wetherell, 1987). Rather than assuming that individuals somehow belong to certain delimited communities, the latter term suggests that media users may rely on a whole range of repertoires, depending on their socioeconomic background, the text at hand, and the specific context of media use. Accordingly, the analysis of, for example, interview discourses can trace the semantic relations, metaphors, and other interpretive procedures that different respondents employ (Jensen, 1990b). In this way, interpretive repertoires avoid the implication either that interpretive communities are on a par with geographical or political communities or that they might arise entirely ad hoc for one text or one reading. A wider implication for media and communication studies is that interpretive and socio-demographic categories may be mapped onto each other in different research designs, as also suggested by (quantitative) lifestyle research. Social media have brought out the additional implication that audiences are constantly anticipated or imagined not just by institutional senders as part of product horizon of expectations – Chapter 2, p. 33
literary criticism – Chapter 2, p. 41
lifestyle research – Chapter 8, p. 173
textual blanks
open and closed texts
interpretations or uses of texts
interpretive repertoires
interpretive and socio demographic categories
Media reception
the imagined audience
development (Ettema & Whitney, 1994; Gans, 1957) but by the ordinary senders of everyday messages as well (Litt, 2012; Litt & Hargittai, 2016).
The texts in front of the audience In contrast to studies of literary and other arts, which traditionally have examined single – and singular – ‘works,’ media and communication research has typically taken individual texts as instances or representatives of some larger class. Media studies can be said to examine discourses – the social uses of language and other modalities – rather than self-contained texts. For better or worse, mass-mediated texts do not have the aura of unique artifacts. Moreover, the texts that are interpreted and used are often the outcome of some audience activity, notably so for interactive digital media, but also, for example, in the case of radio and television programs that are selected and combined by listeners and viewers as a flow. Whereas Chapters 6–7 present different research traditions within the analysis of media contents, this chapter, in conclusion, notes the range and types of media discourses that lend themselves to audience and user studies. • Discursive elements. Reception analysis has mostly examined entire narratives and full news stories. Some studies, however, have traced the presence of particular themes or images in media, for instance, in a critical perspective to assess the mark they may leave on the users’ consciousness (e.g., Philo, 1990). In quantitative audience research, specifically studies of memory and recall, but also agendasetting and framing research, this has been a standard approach. • Single texts. In certain instances, media content acquires the status of
a singular vehicle of communication – a text or work in its own right. A ‘milestone’ example was Orson Welles’s 1938 radio production of War of the Worlds, which attracted attention because of its impact on the general public (Cantril, 1940). Other examples include entertainment programs or formats that become influential, symbolic, and, sometimes, debated as signs of their times, from fiction series such as Dallas and Dynasty (Gripsrud, 1995) to Big Brother, Idol, and other reality television (Hill, 2005). • Genres. Given the focus of media studies on types of discourse, genre also represents a key level of analysis in reception analysis, as witnessed in studies of decoding and contexts of social action: What are the interpretive strategies that audiences apply to the main genres of media fact and fiction, and to what extent do different genres serve as resources of action in institutional settings and within the flow of everyday life (e.g., Baym, 2000; Jensen, 1986; Radway, 1984)? Genres constitute modes of address that anticipate the social uses of their variable contents. • Media. While mostly understood as (discursive) forms and contents, ‘media’ are also material artifacts and infrastructures that condition communication and other social interaction. This has been noted, most consistently, by the tradition of medium theory and has also been explored in user studies under the heading of domestication – the interpretive and interactional processes through which individuals and groups integrate a new and largely unfamiliar technology into family life and other settings (for overview, see Silverstone, 2006a). In the form of digital technologies, media as reality television – Chapter 18
definitions of discourse – Chapter 2, p. 42
mode of address – Chapter 10, p. 205
aura – Chapter 1, p. 7
medium theory – Chapter 2, p. 26
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domestication
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Klaus Bruhn Jensen material yet malleable structures present new potentials – for communication and for research. • Flow. Following Raymond Williams’s (1974) definition of broadcasting – radio and television – as a flow rather than as discrete programs, the flow of different media presents itself as another key level of analysis. Differentiating Williams’s concept of flow in the context of reception studies, the present author outlined a three-part model comprising individual channel flows, the total or super flow of a given television system or market, and the actual viewer flows within and across these other flows (Jensen, 1994). The model is laid out in Figure 9.3. More generally, the concept of flow, including transitions between otherwise separate discursive sequences, can be seen to capture important aspects of other media and communicative practices, from turn-taking in a conversation to collaboration or combat in a computer game. Such flows are examined in further detail in Chapter 10. • Hypertexts. Though comparable, in certain respects, to the flows of broadcasting, hypertexts afford more interactive options in sending and receiving information and in producing and accessing content. And, while also anticipated by other kinds of writing and print media (Bolter, 1991), hypertextual structures enable categorically new forms of media use, which feed into multiple steps of communication. • Media environments. Most generally, the entire configuration of media in a
Channel flows
Audience flow
Figure 9.3 Three flows of media use
historical setting can be understood as a cultural environment by analogy to the natural environment – a material, institutional, and discursive infrastructure that both enables and constrains the role of communication in social coordination and collaboration. Whereas certain discursive aspects of media environments have long been examined with reference to intertextuality – the many explicit or implicit references between media and genres that generate additional meanings in the course of communication – the question of how, specifically, media serve to constitute social and cultural environments has taken on new salience with digital and global media (Athique, 2016). The next chapter examines media environments as ‘contexts’ of communication and other social interaction. Media communicate within contexts; they also serve to establish, maintain, and modify contexts across time and space.
digital methods – Chapter 15 hypertexts – Chapter 10, p. 202
SUPER FLOW
intertextuality – Chapter 10, p. 200
Media contexts
10
Communication in contexts Beyond mass-interpersonal and online-offline divides Klaus Bruhn Jensen
• a three-step flow model of communication – extending the traditional two-step model of mass and interpersonal communication • networks and intertextuality – multi-step flows of information in textual and social networks • media, genres, texts – a reconsideration of a classic analytical hierarchy • meta-communication – communication that serves to establish contexts of communication and other social interaction • web search engines – an illustration of meta-communication in practice • surveillance and/as communication in digital information systems • time-in culture and time-out culture – a discussion of communicative practices as constituents of culture and society
THE FLOWS OF COMMUNICATION The concept of flow has been associated, in media studies, with Raymond Williams’s (1974) characterization of radio and television broadcasting. Especially in commercial television formats, viewers have been expected and encouraged to go with the flow – to keep watching throughout commercial breaks and transitions between programs. Figure 9.3 laid out an analytical distinction between different types of flow: The channel flow of each station enters into the super flow of all the contents on offer, while audience flows move across and combine the various channel flows (Jensen, 1994). In digital media, the flows of communication are comparable yet different. The super flow of the internet is more the flows of broadcasting – Chapter 9, p. 192
composite and complex than any traditional television market. The channel flow of any site or service is more differentiated and more integrated with other channels. And the user flows, on top of selections from and navigation between channels, include interactivity within the various channels in question. Even more importantly, digital networks, along with mobile devices, support distributed contexts of communication and action that were precluded in broadcasting and other mass communication: interactions with other users about the information on offer through a range of channels and coordinated actions on the basis of such information in dispersed physical and geographical settings, integrating face-toface communication as well. In order to examine the contemporary flows of communication across media of
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Klaus Bruhn Jensen all three degrees – humans, mass media, and network media – and across geographical and social contexts, it is helpful to distinguish between three constitutive types of flow:
media repertoires
• Information flows. Like a broadcast channel, any internet site or service can be understood as a flow of information, broadly speaking. Like broadcast news and fiction series, internet content draws on both real-life and literary sources and gives rise to all manner of dialogues, online as well as offline. Unlike previous media, digital networks integrate one-to-one, oneto-many, and many-to-many flows of information – technologically, discursively, and institutionally – and feed into diverse contexts of social interaction. • User flows. Users flow across the available and accessible media types, building different and distinctive media repertoires for themselves (Hasebrink & Domeyer, 2012; S. J. Kim, 2016); other users represent additional, embodied media. The internet, at once, enables one-to-one, one-tomany, and many-to-many interactions; it also supports users flowing across all of these in one session, or at a later point in time, perhaps with reference to records of earlier sessions. And what used to require multitasking by switching between devices can now be accomplished through a single device with a graphic user interface (Yeykelis, Cummings, & Reeves, 2014). In addition, mobile technologies allow users to flow across and intervene in several different physical contexts of interaction, perhaps incorporating additional print, broadcast, or digital media. • Context flows. Mobile media studies have drawn attention to the importance
of contextual mobility (Kakihara & Sørensen, 2002). What’s mobile in mobile communication is not so much the information, the user, or the technology, but the context in which all of these come together in communication (Jensen, 2013b). In mobile communication, entire configurations of social relations – present and absent – move about. One example, commonly cited in the literature (Jenkins, 2006; Rheingold, 2002), has been the use of mobile telephones to organize social protests in various national settings: Text messages make real people take to the streets to communicate among themselves and to the powers that be while continuing the conversation with absent allies via mobile media. More generally, communication involves an ongoing negotiation and coordination of selves and places, maintaining and modifying different kinds of social ties (Sutko & de Sousa e Silva, 2011). Gone is the relative simplicity of a delimited set of broadcast channels from which individuals or households would pick and choose and, more generally, of a relatively few mass media feeding information into interpersonal interaction. It is this multitude of flows that has presented one of the central challenges for media and communication research in the early twenty-first century.
THREE-STEP FLOW Media and communication research took shape as a field of study around the mid-twentieth century in response to an infrastructural demand for more knowledge that would aid the organization, regulation, and administration of print and broadcast media. One early finding was that, contrary to widespread contemporary assumptions, these media had rather
media of three degrees – Chapter 1, p. 2 one-to-one, one-to-many, and many-to-many communication – p. 196
media research as a social institution – Chapter 20, p. 416
Communication in contexts limited direct effects on the attitudes and behaviors of the general public. Instead, media appeared to work in a two-step flow, affecting a relatively few so-called opinion leaders who, in turn, would influence their immediate social relations through conversation and other interpersonal communication (Katz & Lazarsfeld, 1955; Lazarsfeld et al., 1944). While debated (Gitlin, 1978), the two-step model contributed significantly to a more differentiated and nuanced understanding of mass communication as a multi-step process with multi-level effects. Perhaps surprisingly, given the prominence of this model in the literature, the field has been characterized by a disconnect between ‘mass’ and ‘interpersonal’ communication studies. If communication moves in two steps, the field has taken one step at a time and in different directions. As evidenced in bibliometric research, it has amounted to “two subdisciplines of communication study” (Rogers, 1999). This is in addition to other theoretical and ideological divisions between social- scientific, interpretive, and critical scholarship (Fink & Gantz, 1996). While these latter divisions may be inevitable and, indeed, a source of intellectual dynamism, the former great divide between mass and interpersonal communication has been and remains counterproductive, particularly at the present moment of media history. Many-to-many communication in internet communities, social network sites, mobile messaging, and other formats have been added to the classic two-step model that coupled one-to-one and oneto-many communication. A third variant of networked communication, involving three-step flows, has become constitutive of the contemporary media environment (Jensen, 2009, 2010). In order to examine the ongoing reconfiguration of both ‘media’ and ‘communication,’ it is helpful to start from the communication: How are not only media
and genres but common practices of communication being remediated (Bolter & Grusin, 1999) – in the face of technological, discursive, and institutional processes of change? Figure 10.1 lays out and exemplifies key communicative practices as they relate to media of the first, second, and third degrees (see further Jensen & Helles, 2011). Along its vertical dimension, the figure distinguishes between communicative practices according to the number of participants. In essence, how many get to say something to how many others? Whereas each kind of communicative practice is instantiated in both network and mass media as well as in faceto-face interaction, each kind also has a prototype, associated with a specific set of material or technological affordances along with their embedding historical and institutional frameworks. Along the horizontal dimension, the figure distinguishes between media of the first, second, and third degrees. Figure 10.1 summarizes the contemporary media environment in terms of its intermediality (Jensen, 2008a), highlighting the interrelations between different media types and the communicative practices that they variously enable. (An additional prototype of many-toone communication is considered further subsequently.) Here, it is the general framework of communicative prototypes, and the specific flows of communication across different media, which are of particular interest. First of all, it should be emphasized that, in three-step (and two-step) flows of communication, the steps typically are not equivalent. The two-step flow (Katz & Lazarsfeld, 1955; Lazarsfeld et al., 1944) comprised not just steps but types of communication. 1940s news announcers and political commentators addressing their listeners was one type of communicative event; the listeners, whether opinion leaders or not, conversing locally with one or a few other people
two-step flow – Chapter 9, p. 180
many-to-one communication, p. 208
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remediation
intermediality
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Klaus Bruhn Jensen Media types Communicative practices
Media of the first degree
Media of the second degree
Media
PROTOTYPE Face-to-face conversation, hand-written letter
Telegraph, telephone, fax
One-to-one
Email, text message, instant messaging, IP
Manuscript, theater,
PROTOTYPE
Web 1.0 / webpage,
painting, sculpture,
Book, newspaper,
download, streaming
architecture, musical
magazine, broadcasting,
(mass) media
composition
audio and video recording
Cave painting, gaming,
Community media, public-
PROTOTYPE
graffiti, notice board,
access radio and
Web 2.0 / wiki, file-
agora, marketplace,
television, telephone chat
sharing site, online chat,
stadium
services
massively multiplayer
One-to-many
Many-to-many
of the third degree
telephony
online gaming, social network site, blog, auction site
Figure 10.1 Communicative practices across media types
user-generated content
about their preferred presidential candidate, were quite a different type. Equally, there is a categorical difference between, on the one hand, A telling something to B in the street, who later talks about it with C at home or at work and, on the other hand, A watching a newscast and, next, engaging in online interaction with B and C (and perhaps others) about it. Not all communicative steps are created equal. An additional case in point is user-generated content, which garnered considerable early attention as a potentially democratizing format and force (for overview, see Burgess & Green, 2018; Hamilton, 2014; McKenzie et al., 2012). Over time, however, a site such as YouTube has been integrated with established media and has become a source of “professionally generated content” (J. Kim, 2012), as well. (On the unequal relationship between uploads to and views of YouTube, see further Bärtl, 2018.) The relationship between professional and popular or lay sources of information has attracted special attention in research
as well as in public debate on political communication. Beyond propaganda, deliberate disinformation, and so-called fake news, one concern has been that citizens and voters may receive not just generally selective but ideologically slanted information, partly through the intervention of their social-media contacts, partly because of a growing personalization of what users gain access to, for example, through search engines. The phenomenon has been referred to, variously, as echo chambers (Sunstein, 2007) or filter bubbles (Pariser, 2011), in which opinions may be reinforced rather than challenged. While the issues are complex and contested, a variety of empirical studies have suggested that online news use is not more fragmented than other news use and that online news users will encounter at least a certain diversity of viewpoints through incidental exposure and selfselection (e.g., Bakshy, Messing, & Adamic, 2015; Bruns, 2019a; Fletcher & Nielsen, search engines, p. 202
echo chambers filter bubbles
Communication in contexts 2017; J. G. Webster, 2014). Other studies have found that established media organizations with editorial functions still predominate as information providers and agenda-setters in public affairs (e.g., Himelboim, 2010; Meraz, 2009). To conceptualize and assess the interrelated flows of interpersonal, mass, and networked communication in the current media environment, a growing number of publications have referred back to the literature on two-step flows and opinion leaders (Brosius & Weimann, 1996; Campus, 2012; Himelboim, Gleave, & Smith, 2009; Karlsen, 2015; Vu & Gehrau, 2010; Zhang, Zhao, & Xu, 2016). Over time, the flows of communication serve to produce and maintain society and culture. Social and cultural contexts can be understood as the concrete sites – at once material and discursive – in which users and information intersect and interact. If users and information are the nodes of communication, the contexts that they jointly constitute and configure are the nodes of more expansive networks of social interactions and institutions.
FLOWS AND NETWORKS
the network society
the information society
spaces of flows, timeless time, a culture of real virtuality
The network terminology has been widespread in recent theories of communication and society. One of the most influential formulations has been offered by Manuel Castells (1996, 2009), who diagnosed an epochal network society – a world-historical transition from industrial capitalism to informational capitalism. While subject to debate (F. Webster & Dimitriou, 2004), Castells’s framework has helped to foreground a shift in perspective from information as a resource, not least in material production and administration (‘the information society’ [Bell, 1973; Porat, 1977]), to communication as a process across all sectors of society. Three key concepts suggest the implications of the general argument for communication research: spaces of flows, timeless time, and a culture of real virtuality. Dispersed physical
spaces of social interaction are linked in real time, local times are subordinated to global flows of exchange, and our sense of reality includes both present and absent individuals and settings. The point is not that we enter ‘virtual realities’ in exceptional instances of media use but that a substantial portion of all social interaction is technologically mediated across space and time – which does not make it any less real or consequential. Also as a methodological category, the idea of networks has been gaining ground, in part as a response to the coming of digital networks as central objects of study and, simultaneously, as tools of analyzing such networks – through quantitative as well as qualitative approaches. Networks comprise both global measurable structures and local nodes and links with contextual meanings. Not surprisingly, network analysis has proven applicable in communication studies (Monge & Contractor, 2003). Communication is an inherently relational phenomenon: Information represents states of affairs in the world; users access such information via diverse media; and users interact with the information, and with each other, in contexts – which themselves may be interrelated. Network analysis is characterized by its focus on relations rather than entities. The central units of analysis are the relational ties between social actors and their objects of interest (and the nodes in other kinds of systems – from ant colonies to financial markets), not their attributes as entities. Parents and children, buyers and sellers, elected officials and electorates – all can be defined by their interrelations and interactions with different aspects of their social settings. Relational ties can be understood as channels or vehicles for the flow of resources, which may be either material or immaterial (Wasserman & Faust, 1994: 4). Parents provide food and emotional care to their children; buyers network analysis – Chapter 15, p. 320
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relational ties
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strong and weak ties
communication: the human capacity to consider how things might be different
Klaus Bruhn Jensen and sellers relate via goods and contracts; votes generate both symbolic positions and material benefits to the successful candidates for office. Whereas a distinction is commonly made between strong and weak ties (Granovetter, 1973) – family and close friends as compared to acquaintances and more distant resource persons – any individual is situated in a variety of intersecting networks; so are the private and public organizations that make up the social structure. Communication is a special, self-reflective type of relational tie: It represents and articulates the human capacity to consider how things, including other types of social ties, might be different. Communication is a source of doubt and delay before individuals, groups, and entire societies do things that might have irreversible consequences. In most cases, communication is a constituent of other social interaction; in some cases, communication is a dedicated activity of deliberating on the ends and means of social coexistence. The nature and import of such deliberation depend on the historically and culturally available media technologies and institutions, which facilitate different kinds and numbers of communicative steps. Modern societies have developed media as distinctive public institutions-to-think-with. Research on communicative networks has challenged at least two widespread notions of the internet. First, from the users’ perspective, the web is not a medium of globally interlinked nodes, nor even a Western-centric network that routes communication toward and through a relatively few top sites. In a major study of “the top 1,000 Web domains (ranked by monthly unique users),” which “accounts for 99% of Web user visits,” Taneja and Webster (2016) showed that “the number of hyperlinks between websites explains very little audience overlap” (p. 167, 175). Instead, “global audiences cluster based on language and geography” institutions-to-think-with – Chapter 1, p. 17
(p. 175). At least in this regard, culture trumps technology. Second, it is not the case that digital media have established a separate cyberspace of dedicated activities, as had been suggested by some early and still influential accounts of the internet (e.g., Turkle, 1995). Face-to-face and technologically mediated communications are grounded in similar social purposes, ties, and contexts (Hage & Noseleit, 2018; Hampton, Lee, & Her, 2011; Merolla, 2010; Tillema, Dijst, & Schwanen, 2010; Yau, Reich, Wang, Niiya, & Mark, 2018). Once again, it is the communicative practices, not the specific media carrying them, that are key to understanding the development and maintenance of social networks. The common terminology of ‘contexts’ suggests that no text is an island – that texts are typically interrelated, but also that social settings can be understood literally as con-texts: meaningful configurations of human interaction. While networked communication has directed renewed attention to the importance of contexts, research on the relationship between text and context has a long history.
CONTEXTS AND INTERTEXTUALITY Is there a text in this network? In a famous book title, the literary theorist Stanley Fish (1979), quoting a student, asked, Is There a Text in This Class? His provocative and influential suggestion was that texts – meaningful discourses – are not found in classrooms, libraries, media, or any other location. Rather, texts have a virtual existence in the minds of their readers and in readers’ dealings with each other as interpretive communities. Moreover, the meanings of texts as well as their boundaries – what is (not) part of a given text – will remain open to
interpretive communities, Chapter 9, p. 190
Communication in contexts
intertextuality
interpretation by additional readers and other interpretive communities. Fish’s suggestion was provocative because it sought to deconstruct the traditional conception of texts within the humanities as delimited objects of immanent analysis, interpretation, and introspection, typically regarding unique artworks with an aura transcending historical time (Benjamin, 1977/1936). His suggestion also proved influential, in part, because it extended and radicalized the redefinition of texts, meaning, and information as relational structures that had been gaining currency in twentiethcentury semiotics and cybernetics. Readers themselves and other communicators have a stake in, and could be considered a part of, the text, along with its explicit or implicit cross-references to other texts. All the while, a broader understanding of ‘texts’ as any vehicle of meaning, including images, conversations, and everyday artifacts, became the norm in twentieth-century scholarship on communication and culture. The term ‘text,’ whose Latin root means to weave a fabric or an account, highlights the process in which a content of ideas is given form: It is in-formed. To be sure, the classical traditions of rhetoric and hermeneutics had approached texts as composite structures of meaning in layers, circles, and webs. What theories of intertextuality came to insist on was the transience of texts – in contrast to any transcendent content or form. Neither literary works nor other messages could be considered sites of essential or stable meaning. Texts make sense not in themselves but in relation to other texts. The seminal contribution had come from the Russian literary scholar Mikhail Bakhtin and his circle in the early decades of the twentieth century (Bakhtin, 1981). His most
basic concept concerning the relationship between different literary works – dialogism – was translated as intertextuality by Julia Kristeva (1984/1974). Among other things, she reemphasized the structural point of semiotics that signs are defined in relation to other signs. By extension, texts acquire their meaning as part of a network of texts, past as well as present. Texts are momentary manifestations of a general textuality; texts selectively articulate a cultural heritage. A culture could be understood as the most complex instance of intertextuality. This line of argument, on the one hand, suggests that all texts – all human acts of communication – are created equal, at least as a working hypothesis. The task of research, accordingly, would be to establish how specific texts with particular origins and trajectories feed into cultural patterns and social structures. On the other hand, ironically, the bulk of intertextual studies have looked for interrelations among a small and select category of texts. Through formal and thematic readings of literature, visual arts, film, and television, research has identified a wide variety of explicit and, more commonly, implicit references to other texts, for instance, metatextual relations hinting at the historical origins of key cultural symbols or paratextual relations between a novel and its cover text (Genette, 1997/1982). It is particularly striking that intertextual studies mostly have given little or no empirical attention to readers or audiences (but see, e.g., Appel & Maleckar, 2012). Presumably, they are the interpretive agents who establish the links between the nodes of textual networks. The shift of analytical focus from delimited texts toward textual or discursive practices – and from media to communication – has been a long time coming. In part, it has been the response
aura, Chapter 1, p. 7 ‘text’ – Chapter 2, p. 40 rhetoric – Chapter 2, p. 29 hermeneutics – Chapter 2, p. 31
semiotics, Chapter 2, p. 34 communication and/vs. media, Chapter 1, p. 9
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Klaus Bruhn Jensen of the academy to a changing media environment, as illustrated by the pragmatic and digital turns of the humanities. As long as the legitimate objects of analysis remained a comparatively few canonical or prototypical works summing up and disseminating cultural tradition, it might seem natural to study intertextuality with reference to such texts only. With mass media, certainly on the scale witnessed over the course of the twentieth century, that approach became increasingly untenable. Mass-mediated texts are the products of a meticulously planned, systemic kind of intertextuality; mass media anticipate their audiences as more or less willing partners in intertextuality across time, media, and genres. By the 1980s, humanistic studies of media as texts had also come to devote more explicit, empirical attention to audiences in qualitative reception studies.
From primary texts to hypertexts
horizontal and vertical intertextuality
In an important contribution to the literature on intertextuality, John Fiske (1987) distinguished two aspects: horizontal and vertical. The horizontal dimension refers to the traditional understanding of intertextuality in literary studies as a transfer of meanings across historical time – over decades and centuries – as preserved in the metaphors, characters, and styles of both fine arts and popular media. Vertical intertextuality, in comparison, focuses attention on the media system that circulates themes, issues, and agendas in a shorter time frame – from minutes to months. Importantly, the vertical dimension includes audience members as media in their own right, who may respond to or debate both the contents and the forms of mass media texts among themselves.
pragmatic and digital turns of the humanities – Chapter 1, p. 50
To clarify the processes circulating meaning in society, Fiske identified three categories of texts. Primary texts are carriers of significant information or insight in their own right – not necessarily aesthetic masterpieces or trend-setting media products but privileged texts nevertheless. To exemplify, if the primary text is a new feature movie, the secondary texts will consist of studio publicity, reviews, and other criticism. The tertiary texts are audiences’ conversations and other communications about the movie – before, during, and after a visit to the cinema (or the use of a streaming service). Figure 10.2 lays out the two axes of intertextuality. Research has explored the trajectories of texts across media, audience groups, and time periods. Studies have examined, for example, James Bond (Bennett & Woollacott, 1987) and the Batman (Pearson & Uricchio, 1990) as cultural icons that have provided sounding boards for political as well as existential reflections. Methodologically, the process of intertextual meaning production has been examined through, for instance, oral history interviews and analyses of the creations of fan cultures (Lewis, 1991). In the case of traditional television, as noted, viewers can be seen to shape their own intertextual sequences by selecting and combining (parts of) programs, preannouncements, and commercial breaks from multiple channels in the flow of any given viewing session (Jensen, 1994). However, as suggested by the terminology of primary, secondary, and tertiary texts (Fiske, 1987), research on massmediated intertextuality has still tended to approach the entire process of communication from the perspective of texts, as if meaning flowed from a relatively few mass media, perhaps via other media and texts, and on to audiences. Because digital technologies serve to reconfigure the texts of communication, they present additional challenges of how to define and delimit the ‘messages’ of
reception studies – Chapter 9 humans as media, Chapter 1, p. 5
oral history – Chapter 14, p. 294
primary, secondary, and tertiary texts
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VERTICAL INTERTEXTUALITY
Tertiary texts: conversation about media
Related genres, figures, themes
Related figures or actors
Secondary texts: references within media
Earlier texts in the same series
Earlier texts in the same genre
HORIZONTAL INTERTEXTUALITY
Primary text
Figure 10.2 Horizontal and vertical intertextuality
media, genres, texts
media – born and adopted
communication as analytical objects. In studies of mass communication, it has been common to assume a triad of media, genres, and texts: Media are technologies and institutions, genres are prototypical discursive formats, and texts are the concrete vehicles of expression and experience. In comparison, the digital computer and by extension the internet constitute meta-media (Kay & Goldberg, 1999/1977) – reproducing and recombining all previous media and genres of representation and interaction in a process of remediation. To begin to specify this process, it is helpful to distinguish between media and genres which, respectively, have been ‘born’ and ‘adopted’ into new (meta-) media. On the one hand, the internet has become a new home to most of the meta-media, Chapter 1, p. 8 remediation – p. 195
traditional mass media, as laid out in Figure 10.1: books, newspapers, broadcasting, and so on. Within each of these media, also online, one encounters classic genres: dramatic, epic, lyrical, and didactic, along with the genre systems of fact and fiction inherited from print, cinema, radio, and television. With Wikipedia, for example, has come the collaborative production of encyclopedia (even if, in practice, the format amounts to few-tomany rather than many-to-many communication) (Kimmons, 2011; Loveland & Reagle, 2013; Lovink & Tkacz, 2011). In addition, personal media such as diaries have been reworked for sharing on the internet (Good, 2013; Humphreys, 2018). On the other hand, the internet can be considered the parent of a growing variety of novel media forms, not least so-called social media (Bruns, 2008; Highfield, 2016; van Dijck, 2013), including social network sites (Boyd & Ellison, 2007) and
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hypermedia
Klaus Bruhn Jensen blogs (Rettberg, 2013), each with genre variants, such as Facebook or LinkedIn and personal, filter, or topic-driven blogs, and complemented by microblogs such as Twitter (Weller, Bruns, Burgess, Mahrt, & Puschmann, 2014). (On methods for social media research, see further Sloan & Quan-Haase, 2017.) Digital meta-media, from the outset, have invited research on the distributed processes in which users interact both with texts and with each other through texts (Aarseth, 1997; Bolter, 1991). With digital technologies, intertextuality became an explicit and operational set of structures – hypertextuality – typified by the familiar hyperlinks that connect diverse texts, genres, and constitutive media. Links make explicit, retrievable, and modifiable what might have remained a more or less random association in the mind of either sender or receiver. Full-fledged hypertexts can be organized and marked up both for creative purposes of interactive story-telling and for instrumental purposes of indexing, searching, and combining items of information (Nelson, 1965). Like other ‘texts,’ hypermedia mix visual, auditory, and alphabetic modalities of communication. A click on a news headline activates a video clip; a click on a photograph brings up a text box or a spoken commentary. More generally, algorithms serve to structure elements of both the production and the consumption of digital media contents (Napoli, 2014).
The world wide web is the most massive example, so far, of a multimodal hypertext, appropriately named to suggest the weaving of texts in a worldwide network. While some commentators, returning to avantgardist positions, have claimed that hypertextual representations of social reality would tend to be aesthetically innovative and socially transgressive (e.g., Landow, 1997), the more basic research question is how, potentially and actually, users may approach and apply this wealth of texts and their constitutive elements. In addition to browsers and graphic user interfaces, web users depend on a distinctive kind of intertextual resource – search engines – that identify, relate, and rank texts. Search engines bring home the point that texts are much more than representations of, or items of information about, the world; the web is a point of access to diverse communicative functionalities (Herring, 2004: 30) – a resource for political mobilization, distributed production, and cultural involvement. As far as millions of daily searchers are concerned, there are texts in the network. The question is which texts will be considered primary, in which contexts, and for what purposes. The answer depends not only on users’ search terms but also on the design of search engines, and on the intertexts, metadata, and algorithms that link service providers with searchers and searchers with each other.
the world wide web
search engines
ANALYSIS BOX 10.1 SEARCH ENGINES AS COMMUNICATION AND META-COMMUNICATION To be precise, what is mostly referred to as ‘search engines’ are web search engines (for overview, see Halavais, 2018). Search engines include a variety of digital retrieval systems that facilitate access to information also in stand-alone databases and on personal computing devices; an example of this last type is the Spotlight feature of Apple’s macOS (and iOS) operating system, which identifies search terms in different file types so that I may trace, for instance, my own writings on search engines, the sources that I relied on, and the advice that I received from colleagues by email. cont.
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Beyond the market leader – Google – and household names such as Yahoo and Bing, there exists a variety of search engines that, further, are differentiated by language, including national or regional variants of the ‘same’ service. In the People’s Republic of China, Google is unavailable; the most popular search engine here is Baidu. In Europe, the practical as well as symbolic implications of search were suggested by the (failed) French-German Quaero initiative to develop a distinctively ‘European’ search engine with multilingual and multimedia functionalities (Machill, Beiler, & Zenker, 2008: 599). In addition, specialized search engines address different areas of social activity. In the case of Refugees United, search acquires an existential meaning: This particular search engine has the mission to “reconnect refugee families across the globe” (www.refunite. org, accessed November 15, 2020). Search engines provide pre-structured access to information for living – for existence and for survival. As part of a project on citizens’ communications about climate change (Jensen, 2017), the present author explored some of the implications of searching for information on the web about the issues involved (www.google.com/, accessed February 21, 2008). For the text string “climate change,” the Top 20 results, which searchers will typically give special attention, included, first, official sites of national and international entities, such as United Nations agencies, and, second, ‘green’ or environmentally concerned voices. In comparison, the Top 20 for the string “global warming” produced a mixture of ‘green’ and ‘skeptical’ positions, including organizations arguing against the reality of global warming or advocating different cost-benefit strategies than, for instance, internationally coordinated limits on carbon dioxide emissions. Also in the case of internet domain names, naming implied framing: www.globalwarming.net represented a ‘green’ position, featuring an Extreme Event Index, while www.globalwarming. org advanced a ‘skeptical’ position under the motto, “reasoned thinking comes from cooler heads” (accessed February 21, 2008). Search and ye shall find, depending on your search terms. Results, however, further depend on the structure of search engines and on the skills of searchers. As noted by an early contribution to research on web search engines (Introna & Nissenbaum, 2000), search algorithms normally remain proprietary information, so that the premises of any given search are difficult to assess. Also, the media literacy of users is in question. One study concluded that “users have only the basic skills required to use search engines; this is exacerbated by search engines’ lack of transparency” (Machill, Neuberger, Schweiger, & Wirth, 2004: 321). In one respect, search engines open up the web. In another respect, searches close in on and around particular items of information and communicative relations. Like communication, searching ends. Closure is facilitated by metadata – data about data. Metadata, briefly, address the origins, characteristics, and trajectories of any given piece of information (for overview, see Freelon, 2014). While referring, in principle, to any kind of data in any medium – for the present book: its title, author, date, publisher (and company webpage), ISBN, contents, index, and so on – metadata are key to digital communication systems. The data in question document which items of information are available, which ones are accessed, by whom, at what time, in which formats and,
metadata
cont.
media literacy, Chapter 20, p. 425 the end of communication, Chapter 20, p. 432
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Klaus Bruhn Jensen
perhaps, in which combinations, sequences, and contexts of use. Crucially, metadata are documented in and of the operation of search engines (and other digital systems), and they are fed back into the system. The search strings that users enter are stored by search engine providers and are used to generate one more layer of metadata on online content. Also on the web, you cannot not communicate (Watzlawick et al., 1967: 49); my search anticipates your search, and vice versa. Whereas metadata are commonly associated with technical and legal aspects of system maintenance, copyright, and security, the senders or providers of metadata include, in principle, anyone in a networked communication system. And, evidently, the capacity of different types of users to not only send but receive and apply metadata for their own purposes depends on differential technological and economic resources. Most people most of the time speak into the system ( Jensen & Helles, 2017). As summed up by Larry Lessig (2006), in a digital communication infrastructure, code is law. Also in other media, code – conventionalized and institutionalized uses of discourse – is law in different and distinctive ways. Metadata have functional ancestors in media of the first and second degrees that hold important implications for media of the third degree. We constantly communicate about whether and how we would like to communicate with each other. We cannot not meta-communicate.
META-COMMUNICATION IN THREE DEGREES The first degree meta-communication
The key formulations regarding meta-communication came from Gregory Bateson, who was examining contexts of face-toface interaction. Departing from work in anthropology, psychiatry, and cybernetics, he suggested that “human verbal communication can operate and always does operate at many contrasting levels of abstraction” (Bateson, 1972/1955: 150), above and beyond the exchange of literal information. Taking a standard example from logic – ‘the cat is on the mat’ – Bateson noted that this proposition carries a denotation that refers to an actual state of affairs: the position of a furry four-legged organism in space (on a mat that we can point to) and time (is, not was). Apart from such denotations, people introduce, first, meta-linguistic information into their
interactions, for example, to clarify that they may mean the word ‘cat’ to include tigers. Second, Bateson noted, they also meta-communicate about their relationship as communicators, “e.g., ‘My telling you where to find the cat [tiger] was friendly,’ or ‘This is play.’ ” Not only does communication thus operate at several levels at once; “the vast majority of both metalinguistic and metacommunicative messages remain implicit” (p. 151) and must be inferred from their ‘context’ – in a discursive, material, or social sense. In another publication, Bateson added that “a majority of propositions about codification are also implicit or explicit propositions about relationship and vice versa” (Ruesch & Bateson, 1987/1951: 209). The meaning of what we say to each other implies the meaning of our relationship. Because communication operates at several levels at once, it is ripe with potential conflicts regarding what people are
humans cannot not communicate – Chapter 1, p. 15 denotation – Chapter 2, p. 37
Communication in contexts
double binds
codification and communicative relationships
actually saying to each other and, not least, why. Bateson (1972/1956: 173– 198) showed how schizophrenic disorders can be understood in communicative terms as the outcome of ‘double binds’ in which a person is unable to resolve several conflicting levels of communication. Of course, most people, most of the time, are remarkably good at mastering such communicative complexity. We recognize that ‘this is information’ (a signal of something else) and that ‘this is this kind of information’ (a message in a specific modality and code, with a particular reference to reality and a likely relevance for us in context). We establish and adjust our communicative relationships, relying on conventional forms of expression, turn-taking, and role-playing. In doing so, we establish contexts that are both psychologically and socially real, what Bateson described as frames (Bateson, 1972/1955: 157). The concept was developed further by Erving Goffman (1974) to suggest how frames are continuously observed or broken, modified and replaced, in social interaction. Media studies have later used the concept of frames to explain how audiences make sense of texts with reference to other texts and to their contexts of use. Like Goffman, Bateson remained focused on embodied interactions in local contexts. However, his two aspects of meta-communication – codification and communicative relationships – are constitutive of mass and network communication as well. Technologies and meta-technologies transport texts across contexts and frames across social settings.
contract of sorts – they depend on genres: discursive conventions of expressing and experiencing a particular subject matter. The concept comes with a long history since Aristotle’s Rhetoric; it has lent itself to spoken, written, print, and electronic forms of communication, and it has remained a central analytical category within literature, aesthetics, and other humanities. Recent research has witnessed a revived interest in genre across the humanities and social sciences, simultaneously as a discursive and a social phenomenon (Bawarshi, 2000; Miller, 1984, 1994; Yates & Orlikowski, 1992). Genres include not just epic, dramatic, and lyrical formats but job interviews and online dating as well. Genres constitute frames of interpretation and interaction, including scripts for social action at a later point in time, beyond the moment of communicative exchange. One of the founders of British cultural studies, Raymond Williams (1977), usefully identified three aspects of any given genre: • Characteristic subject matter (e.g., the ‘public’ content of news, the ‘private’ content of fiction); • Formal composition (e.g., narrative or didactic forms of expression in texts, still or moving images); • Mode of address (e.g., the anticipated relevance of an advertisement or a public-service announcement for an audience).
Mass media address their audiences at a distance: hail, fellow, well met! (Hartley, 1982: 87). To establish a communicative relationship among absent partners – a
Genres are discursive forms with social functions. They signal the nature of what is being communicated and the kinds of social relationships that are being maintained – the two aspects of Bateson’s conception of meta-communication. Unlike both the classic transmission and ritual models of communication – but like
frames – Chapter 8, p. 169
genres – see also Chapter 7, p. 147
technologies and meta-technologies – Chapter 1, p. 2
transmission and ritual models of communication, Chapter 1, p. 13
The second degree
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Klaus Bruhn Jensen linguistics and semiotics – Bateson and cybernetics helped to bring the micro-mechanics of communication to the fore. Complementing cybernetics, linguistics and semiotics have contributed additional models that help to describe, in more finegrained detail, how meta-communication works at the level of discourse and genre. The classic example of a linguisticsemiotic model of communication was presented by the linguist and literary critic Roman Jakobson (1960). Compared to the two aspects of meta-communication that Bateson noted – codification and communicative relationships – Jakobson identified an entire set of communicative functions. His model of the constituents of any communicative exchange and the corresponding functions is laid out in Figure 10.3. The implication of the model was that all discourses bear traces of all these constituents of communication – sender, message, and receiver; channel, code, and context – to varying degrees and in shifting configurations. Addressing a classic question in poetics – is there a special poetic language? – Jakobson concluded that there is, instead, a poetic function of language and that this function is manifest in many other genres, for instance, advertising. Poets, while inviting people to ponder what might be the ‘message’ of their poems (poetic function), also address their readers (conative function) about some possible world (referential function). Web banner advertising, in its turn, relies liberally on the poetic function in order to address internet users about the merits of specific commodities that will be sold and consumed in the real world. In empirical terms, Jakobson (1960) stayed focused on discursive forms. While extrapolating their communicative functions, his analysis explicitly bracketed the social origins and consequences of either forms or functions: “the question of relations between the word and the world” possible worlds, Chapter 1, p. 15
Constituents Context Addresser
Message Addressee
Contact Code
Functions Referential Emotive
Poetic Conative
Phatic Metalingual Figure 10.3 Jakobson’s (1960) model of communication
(p. 19). Other humanistic scholars have directed attention toward the social functions of discourse, seeking to model the common experience that we all listen for tones of voice and choices of words to get the points that others are making – their codes and the communicative relationships that they afford us. Faced with media that communicate at a distance and in additional modalities, audiences read between the lines of texts and the frames of images. This was the insight of Roland Barthes’s influential two-level model of meaning, departing from Louis Hjelmslev’s (1963/1943) linguistics and comprising denotations and connotations. In Bateson’s terms, connotations can be understood as codifications – the metalinguistic aspect of meta-communication. Connotations are codes that accumulate as representations, frames of interpretation, and views of the world. At the same time, codes inscribe communicators into social relations, as recognized by both Bateson and Barthes. Paralleling his model of connotations, Barthes had identified another model which begins to capture some of the distinctive communicative
denotation and connotation – Chapter 2, p. 37
Communication in contexts relationships that digital media establish and maintain.
The third degree
metalanguages
Roland Barthes’s creative use of Louis Hjelmslev’s original terms and formal concepts was debatable. Nevertheless, his appropriation of Hjelmslev’s basic figure of thought became widely applied in analyses of contemporary culture and communication. Like other twentieth-century linguists, Hjelmslev approached languages as systems – systems of communication but also second-order systems that either build on or describe such systems. Barthes’s accomplishment was to apply this logic to communication as a practice and a process: Connotation languages can be examined not only in the analytical rearview mirror but as they are articulated and take effect. Barthes, further, included other modalities than spoken and written language into his analysis of the several levels of meaning production. In Hjelmslev’s definition, connotation languages and meta-languages have different but complementary relations to their common reference point, which is firstorder language – ‘language’ as commonly understood. Connotation languages, on the one hand, build on language and are themselves languages or vehicles of communication, as exemplified by Barthes’s myths. Meta-languages, on the other hand, describe language: They are not languages in themselves but languages about languages, for instance, syntactical or semantic descriptions of the English language. Figure 10.4 lays out the principle of meta-languages. Compared to Barthes’s first model (Figure 2.4), the figure inverts the interrelation between signifier and signified at the second level. The connotations add to the codification of the content; the meta-constituents configure the social relationships that people enter into with reference to this content. Employing a meta-language, a linguist
takes the analyst’s rather than the user’s stance vis-à-vis language. Hjelmslev had qualified his typology by making an antecedent distinction between scientific and non-scientific languages. Meta-languages would be scientific languages, defined by their formal operations (but presumably accessible, above all, by expert users of language, such as linguists). In some media and modalities, however, meta-languages are accessible to anyone. Here again, I treat metalanguages not as analytical systems but as practices of communication as well – meta-communication. Ordinary users of digital media effortlessly employ a wide variety of such meta-languages: They customize their own profile at a social network site, they tag and comment on the social-media entries of others, they forward news stories from websites, and they pull a later push of information to themselves through alerts and newsletters. Digital media facilitate interactivity, not only with information or with other communicators about the denotations and connotations of the information at hand but also with the interfaces and systems of communication. As detailed in Analysis Box 10.1, web search engines present a prototypical example of metacommunication: They codify information and enact communicative relationships. Depending on the coded structure of the available information, I gain access to it (or not) as information and as this kind of information with some contextual relevance. I further establish a communicative relationship, not necessarily with identifiable individuals or institutions but with a distributed resource of communication. Moreover, in and of my search, I both provide input to and reconfigure the search engine, however minimally. My meta-communication prefigures subsequent communications both by myself and by others, whether searching for more information interactivity, Chapter 1, p. 16 search engines, p. 202
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Klaus Bruhn Jensen
III SIGN Meta-language I SIGNIFIED 3. Sign
II SIGNIFIER
Language 1. Signifier
2. Signified
Figure 10.4 Language and meta-language
presence
or interacting about, and perhaps acting on, the outcome of our searches. Digital media, further, transport both texts and contexts across space and time. By responding to the ring tones of mobile telephones and logging onto conference systems, users introduce additional communicative relationships into their current contexts. They may do so in several modalities, through video calls and by using smartphone cameras to relay images of their immediate surroundings while conversing at a distance. Television had introduced moving images (and sounds) of public events into the private sphere of the home (Meyrowitz, 1985); mobile media have recontextualized private conversations within public spaces (Humphreys, 2005). At the level of individual consciousness, this raises conceptual questions of what it means to be present – in a physical or psychological respect or both (Biocca, Harms, & Burgoon, 2003). At the level of social structures, meta-communication contributes to the maintenance of diverse public as well as private relations as communicators depart from and engage with what communication theory has referred to as implicit connection cues (Bayer, Campbell, & Ling, 2016) or paralinguistic affordances (Hayes, Carr, & Wohn, 2016) in digital interfaces. A final, crucial aspect of meta- communication in digital systems is yet
another prototype, namely many-to-one communication (Jensen & Helles, 2017): the bit trails that users leave behind, more or less willingly and knowingly, and which are of significant interest to big governmental brothers and little commercial sisters, who may treat them as information about attitudes and behaviors, communicate about them in several additional steps, and act on them for a variety of social ends (Shorey & Howard, 2016). In this regard, communication comes to constitute surveillance.
Surveillance as communication Compared to early celebrations of the internet as a liberating resource (Barlow, 1996) and subsequent accounts of its participatory potentials (Jenkins, 2006), the 2010s witnessed widespread and growing skepticism, in research as in public debate, regarding the premises and procedures of predominant digital communication systems. Such skepticism has been reinforced by a sequence of revelations involving the operations of both private service providers such as Facebook and nominally public intelligence agencies such as the US National Security Agency. The upshot of these revelations has been a realization that, in and through their use of digital systems, citizens and consumers are subject to surveillance, not only or
many-to-one communication
Communication in contexts
surveillance capitalism
even primarily for specified purposes but as a standard operating procedure (Agre, 1994). As such, the social profiling of individuals as well as of groups represents more than a byproduct of contemporary digital media. The resulting theoretical, empirical, and normative issues are currently being addressed in disciplinary and interdisciplinary studies of the relationship between surveillance and society (for overview, see Monahan & Murakami Wood, 2018); the issues point beyond traditional rights of access to information, communicative expression, and participation in political governance to questions of what has been referred to as data justice (Taylor, 2017). In media and communication research, studies have addressed the deployment of data mining both in legacy media and advertising (Turow, 2012) and within the practices of public and community organizations (Kennedy, 2016), with special attention to the constitutive role of users in digital media. Dallas W. Smythe (1977) had noted that audience attention is a commodity and, indeed, could be understood as the primary product that is bought and sold through a medium such as television; Mark Andrejevic (2002) pointed to a more detailed self-disclosure through interactive television by viewers performing “the work of being watched”; and in the digital media environment, the user commodity has become key to the business model of entities such as Google (Lee, 2011). At the level of the social system, what Manuel Castells (1996) had considered a shift from industrial capitalism to informational capitalism might, instead, be referred to as an emergence of a surveillance capitalism (Zuboff, 2019) premised on the monetization and capitalization of data about citizens rights of information, communication, and participation – Chapter 20, p. 415 data mining – Chapter 15, p. 314 the audience commodity – Chapter 8, p. 162 informational capitalism, p. 197
and consumers. All the while, digital media also enable the monitoring and critique from below of the powers that be (sousveillance), in addition to continuous interactions with one’s more or less significant others (coveillance) (Rainie & Wellman, 2012). The idea of meta-communication helps to explicate and conceptualize surveillance as a form of communication. Meta-communication occurs not only between the users of digital media but also between user and medium (Jensen, 2013a; Lomborg & Frandsen, 2016): Codifications and social relationships are documented and accumulated through the architectures of digital technologies. An example of synchronous many-to-one communication is real-time bidding for advertising space, in which the information that is available about users and their trajectories serves to personalize a push of commercial messages. A corresponding example of asynchronous many-toone communication is the accumulation of user preferences over time that drives the recommendation of genres and titles in systems such as Amazon, Netflix, and Spotify. In each case, what occurs is not so much an intentional input by users but an instrumental registration of users – in a minimal sense, what they do with media (Katz, 1959). Being flexible, programmable technologies, digital media give rise to at least two different products of meta-communication. First, at the interface between system and user, communicative events are registered at variable levels of granularity, for example, as time stamps and as user flows across the wider media environment. Depending on the configuration of the system in question, digital media document important aspects of the conditions under which communications took place in the past, and which may be examined and assessed with a view to future communications. Second, beyond the exchange of ‘messages,’ the interactions between users include statements on both codification
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210
Klaus Bruhn Jensen and social relationships. Emojis, tags, and other commentary contribute at once to the meaning of a message and to the experience of self and other among the participants. Together, the inputs of users and the outputs of systems deliver detailed records about the texts as well as the contexts of communication. Meta-communication is a continuous process; it also generates products which, in the case of digital media, are spoken into the system (Jensen & Helles, 2017). While most commonly referred to as metadata – data about data – at a technical level of description, these products also yield rich information that can be re-communicated to and applied by system administrators, advertisers, regulators, and other stakeholders. The question is who codifies what – and whom – resulting in which social relationships, in unforeseen and unforeseeable contexts. What users do with media later comes to inform what the same media, or third parties, do with or to users. In this regard, big data, but also small data and, sometimes, no data (Borgman, 2015) condition both the common practice of communication and the practice of research (see also Kitchin, 2014) – Chapter 15 elaborates on the relevance and use of digital methods in communication research. With the emergence of an internet of things (Bunz & Meikle, 2018), meta-communication is set to acquire an even more central place in everyday life. Like all communication, meta-communication contributes to the ongoing structuration of society.
The idea of a duality of structure, while specifically associated with the work of the sociologist Anthony Giddens (1984), sums up a common insight from more than a century of social sciences and cultural studies. Human agency is not
the manifestation of an individual free will, nor is social structure a set of external constraints on individuals’ actions. Instead, societies are structured by, and they simultaneously structure, the myriad interactions that individuals, groups, and institutions incessantly engage in. Subjects and social systems – agency and structure – are each other’s enabling conditions. To exemplify, the press consists of its structural properties – its economic, legal, and technological permanence – and of the diverse distributed actions of journalists, advertisers, regulators, and audiences. Like other institutions in society, the press, and the media as such, are reenacted day by day. Media and communication, surprisingly, have been comparative blindspots of social theory, including Giddens’s summative framework (for discussion, see, e.g., Jensen, 1995; Silverstone, 1999; Thompson, 1995). This is in spite of the central distinction that Giddens also makes between social interactions that are technologically mediated and those that are not – what he terms system integration and social integration, respectively. Social integration refers to local, embodied, faceto-face interaction; system integration is “reciprocity between actors or collectivities across extended time-space, outside conditions of co-presence” (Giddens, 1984: 377) – which depends on information and communication technologies. Equally, communication has remained a missing link in Giddens’s (1979) account of double hermeneutics: Reinterpretations of society – by scholars and (other) social actors – occur and take effect in communication. As indicated in Chapter 1 (Figure 1.3), media are on a par with agency and structure for an understanding of culture and society. Communication mediates structure and agency. Communication accumulates as culture that is remembered, archived, and disseminated, depending on the historically available media. Culture lends meaning
the internet of things – Chapter 1, p. 10
double hermeneutics, Chapter 20, p. 411
THE DUALITY OF COMMUNICATION The duality of structure
agency and structure
communication mediates structure and agency communication accumulates as culture
Communication in contexts both to the social structures emanating from the past and to the human actions shaping the future. Cultural norms and institutions serve to legitimate and prefer certain forms of agency and some social structures above others. Whereas Chapter 11 elaborates on the relationship between communication and culture, it is helpful, first, to note an additional and distinctive duality of communication as it constitutes and structures social life.
Time-in culture and time-out culture Communication is both in and out of time – it oscillates between moments of reflection and moments of action. In the case of both expert and lay knowledge, high as well as low culture, communication reflects on structure and anticipates agency. Different media and genres enable different kinds of reflection and action. As an illustration, consider the world of sports. In basketball and (American) football, coaches can call for a time-out – an interval – to discuss strategy with their teams. While temporarily suspending the game, the time-out occurs within and addresses the total time-in of the game. By analogy, media use and other cultural practices – visits to theaters and museums, gaming and television viewing at home, or music listening en route to either type of activity – establish a time-out. While suspending other activities, in whole or in part, the communication still takes place within the routines of everyday life and with reference to families, markets, parliaments, and other social institutions. As analytical categories, time-in and time-out culture suggest several dimensions along which communicative practices vary. The production of meaning may be more or less integrated into or separate from other activities in context; its form may be relatively innovative or routinized; its function may be experienced as comparatively ordinary or extraordinary; and the meanings being expressed and experienced may present themselves either as resources inviting, even requiring immediate action,
or as accounts of past or future events. Time-out culture prefigures, time-in culture configures social interaction; the mediating element is communication. The duality of communication has taken many different shapes, depending on the affordances of the available media technologies and on their social organization and regulation as institutions-to-think-with. Historically, timeout and space-out have gone together in dedicated public arenas: theaters, museums, concert halls, tivolis, and cinemas. Radio and television also began, in many settings, as one-set-per-household media in the dedicated space of a central room in the household. Digital media have shifted the lines of division and transition between time-in and time-out, space-in as well as space-out, by radically extending the accessibility of both information and other communicators, anytime and anywhere. Contexts flow in and through communication. In addition, digital media potentially accelerate the process of communicative turn-taking. This is true of the private coordination of family life but also of the public negotiation across media and genres of, for example, political scandals (Thompson, 2000, 2020). Most importantly, digital media facilitate the immediate translation of communication into action at a distance, from the coordination of private lives to the conduct of global business and politics.
TURNS AND TRANSITIONS As vehicles of communication and meta-communication, media of the first, second, and third degrees share two basic features: Communicators take turns, and they make transitions to (other) action, whether of a consensual or conflictual nature. We navigate the material and modal interfaces of different media – books as well as mobile telephones – in order to gain access to information and to other communicators. To get your point, I listen institutions-to-think-with – Chapter 1, p. 17
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communication prefigures and configures action
action at a distance
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Klaus Bruhn Jensen to your speech sounds and watch your gestures. To update myself on national events, I turn the pages of my morning newspaper and change the channels on my radio and television sets. To monitor the state of the world, in the public sphere and my own private sphere, I daily surf the web at regular intervals and exchange text messages and social-media updates with family and friends. In my communication, I take turns with people and with (other) media. Navigating different media, we make ourselves accessible for communication and gain access to other communicators and possible worlds. The approach to communication as turn-taking was developed by conversation and discourse analysis from the 1970s onwards (Sacks et al., 1974). While the focus in linguistics and discourse studies has been on the turns that speakers take in question-answer sequences and other interpersonal interactions, the concept applies more generally to communicative practices in other media. Newspaper articles, feature films, and websites all constitute turns, as do headline glancing, visits to the cinema, and responses to a quickpoll about the news of the day or a new film release. Turns feed more turns, whether in the same or different media. We return for an update of the news the next day or go to compare a news item with another source on the same day; we look out for the next release by our favorite film director, and we engage in discussions about world events or Academy Award winners in the media at our disposal. One of the main things that people do with media is to communicate about them. They do so in turns, sequences, three- or multi-step flows – within and across media. In computer-mediated communication as in conversation, turn-taking depends on its purpose and context – what the turns are about and why they are taken. Different genres involve different structures of turn-taking. In classic stage discourse analysis – Chapter 6
drama, conversational turns are embedded in the players’ action, while the audience, at least today, is expected to take long, silent turns of involvement. Historical research has suggested that, before 1800, the convention was for audiences to give priority to speaking with others in the hall rather than immersing themselves in an individualized, interior experience of the communication taking place on the stage (Johnson, 1995). Today, readers can decide to read literary classics in brief installments that are sent daily to their computer or mobile device (http://dailylit.com/, accessed November 15, 2020). In an online computer game, the distributed players’ sustained interactivity with each other, and with non-player characters, is a condition of possibility of the genre – interactivity is the name of the game. The individual players’ turns, moreover, decide the completion of levels and hence their social identity and standing within the game. In modern urban living, brief mobile phone conversations at the end of a workday may serve to coordinate who shops for an evening meal and who picks up the children from daycare, just as online banking sessions during a lunch break or the free time of evening serve to pay the family’s bills. In the larger scheme of things, the exchange of minimal items of information and the performance of rudimentary acts of communication produce, maintain, repair, and transform social institutions (Carey, 1989b/1975: 23): families, banking, theater, popular entertainments, and other constituents of contemporary society. We cannot not take turns communicating; we also incessantly make the transition from communication to other social interaction. Communication both accomplishes and anticipates action. In and through communication, we establish contexts that are meaningful – cultural contexts at different levels of social organization – which are the focus of the next chapter.
we cannot not take turns communicating communication accomplishes and anticipates action
11 • • • •
The cultural contexts of media and communication Klaus Bruhn Jensen
a presentation of the concept of culture as it relates to media and communication an overview of research concerning the cultural contexts of communication at various levels of social organization: local, national, intercultural, and global a review of studies addressing subcultures, cultural imperialism, and postcolonialism a discussion of different research traditions as being themselves products of cultural contexts
COMMUNICATION AS CULTURE Communication as Culture (Carey, 1989a) is the title of an influential collection of articles by James W. Carey, who elaborated the ritual model of communication. The title suggests that communication and culture are mutually constitutive: Culture is articulated in communication, and communication invariably shapes and reshapes culture over time. If communication is the short-term activity, culture is the long-term outcome, both of which have depended on historically shifting media. Modern media technologies have extended communication radically across space, time, and social collectives, enabling both global and local forms of culture. This chapter reviews research on the three-way relationship of culture, communication, and media. Because this relationship raises questions that are at once theoretically fundamental and politically the ritual model of communication – Chapter 1, p. 13
controversial, it has generated a wide variety of research approaches, frequently with competing or opposed agendas. At stake are classic issues pertaining to identity and ideology: Who am I, who are you, and how may we negotiate the terms of our coexistence? The answers to such questions have practical consequences: What we jointly imagine and, perhaps, agree on in communication is translated into political and economic ends and means, institutions and infrastructures. The first section lays out some working definitions of culture, which is an example of so-called essentially contested concepts (Gallie, 1956). The implications of ‘culture,’ ‘freedom,’ or ‘art’ have remained intensely debated, even if most people will agree about their core meaning. Many such debates relate to similarly controversial conceptions of communication and media. The rest of the chapter is structured according to different types and scales of cultural formations and their communications – from the local to the global level. At each level, it is generally
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Klaus Bruhn Jensen helpful to approach culture as one layer or structure of reality that intersects with other material as well as immaterial layers and structures. Being humans, we observe and engage both nature and society from within culture. First of all, national cultures, while contested as analytical categories, constitute a key reference point for the contents as well as the infrastructures of media around the world. Below the national level, subcultures variously constitute components of national cultures, transnational formations, and explicit challenges to both national and transnational conceptions of culture. Beyond the nation-state, research has advanced diverse notions of ‘international,’ ‘transnational,’ and ‘intercultural’ communication, seeking to specify what ‘inter’ and ‘trans’ might imply. Given the role of culture, frequently in the shape of religion, throughout centuries of conquest and warfare, it is not surprising that research traditions in the area have given special and critical attention to the influence of media on ‘other’ cultures, for good or ill, and to communication as an exercise of power. To paraphrase the military historian Carl von Clausewitz (2006/1832), who described war as the continuation of politics by different means, communication could be seen, in some instances, as the continuation of either politics or war by cultural means.
CULTURE AND CULTURES
164 definitions of culture
249 definitions of communication
The contested status of culture is reflected in the large number of definitions that have been offered by scholars. In 1952, around the time when the field of media and communication research was taking shape, an interdisciplinary review already noted 164 definitions (Kroeber & Kluckhohn, 1952). Similar issues arose in communication studies; Anderson (1996) identified 249 definitions or theories of communication. For media and communication studies, however, three main themes can be identified: the difference
between culture in the singular and cultures in the plural, the distinction between fine arts and popular entertainments, and the relationship between the production of culture as a process and the resulting cultural products. First up is the question of having it or not having it: Could any individual or group be said not to have (a) culture? Historically, the response has been an emphatic yes, as far as diverse peoples and regions of the world have been concerned, including classical Greece, where non-Greeks were labeled barbarians with reference to the bar-bar or babble that foreigners were heard speaking. A modern conception of culture dates from the Enlightenment and the Romantic Age, as elaborated in the work of Johann Gottfried von Herder (Ideas for the Philosophy of History of Humanity, 1784–91) (Forster, 2008). Culture is that which simultaneously unites and differentiates humans. On the one hand, all human beings share culture – the ability to experience, reproduce, reformulate, and communicate meaning. On the other hand, humans are distinguished by the specific meanings with which they align themselves – the cultural formations or communities to which they find that they belong or feel that they owe at least part of their identity and solidarity. It is this understanding that was formally codified in The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (United Nations, 1948), including the idea that everyone has “cultural rights indispensable for his dignity and the free development of his personality” (www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/index.html, accessed November 15, 2020). Whereas cultures have frequently been equated with social groupings in geographical locations, information and communication technologies increasingly have unhinged culture and place. Alongside communities of place have developed communities of interest. communities of place and/or interest – p. 220
culture unites and differentiates all humans
Cultural contexts of communication
high and low culture
culture as extraordinary realm
culture as ordinary practice
A second question centers on the relationship between high and low culture – fine arts and popular entertainments. Also in this sense, some people have been, and still are, said by some others to have no culture, that is, being unable to access or appreciate especially fine arts. In a book entitled After the Great Divide, Andreas Huyssen (1986) noted that, with mass media, high and low cultural forms increasingly came to appear side by side, influencing and, to a degree, merging with one another. With digital media, this process has been intensified, as both authors and audiences may engage in diverse cultural expressions on the same media platforms. Nevertheless, it must be recognized that notions of ‘high’ and ‘low’ remain key to much research as well as public debate; they are grounded in two diffe rent conceptions of culture – one aesthetic, the other anthropological. On the one hand, culture constitutes a world apart, typically in the shape of representations of reality in the works of high art. Despite the modern questioning of art as disinterested contemplation, certain select ideas and representations might still be said to qualify, in the words of the cultural critic Matthew Arnold, as “the best which has been thought and said in the world” (Arnold, 2003/1869: n.p.). On the other hand, culture is part and parcel of the lowly world of practice. Pervading human consciousness and social interaction, it amounts to what a later cultural critic and theorist, Raymond Williams (1975/1958: 18), called “a whole way of life.” Culture is constitutive of all the ordinary things that humans say to and do with each other, our habits as well as our artifacts. It is this great divide that the field of media and communication research has inherited, struggled with, and variously sought to integrate.
A third and final complication relates to a duality of culture. Like communication, culture comprises finished products as well as open-ended processes. Culture has been studied both as concrete ‘containers’ of meaning and as fleeting processes of mental and social life – in the latter sense, literally, the cultivation of the human spirit in either a secular or a religious sense (Williams, 1983). Overlapping, in part, with the aesthetic-anthropological distinction, and familiar from analog mass media, the product-process juncture has gained new prominence with digital media. For one thing, digital technologies facilitate the reproduction and reembedding of cultural products – texts, sounds, and images – within one another in distinctive ways. For another thing, digital technologies redraw the very boundary between product and process by facilitating the ripping, mixing, and burning of culture (Bowrey & Rimmer, 2002) – whether high or low – in acts of production, reception, and combinations thereof. To sum up, culture can be understood as communication, as enabled by and accumulated in more or less durable media. Culture, in the singular, constitutes frames of interpretation that continuously orient social interaction between individuals and within communities. Cultures, in the plural, are formations with extension in physical space and across social systems. From a horizontal-geographical perspective, media serve to consolidate and maintain certain worldviews far beyond the here and now. In a vertical-institutional perspective, media provide resources for enforcing as well as challenging the social structures that be – instruments of both repression and rebellion. It is, not least, the relationship between moments of production and moments of reception that have generated theoretical interest and empirical studies: What is the relative importance of, for example, transnational economic conglomerates, regional
modern fine arts – Chapter 2, p. 39
time-in and time-out culture – Chapter 10, p. 211
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Klaus Bruhn Jensen aesthetic conventions, and national political regulation for the local uses and experiences of different media? And, if media are understood as the centers of communication, how broad and deep are their peripheries – the contexts in which the communications that they carry may form and transform culture?
NATIONS AS MODERN CULTURES
nation-states
the United Nations
modernization
If asked, most people will agree that they belong together with many others in some larger entity, variously called a country, state, or nation. Whereas ‘country’ may be the most commonly used term, ‘state’ and ‘nation’ together suggest the ambiguous status of the entities in question. On the one hand, states are political entities with sovereign authority over a particular territory. On the other hand, nations are cultural entities with a common language and history. It is the interrelation or integration of the two in nation-states that have generated some of the most bloody conflicts and heated theoretical arguments in history. Geographical territories have political boundaries as well as cultural meanings, both of which can and will be contested. Regional and independence movements typically understand themselves as nations that have a right to become states. One contemporary symbol of the ambiguity is the United Nations, which only admits states, not nations, according to its charter (www.un.org/en/ sections/un-charter/chapter-ii/index.html, accessed November 15, 2020). Like the media that helped to shape them, nation-states must be understood with reference to the centuries-long process of modernization that affected most areas of human activity (for overview, see Thompson, 1995): • Economy: industrialization and capitalization of the material economy, along with a growing division and rationalization of labor, leading into variable phases of market competition,
incorporation, imperialism, and conglomeration; • Politics: democratization and bureaucratization of the institutions and practices of political representation and governance, including mass parties and electoral systems; • Culture: secularization of the contents and forms of expression, including the securing of niches for non- or anti-religious communication and the recognition of popular alternatives or complements to the fine arts. Stretching from the eighteenth into the twenty-first century, these interrelated developments depended, to a significant extent, on media as communicative infrastructures with national nodes and variable international links. First, in the economic domain, a world system of capitalist production and trade had begun to take shape from the sixteenth century, centered in Western Europe and its conquests in other regions of the world. Whereas printed books, along with written accounting systems, contributed to the dissemination and application of available knowledge to material production, a key function of the early press was to provide both general economic news from other territories and local advertising for goods, for example, newly arrived cargoes. In contrast to previous such economic systems in the Middle East or China, this modern world-system did not grow into an empire in the classic sense (Wallerstein, 1974: 348). Instead, it promoted a global division of labor; it also allowed for the development of relatively separate political institutions at national as well as regional and local levels (see further Wallerstein, 1980, 1989). Second, also as political units, nationstates were a long time coming. The starting point is commonly considered the Westphalian peace accords in 1648, which ended both a Thirty Years’ War and an Eighty Years’ War in Europe, and which established the principle of sovereign
the economic world system
the Westphalian peace
Cultural contexts of communication
imagined communities
culture as commodities
literacy
dual process of secularization
states with delimited territories. It was, however, during the nineteenth century that the spread of nationalism of various stripes contributed to a consolidation of nation-states as currently understood. In a particularly influential formulation, Benedict Anderson (1991) described nations as imagined communities: They constitute a community – an ‘us’ in a political and cultural sense – but they are imagined (though not imaginary or fictional), because each individual will never have face-to-face or other direct contact with the vast majority of other community members. It is through media and other public institutions – from newspapers and novels to museums, maps, and the census – that communities are imagined, represented, and maintained over time. In this regard, a central feature of print media was that they promoted national languages rather than the sacred languages of scripture or the administrative language of any current ruler. In addition to advancing national languages as the norm and stabilizing their form, print technologies served as means of nation-building and collective self-definition. Increasing numbers of people became audiences for arguments and narratives about the nation that they arguably shared. This society-wide communicative process was accelerated by concurrent economic and political change: the coming of a mass market in which culture was one of the commodities. More people moved above the level of subsistence and became able and willing to pay for technologically mediated experiences. At least in this regard, commercialization served democratization. At the same time, educational systems in different national settings contributed to the literacy required to take advantage of the cultural commodities on offer. Third, national cultures developed in conjunction with a dual process of secularization. Whereas religious culture is premised on an eternal order, national cultures understand themselves as historical,
even as they seek long-lost origins and unbroken bonds with the past, as evidenced in Romantic as well as nationalist and populist sentiments. (In practice, notions of the divine rights of a particular people, or of monarchs over their subjects, also persisted.) An additional process of secularization can be traced in the diffusion of popular culture through mass media. Compared to fine arts, which commonly have invoked universal standards, sometimes with reference to an international canon, popular-cultural practices rather constitute contingent approaches to insight and pleasure. Compared to the ‘folk’ culture that nationalist and populist movements came to celebrate, not as fine or pure but as authentic, popular culture embraced authentic and synthetic, national as well as international, formats. In effect, national cultures, from the outset, were hybrids of folk, fine, and popular constituents, bearing witness to ongoing struggles over the definition of ‘the nation’ and its ‘culture.’ Also, media and communication studies have rehearsed conflicting normative conceptions of culture time and time again, from the ‘mass culture’ debates of the 1950s (Rosenberg & White, 1957, 1971) – considering whether the newly central mass media would be a source of enlightenment and education or escape and entertainment – to the ‘culture wars’ of the 1980s–90s (Hunter, 1991). What modern cultures and their variants seemed to share, nevertheless, was an orientation to the future. From a secular and historical perspective on human endeavors, the future presented itself as an open field of action for individuals as well as social groups. It was not just that a different future could be envisioned; in the absence of a predefined and inherently meaningful cosmos, the future had to be made. This openness has been identified by much social theory as the distinctive experience of modernity (Berman, 1982; Giddens, 1991; Huyssen, 1986). That culture wars – Chapter 20, p. 431
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Klaus Bruhn Jensen experience, in turn, has been described as the origin of much existential uncertainty and of an ambivalence concerning the appropriate ends and means of living one’s life. In these circumstances, media became key institutions that would offer frames of interpretation and cultural resources for engaging the political and economic conditions of an uncertain existence, with the nation-state as its comparatively stable center. Nation-states and their media systems, inevitably, have varied widely. A key reference point for research and debate has been Jürgen Habermas’s (1989/1962) account of the development, in the European setting, of a public sphere, which was instrumental in defining and advancing ideas of both citizenship and nationhood from the eighteenth century. Debates have centered on the extent to which media and civil-society organizations have been able to secure a forum for deliberation despite pressures, to one side, from state agencies and, to the other side, from the market. In an influential analysis of the relationship between national media systems and political systems, Hallin and Mancini (2004) distinguished between three models based on conditions in Europe and North America: a ‘liberal’ market-based model (grounded in the United States and the United Kingdom), a ‘Democratic corporatist’ or social democratic welfare model (prevalent in Northern Europe), and a ‘polarized pluralist’ model with a more antagonistic political system and a stronger state influence on media (characteristic of Southern Europe). Introducing additional empirical evidence, a follow-up study identified not three but four categories of media systems (Brüggemann, Engesser, Büchel, Humprecht, & Castro, 2014) while still observing the world from a northwestern position. Whereas Hallin and Mancini (2012), in an edited volume, recognized the importance of further examining media
systems around the world, including their normative legacies, the western-centric perspective of much work in the area has been critiqued by several of the research traditions covered later in this chapter. One approach has been to extend the typologies in question. For example, the polarized-pluralist, Southern-European model might be said, after the fall of communism, to capture some main characteristics of the ‘new democracies’ in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union (Jakubowicz, 2007). Another approach, short of devising alternative typologies (e.g., Blum, 2005), has been to focus on the specificity on particular (sets of) countries, for instance, the Baltic nations as cultural formations predating Soviet state and media supremacy (Høyer, Lauk, & Vihalemm, 1993; Vihalemm, 2002) or the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) as economic as well as cultural forces (Nordenstreng & Thussu, 2015). At present, media systems theory can be seen to face twin challenges of digitalization and globalization: how to categorize, at once, different instances of digital media environments and the socio economic systems embedding them in a pervasive process of globalization. Another way of summarizing the relationship of nation-states to media is to refer to the ways in which communication flows to, from, and within a given nation-state. With broadcasting (and, previously, the telegraph [Carey, 1989a]), communication and transportation were decoupled: Communication no longer required the physical movement of either people or printed materials but could flow across and between territories. Still, radio and television developed in the framework of the nation-state and contributed centrally to the construction and maintenance of national cultures during the twentieth century. Here, the official life of the nation was represented in public. normative theories – Chapter 20, p. 413
the public sphere – Chapter 1, p. 18
flows of communication – Chapter 10, p. 193
Eastern Europe
BRICS countries
Cultural contexts of communication
sports
Broadcast schedules also supported the rhythms of social life, from the 24-hour cycle of the family to the seasonal ceremonies of the nation, sometimes understood as a ‘family’ (Scannell, 1988). A case in point has been, and remains, sports (Raney & Bryant, 2006) – a ritualized form of international combat that is anchored in the nation-state and an essential component of national media schedules and seasons. International sports lend themselves both to local, on-site participation and to vicarious, technologically mediated forms of experience. With satellite and cable distribution from the 1980s, and the internet from the 1990s, the flows became more flexible. As far as media users are concerned, however, they have remained predominantly national receivers of the contents
of national senders in their own language (Flew & Waisbord, 2015). Figure 11.1 lays out three types of flows through which communication reaches audiences in their national contexts: • National flow. The reference is to foreign or imported (over and above homeproduced) contents that is adapted by distributors to the tastes and cultural backgrounds of a national market. Such adaptation includes not merely translation but the ‘domestication’ of news items through national angles (Cohen, Levy, Roeh, & Gurevitch, 1996) and the redevelopment of formats for fiction series and other entertainments (e.g., Chalaby, 2011; O’Donnell, 1999; Silj, 1988). In this respect, national media, from early newspapers and
COUNTRY 1
COUNTRY 2 Production Distribution national bilateral
Reception
multilateral COUNTRY 3
Figure 11.1 Three communication flows within and between countries (adapted from Sepstrup, 1989) (see also McQuail & Windahl, 1993)
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Klaus Bruhn Jensen popular literature onwards, have always been transnational; • Bilateral flow. The classic example of communication flow between two national territories is the direct, regular, and ‘accidental’ transmission by television and radio stations to audiences in a neighboring country. In a wider sense, print media are exported and imported between culturally affiliated countries and accessed by migrants and tourists, just as digital media cater to ethnic minorities and subcultures; • Multilateral flow. With satellite and cable distribution, there developed major regional television services, for example, Globo in Latin America and STAR in Asia, as well as explicitly transnational formats, such as CNN and MTV. With the internet came the possibility of many more, and more differentiated, flows between countries. The web, however, still bears witness to national borders (Halavais, 2000) and is, further, characterized by regional cultures according to geography and language (Wu & Taneja, 2016).
COMMUNITIES AND SUBCULTURES
communities of place
References to the contexts as well as the outcomes of communication as ‘communities’ have been widespread long before the more recent notion of internet, online, or virtual communities (Rheingold, 1994). As suggested by Anderson’s (1991) terminology of “imagined communities” with reference to nations, communities exist on different scales. Traditionally, however, the reference has been to local entities, either predating the national level of social organization or representing its component parts, for example, a subsection of a city or a rural area on the periphery of an urban center. This first type, then, are communities of place, grounded in a particular location, its history, and its self-conceived identity.
Second, communities of interest refer to cultural formations that are united across space by some perceived purpose or identity (Licklider & Taylor, 1999/1968: 108). In both cases, the nation-state has been an implicit point of reference. Horizontally-geographically, the nation could be seen as a symbolic center, represented by a capital or metropolitan area, with an underrecognized periphery of self-reliant cultural formations. Vertically-structurally, the nation could be understood as a center of power that may have grown out of touch with its constituencies in terms of age, class, gender, or ethnicity. Research interest in communities and subcultures dates has been in evidence from the beginning of modern social sciences. Ferdinand Tönnies (1974/1887) outlined a distinction between two forms of social organization which has remained influential: • Gemeinschaft – homogeneous, communitarian, and non-contractually governed social formations; • Gesellschaft – heterogeneous, individualist, and contractually governed social formations. It should be underscored that the two types do not map neatly onto different historical epochs or particular regions of the world, even if Gesellschaft principles have been on the rise over the last two centuries. Instead, the two terms refer to different kinds of social organization which, to varying degrees, intersect in particular historical and cultural settings. This was documented from the outset by, for instance, the Chicago School tradition in key studies of the importance of local communities in American social life during from the early twentieth century. Like nation-states, the two prototypes – Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft – represent both infrastructural and imagined categories, raising questions of what kind of Chicago School sociology – Chapter 3, p. 60
communities of interest
center and periphery
Cultural contexts of communication
‘1968’
local community media
public access channels
community different social groups seek to promote as practices and as ideals. Since the Romantic age, around 1800, modern societies and cultures have, from time to time, entertained notions of returning to, or reintroducing elements of, Gemeinschaft. And the potentials and implications of local agency have continued to occupy both social and media theory. The events of 1968 in the west and the underlying anti-authoritarian movements in various social domains – from politics to education to the family – articulated a critique of certain Gesellschaft principles that could be seen to stand in the way of Gemeinschaft qualities of life, such as participatory culture and direct democracy. In media studies, classic positions regarding communication as a source of community, and as a resource in struggles for liberation and equality, were rediscovered (Brecht, 1993/1932) and extended (Enzensberger, 1972/1970) to apply to press, radio, and television. One important development was the rise of a range of community media, especially local radio and television (for overviews, see Buckley, 2011; Rennie, 2006). While facilitated by new technologies of production and distribution, these media also were shaped by, and helped to shape, social movements seeking to empower the members of local communities in communication and beyond. In some cases, media practitioners and researchers came together to develop this potential through action research. In different national settings, moreover, public access channels were established, for instance, as part of the mandate of cable service providers so that citizen groups and other non-professionals might gain a voice. In the digital media environment, such initiatives have become more standard fare and have been part of renewed debates concerning civil society as a third force in society, beyond states and markets, from the local to the global action research – Chapter 20, p. 427
level, that might advance alternative forms of both communication and community (for overview, see Edwards, 2004). Being communities of interest, rather than of place, subcultures depend on media that transcend space and time, commonly involving substantial publics on a regional or global scale. As a specific field of research, subcultural studies developed particularly from the 1970s. The immediate point of reference was those groups of young people who had come to stand out, from the 1950s, through their more or less remarkable cultural practices: clothing, musical tastes, interpersonal interaction, and so on (for overview, see Gelder, 2005). In one sense, these cultural formations could be considered a part of, and subordinate to, a national culture of sorts. Subcultures, accordingly, might articulate and cater to specialized cultural preferences and lifestyles, as associated also with different commercial market segments. In another sense, subcultures could be understood and studied as fullfledged sociocultural universes – neither part of nor subordinated to but separate from and in broad opposition to a mainstream (or parent) culture. It is this last, oppositional, conception that subcultural studies have emphasized and, to a degree, promoted (Hebdige, 1979). A particularly influential approach to subcultures has been associated with ‘the Birmingham school’ of cultural studies (S. Hall et al., 1980). Building on Raymond Williams’s (1975/1958: 18) definition of culture as “a whole way of life,” Birmingham and other critical cultural studies have emphasized the specific role of culture in processes of social conflict and change. Rather than being, in classic Marxist terms, part of a superstructure reflecting an economic (and political-institutional) base, cultural practices are here considered sites of social struggle in their lifestyle and market segments – Chapter 8, p. 174 Birmingham cultural studies – Chapter 2, p. 51
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subcultures
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popular music
Klaus Bruhn Jensen own right. Imaginative expressions can articulate imagined alternatives. To cite the title of an early influential volume, the members of subcultures could be said to exercise “resistance through rituals” (S. Hall & Jefferson, 1975). Certainly, cultural practices can be more or less concretely and proactively social. Membership of a subculture need not be different, in practice, from fandom and the cultivation of a personal or age-specific identity. Some critics have characterized cultural studies researchers as disappointed revolutionaries who may find it “reassuring to detect ‘resistance’ saturating the pores of everyday life” (Gitlin, 1997: 30). Subcultural studies have had their romantic and selfrighteous streaks, celebrating the authenticity and legitimacy of certain preferred subcultures. More generally, there has been a comparative neglect of the position of subcultures within the wider social structure. As noted by Middleton (1990: 161) with reference to music-oriented youth subcultures, studies have given less attention to “the subcultures’ relationships with their parent cultures, with the dominant culture and with other youth cultures.” In fairness, though, subcultural studies have been successful in conceptualizing and interpreting culture, not just as one whole way of life but as a remarkably varied range of multiple ways of life with practical implications for different socioeconomic groups and their interrelations. A special focus of research on subcultures, not surprisingly, has been popular music. Post-1945 subcultures emerged as part of the anti-authoritarian turn of 1968 across social institutions. This generalized revolt was symbolized and expressed in innovative rhythms and lyrics. One issue has been how to integrate music into the analytical repertoire of cultural studies as precisely music. Some subcultural studies may have relied excessively on identifying abstract homologies – structural similarities between the organization of, for instance, musical materials and the
social interactions around the music, as in references to rock‘n’roll as “screw and smash music” (Middleton, 1990: 158). Part of the difficulty has been that, also in the wider field of media and communication, music remains one of the most underresearched topics (for overview, see Jensen, 2006). For one thing, until quite recently, popular music had been largely neglected by the discipline of musicology. Compared to departments of literature or art history, popular culture has only very slowly been making inroads into departments of music. For another thing, media and communication studies have had noticeable difficulties in accounting for music and other sound as communication. Given the massive presence of music and composite soundscapes (Schafer, 1977) in the contemporary media environment, one challenge has been to develop theoretical and analytical frameworks that may accommodate the several modalities of communication – verbal, visual, and auditive. Popular music is testimony to the place of cultural practices in processes of social conflict and change, feeding a sense of community, and sometimes solidarity. Rock‘n’roll, in its different incarnations, has been a centerpiece of national and international social movements, from Vietnam War protests to Live Aid concerts to YouTube and Facebook support actions for disaster victims. Somewhat paradoxically, both popular music and other cultural artifacts feeding diverse subcultures have, to a great extent, been the product of American and other transnational media industries. In historical perspective, especially US popular culture has held an ambivalent fascination around the world after World War II (Webster, 1988); simultaneously, it has served as a resource that could be reappropriated for alternative purposes in local and subcultural contexts. multimodal communication – Chapter 6, p. 121
soundscapes
Cultural contexts of communication Beyond communities and nations as cultures in their own right, a central issue for media studies has been communication between and among cultures. Unlike most individuals and groups, both state agencies and commercial media organizations have historically been in a position to address large numbers of people, to a degree, across national borders. Whereas research and debate, from the outset, had primarily addressed interaction ‘between’ two (or a few) cultures or between a center of power and its periphery, from the 1990s, the interrelation ‘among’ cultures in a global perspective, along with the potential for individuals and smaller groups to engage in communication via the internet, moved to the top of the research agenda. The next two sections examine theoretical and analytical approaches from each of these perspectives.
BETWEEN CULTURES Intercultural communication
intergroup communication
Cultures, in one sense, do not – cannot – communicate, but their constituent parts can and do communicate constantly, in the shape of heads of states (or of nations), businesspeople, tourists, and media imports/exports. Whereas much work in the area has departed from the codes and practices of face-to-face communication, research increasingly has addressed technologically mediated communication as well (for overview, see Y. Y. Kim, 2018). It should also be noted that the subfield intersects with other specializations such as development communication (noted subsequently) and intergroup communication (Giles, 2012), which examines interactions between groups of people with different age, gender, ethnic, socio economic, and cultural backgrounds. A common premise of work on intercultural communication is that the culturally variable codes of communication will get in the way of people understanding and coexisting with others of different
national or ethnic origins. As such, the research tradition has taken an instrumental approach to communication as a means of avoiding or managing conflict. Specifically, foundational work was undertaken by Edward T. Hall (1959) after World War II in the context of the American Foreign Service Institute, which “concentrated on training diplomats to communicate with the different cultures they met outside of the USA” (Giles & Watson, 2008: 2340). Nonverbal behavior, which commonly registers below the level of explicit discursive interaction, has been an important topic of analysis; if understood and tackled appropriately, both verbal and nonverbal behavior offer aids in uncertainty reduction when strangers interact in economic, political, and other practical matters. The tradition, further, has invoked ideals such as “the intercultural person as a model for human development” (Gudykunst & Kim, 1992: 253), which may exaggerate the extent to which good communication among sincere individuals might remove conflicts of interest regarding the common good. The classic example of the application of such communicative strategies in social planning was the study and practice of development communication. A variety of initiatives sought to employ information and communication technologies in order to advance general social progress in the developing world – economic growth, family planning, political institutions, schooling, and so on (Lerner, 1958; Schramm, 1964). In fact, the effort largely failed. For one thing, a number of projects could be considered patronizing, transplanting western forms of organization to entirely different social systems. For another thing, the faith in communication as a general problem solver, in retrospect, seems exaggerated. As discussed in the following sections on cultural imperialism and postcolonial theory, it was perhaps no wonder that, in an era of decolonization coupled with global East-West conflict, development communication would
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development communication
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entertain menteducation
Klaus Bruhn Jensen be perceived as communication in the interest of the developed rather than the developing world. In fairness, several of the originators of development communication research recognized at least some of its limitations and failures (Schramm & Lerner, 1976). The title of a key volume, The Passing of Traditional Society (Lerner, 1958), was recycled in the subtitle of one self-critical article as “The Passing of the Dominant Paradigm” (Rogers, 1976). The transition from traditional to modern forms of social organization was proving more complex than expected and might require (one or more) alternative research paradigms. Everett M. Rogers, the author of that self-critical article, for one, continued his involvement in development through communication, for example, entertainment-education, which has promoted education and general information for living through entertainment formats (Singhal, Cody, Rogers, & Sabido, 2004). Western scholars and politicians have not been alone in entertaining high hopes for communication; nation building, both material and symbolic, has been a key concern for both policy makers and media practitioners in developing countries. One example was the 1975–76 SITE experiment in India in which community television sets were introduced in as many as 2,330 largely rural villages. While, again, the results were, at best, mixed, the purpose was to transmit especially educational and informational programs on agriculture, health, and family planning – in addition to promoting particular notions of nationhood and citizenship (for overview, see Journal of Communication, 29(4), 1979: 89–144). With the internet and mobile media, a new round of policy deliberations and research projects concerning their development potential has begun – including non-profit initiatives such as One Laptop Per Child (http://laptop.org/en/, accessed
November 15, 2020), a World Summit on the Information Society (www.itu.int/ wsis/index.html), followed by an Internet Governance Forum (www.intgovforum. org/cms/, accessed November 15, 2020), as well as studies finding new communicative divides arising, for example, within China (Qiu, 2009), even as the country is becoming a global economic and technological leader in addition to being the largest mobile-media market in the world. Perhaps surprisingly, until recently, the discipline of anthropology has not been central to research on culture and (technologically mediated) communication (for overview, see Pertierra, 2018). As noted by another review, anthropologists have commonly shied away from media as conditions and symbols of modernity, still giving priority to culture as a traditionally and locally conceived phenomenon in non-western settings (Rothenbuhler & Coman, 2005: 13–15). Instead, anthropological perspectives have typically been imported into the media field as part of interdisciplinary developments. Regarding cultural differences in the situated experience of media, one classic work was Tamar Liebes and Elihu Katz’s (1990) The Export of Meaning on the reception of the television series Dallas. Other studies have examined, for instance, Indian television as a source of middle-class female identities (Mankekar, 1999), MexicanAmerican girls’ interpretations of transnational telenovelas (Mayer, 2003), the localized reception of Hollywood movies around the world (Stokes & Maltby, 2004), and the cultural specificity of social media use (D. Miller et al., 2016). Most specifically, the key anthropological methodology of ethnography has been an important, if debated, inspiration in studies of both media reception and media production. In addition, anthropological theories have informed media theories, The Export of Meaning – Chapter 9, p. 181
paradigms – Chapter 16, p. 330
ethnography – Chapter 10, p. 187
anthropology
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Cultural contexts of communication
non-western ontologies
for instance, regarding media events as integrative social rituals (Dayan & Katz, 1992). This understanding, in turn, has sparked critiques of media rituals as communicative practices through which a repressive social (and international) order may be naturalized and reinforced (Couldry, 2003). Such conflicting conceptions of ritual begin to suggest rather different notions of intercultural communication, examined in the following sections. It should be added that, for historical and structural reasons, both critical and consensual conceptions of culture and communication have grown out of western models of research. Whereas a number of publications have explored potential metatheoretical links between classic scientific worldviews and other ontologies, including world religions (e.g., Christians & Nordenstreng, 2014; Christians & Traber, 1997; Dissanayake, 1988b; Kincaid, 1987; Wang, 2011), no shared, substantive research agenda has emerged to date. In some cases, analyses have been premised on stark dichotomies regarding an individualist west versus a collectivist east (e.g., M.-S. Kim, 2002). In other cases, interventions have been thinly veiled attempts at applying religious axioms to contemporary policy issues (e.g., Mowlana, 1993). It is easy to agree that “a preoccupation with metatheory is a clear sign that a given discipline has attained a certain level of maturity” (Dissanayake, 1988a: 1) and that more metatheoretical efforts might promote a better understanding of the communicative practices of different cultures. For the time being, however, the field is heir to two main positions in twentieth-century western social theory, one seeking consensus, as in the case of intercultural communication research, the other oriented toward conflict, as exemplified by work on cultural imperialism.
Cultural imperialism A great deal of research on communication across national borders has performed a critique of ‘cultural imperialism’ – the extension of physical or economic force by cultural means. Specifically, the predominantly western mass media of the post-1945 period might be said to subordinate non-western cultures in an extension of colonialism, which was officially being dismantled particularly from the 1960s. The main thesis can be stated briefly: Western media have served as more or less willing agents of a continued de facto imperialism, as exercised most manifestly by the United States over developing nations, and made possible by an international free-market economy. The technologies and the professional competences that are required for indigenous media production to flourish simply have not been available in many regions of the world. Instead, comparatively cheap news and fiction products, which had already made a profit in their primary western markets, could be marketed massively and cheaply to secondary markets in the developing world – cultural dumping. The thesis was summed up in an early book title: The Media Are American (Tunstall, 1977). It has remained debated, however, on both theoretical and empirical grounds. With reference to emerging communications infrastructures in other parts of the world, the same author later concluded that The Media Were American (Tunstall, 2007). The historical context of culturalimperialism work helps to explain both the thesis and the vehemence of the debates it generated. First, research was faced with a divided world in which the post-1945 conflict between two super-powers, the United States and the Soviet Union, had global consequences. The hot Second World War had been followed by their Cold War, and the dismantling of colonies
media events – Chapter 8, p. 176 meta-theory – Chapter 16, p. 333
colonialism, p. 227
cultural dumping
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the ‘Third World’
public service broadcasting
Klaus Bruhn Jensen was opening an additional front in the struggle for local hearts and minds. The ‘Third World’ represented a residual to be enlisted, by cultural and any other means, against the other side. Different normative theories, particularly of the press, were invoked by representatives of all three worlds in order to advance their respective causes. The positions were sharpened in policy-oriented research feeding into deliberations in the context of the United Nations, specifically debates under the auspices of UNESCO concerning a possible New World Information and Communication Order (NWICO) that would accommodate more voices in world communications (for key documents, see MacBride, 1980). A second background to cultural-imperialism research and debate was a widespread perception that the culture of global mass media was invading, even displacing, local cultures, which might be considered more authentic, more refined, or merely worth protecting and preserving. As in the case of subcultural studies, such reactions displayed a somewhat ambivalent attitude toward American and other popular media formats (Webster, 1988). Notably in the European setting, national cultural establishments seemed to resent the challenge to time-honored traditions, arguably balking at modernization as such, as symbolized by an anti-authoritarian popular culture. However, studies in the area witnessed a more specific concern with the economic logic of cultural dumping, which might make significant minority interests or entire forms of expression unavailable in local and regional contexts. In Europe, a central point of reference of research and debate during the 1980–90s became public service broadcasting, particularly the diversity, or lack thereof, in television programming (e.g., Richardson &
normative theories of media – Chapter 20, p. 413
Meinhof, 1999; Wieten, Murdock, & Dahlgren, 2000). Being part of the revitalization of critical social theory from the 1960s, cultural-imperialism research derived much of its theoretical impetus from the critical political economy tradition which was then taking shape in media studies (e.g., Murdock & Golding, 1977). Whereas the work of Herbert I. Schiller (1969) became an inspiration to a generation of critical US researchers, a characteristic feature of studies in the area was the alliances that it fostered among researchers on several continents, including Latin America as well as Europe (Roach, 1997). Among the central research topics were the various gaps – technological, educational, and professional – between the media of countries in the North and the South (Nordenstreng & Schiller, 1979) and specific imbalances in the international flow of news (Sreberny, Nordenstreng, Stevenson, & Ugboajah, 1985), which informed the NWICO debates. A different, if related, critical approach, focusing on the contents rather than the infrastructures of global communications, performed ideology critiques of media texts. One classic study identified diverse ideological implications of Donald Duck comics for non-US readers (Dorfman & Mattelart, 1975/1971). The general label of cultural imperialism appears less frequently in more recent work and has itself been subject to critique (Golding & Harris, 1997). On empirical grounds, research has emphasized that the global media system has more than one center – in both wholesale and retail. Specifically, studies have long identified the substantial role of regional news organizations (Boyd-Barrett & Thussu, 1992) as well as of the ‘domestication’ of international news stories for local audiences (Cohen et al., 1996). In the digital media environment, news flows bear witness to several centers and ideology critique – Chapter 2, p. 46
critical political economy research
international news flows
Cultural contexts of communication peripheries, depending both on the news stories and on the news organizations in question (Segev, 2015), and news flows further constitute networks that contribute to national as well as international agenda-setting (Guo & Vargo, 2020). Similarly, fictional and entertainment genres exhibit a great variety of influences and confluences across national, regional, and global media (Straubhaar, 2007; Thussu, 2007). The flows of feature films follow geographical, linguistic, and broadly cultural routes (Chung, 2011). ‘Local’ contents, albeit sometimes in ‘Americanized’ formats, may have the greatest audience appeal (O’Donnell, 1999; Silj, 1988). Also on theoretical grounds, reception studies have explored the various ways in which local audiences may accommodate or resist the worldviews on offer in transnational media contents (e.g., Biltereyst, 1991; Liebes & Katz, 1990). This is in spite of countervailing arguments suggesting that cultural imperialism may be extended, for example, to China, ironically through digital piracy, as young Chinese viewers are exposed to American television programs with a significant element of product placement (Shi, 2010). One explanation for the apparent demise of the cultural-imperialism position may be that the research tradition had given more attention to global infrastructures than to local cultures, in practice reproducing the center-periphery model of communication being criticized. Faced with more granular evidence, and with a digital media environment in which, despite the persistence of digital and other divides, bandwidth is nowhere near as scarce as in an age of broadcasting, the cultural-imperialism argument may be undermined by its generality. A second likely explanation has to do, again, with infrastructure, this time of communication research. Given the institutional cross-cultural reception studies – Chapter 9, p. 185 digital divides – Chapter 20, p. 415
resources of North America and Europe, it is not surprising that these cultures have exercised a de facto ‘academic imperialism’ in the field. During the last decade, however, book titles and themed journal issues bear witness to attempts at dewesternizing (Waisbord & Mellado, 2014; Wang, 2011) and internationalizing (Thussu, 2009) media and communication research – beyond abstract east-west antitheses or syntheses – at the level of middle-range theories, multiple methodologies, and comparative themes of empirical research. Yet another book title suggests the long-term effort required: There is also a call for internationalizing one of the latest subspecialties of communication research, namely internet studies (Goggin & McLelland, 2009).
Postcolonial theory If cultural-imperialism research has constituted a modernist enterprise, emphasizing the structural preconditions of communication, postcolonial theory represents a postmodernist endeavor, focusing on the discourses in which power may be either exercised or subverted. Conducted from a variety of perspectives by intellectuals in former colonies as well as by literary, historical, and other scholars around the world, postcolonial studies have reemphasized the implications of the colonial past for present cultural forms and social interactions (for overview, see Ashcroft, Griffiths, & Tiffin, 2006; Huggan, 2013). The most distinctive position has its sources in poststructuralist theories of discourse. Compared to historical or sociological conceptions of postcolonialism, which would focus on the various economic and political mechanisms of exploitation, a discursive conception shifts attention toward the narratives and worldviews that serve as cultural vehicles of (self-)oppression. In particular, postcolonial studies have been informed by poststructuralism – Chapter 2, p. 46
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the ‘other’
orientalism
Klaus Bruhn Jensen Michel Foucault’s notion of discursive formations that privilege certain worldviews while delegitimizing or silencing others (Foucault, 1972). In addition, work in the area has been influenced by the psychoanalytic theory of Jacques Lacan (1977), who contributed the notion that language (and other cultural forms) create a speaking position from which a dominant group can differentiate itself from – excommunicate – others. Not just individuals and groups, but entire cultural formations can be labeled as an ‘other’ – not ‘us.’ The classic statement on cultural ‘othering’ was Edward Saïd’s (1978) work on orientalism. From a wide variety of sources and genres, his volume identified a deep-seated tension in how western authors – explorers, colonial administrators, artists, and so on – have expressed their understanding of non-western cultures. These others are, on the one hand, appealing, and, on the other hand, repelling: symbols of deep and dark desires. The ambivalent experience, next, suggests that ‘others’ must, and can legitimately, be mastered and controlled for ‘our’ purposes and, perhaps, protected against themselves. (Other research, rooted in traditional orientalist studies, has raised serious doubts about Saïd’s [1978] original argument, both its generality and its supporting evidence [Irwin, 2006].) More recent and equally influential contributions to postcolonial studies have shifted the emphasis even further toward discursive conceptions of oppression and of power generally (Bhabha, 1994; Spivak, 1988). While holding somewhat different perspectives on the degrees of freedom that individuals and groups might have for generating alternative viewpoints, resistance, or liberation for themselves, both Homi Bhabha and Gayatri Spivak have developed quite abstract analyses and rather stipulative theories of discourse. A central question has been how – in what discursive forms – an autonomous and genuinely post-colonial subject might
finally articulate itself. In comparison, both these authors and the mainstream of postcolonial studies have paid little attention either to the material and institutional conditions of discourse or to the variable interpretations that individuals or groups may make of any discourse according to their concrete cultural contexts. Presumably these factors must enter into in any explanation of how colonialism works and in any strategy of ending the suffering and humiliation it engenders. At least some researchers in the area have complained that the preoccupation with discourse might render postcolonial theory an inward-looking, irrelevant “academic glass-bead game” (Slemon, 2006: 56). Postcolonial studies, so far, have paid minimal attention to media (Shome, 2016: 245). Within media and communication research, as well, postcolonial theory has been a marginal influence, although the cultural studies tradition has incorporated some key concepts, for instance, diaspora – the disembedding and reembedding of ethnic and cultural groups across locales – in order to account, for example, for distinctive categories and experiences of ‘home’ (e.g., Morley, 2000). One general lesson of postcolonial studies for the field may be historical, as suggested by different definitions of the very term ‘postcolonial’: Does it refer to the relatively short period since the post1945 independence of many developing nations, to the longer period since the original colonization, or broadly to social and cultural practices in a world affected by only partially recognized forms of colonialism (Ashcroft et al., 2006: xix)? Cultures amount to longterm memories – of themselves and of their others; communication serves to articulate and reflect on such memories, depending on the media available to different cultures. With economic as well as cultural globalization, as accelerated by digital media, research has increasingly come to ask how multiple cultures with intersecting histories both imagine and interact with one an other.
diaspora
globalization
Cultural contexts of communication AMONG CULTURES The lines of division between intercultural, transnational, and global communications can be difficult to draw, both conceptually and empirically. The 1990s and 2000s, however, witnessed a renewed and marked research interest in globalization, relating, to a significant extent, to media and communication (for overview, see Robertson, 1992; Tomlinson, 1999). This occurred, in part, in response to the growing diffusion of digital technologies, which contributed to far-reaching changes in the production, distribution, and uses of media products and services. At the same time, it should be underlined that globalization did not follow from digitalization. For one thing, media technologies are never singular or simple causes of social developments, even if each new technology has had specific social affordances. For another thing, digital technologies are much more than media technologies (Braman, 2006: 56–57): They are general resources of material production and social organization and thus constituents of other economic and political transformations that are still ongoing, and which perhaps are best assessed with hindsight – in decades or centuries. The transformative potential of the printing press was not, and could not be, anticipated in 1500. To begin, it is important to recognize that globalization is not a unique development of the decades around 2000. As already discussed, one aspect of the longer and wider process of modernization was the emergence of an economic world system from the sixteenth century. Moreover, the various aspects of modernization and globalization do not necessarily proceed at the same pace or according to one central logic. In summary, one can distinguish three aspects of globalization:
• economic – which has been ongoing for centuries, including phases of market competition, incorporation, imperialism, and conglomeration; • political – which remains limited in institutional terms, despite the formation of the United Nations, the growth of international treaty systems, and regional entities such as the European Union; • cultural – which has depended on shifting technological infrastructures – print, cinema, broadcasting, internet – and which has been intensifying in recent decades. It is in the cultural domain that various other aspects of globalization can be articulated and debated. Media themselves are at once commodities in a global economy and local political and cultural institutions – products as well as agents of globalization. Given the potential scope of the transformations in question, research on globalization has outlined several ‘grand’ theories, focusing variously on economy and society (e.g., Harvey, 1989; Held, McGrew, Goldblatt, & Perraton, 2000) or on culture (e.g., Appadurai, 1996; Hannerz, 1996). One of the most widely influential frameworks has been presented by Manuel Castells (1996, 2004), who described the coming of a network society. In order to specify the relationship between communication and other social interaction on a global scale, it is helpful to distinguish between the world as a context of action and as a frame of reference (Tomlinson, 1999: 11). As a context of action – including business investments, political negotiations, tourism, and cultural exchange – the world has undoubtedly become more interconnected in recent decades. In the media field, this is evidenced, for example, by tendencies toward concentration and
affordances of technologies – Chapter 1, p. 5 modernization, p. 216
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the network society – Chapter 10, p. 197
the world as a context of action
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the world as frame of reference
glocalization
Klaus Bruhn Jensen conglomeration in production and distribution infrastructures, despite countervailing forces in the form of regional and local media organizations. It should also be noted that the internet, as an infrastructure, constitutes a relatively concentrated structure of service providers and access points, again despite its potential for user participation and distributed innovation (e.g., Benkler, 2006; Von Hippel, 2005). It is primarily as a frame of reference, however, that globalization affects individuals and communities. For most people most of the time, the rest of the world is an imagined entity, sometimes an imagined community (B. Anderson, 1991), that they encounter through media and communication. What I know about, and do together with, other individuals and institutions elsewhere – in either a material or an immaterial sense – affects me in all manner of indirect and cumulative ways. This is the technologically mediated condition of modernity, as accentuated by globalization. The media enable a global social system that is complex as well as opaque; they simultaneously provide means of making that system more transparent and actionable. Also media organizations need to consider the globe as an imagined entity. In order to attract localized audiences and users, producers and distributors of media products and services must take into account the several frames of reference – national, regional, transnational – which enter into ‘local’ cultures. One lesson from transnational television channels, such as MTV and CNN, was that, when faced with national competition, they may be forced to regionalize their product (Roe & De Meyer, 2000; see also Volkmer, 1999). In theories of globalization, this dialectic has been referred to as glocalization (Robertson, 1995). Web search
engines (Halavais, 2018) include customized versions of, for instance, Google in many languages. In conclusion, the field of media and communication is a prime candidate for culturally comparative research. Whereas studies of media and their uses in cultural contexts have been comparatively few (e.g., Blumler, McLeod, & Rosengren, 1992), more reference works have become available for further research in the area (Chan & Lee, 2017; Esser & Hanitzsch, 2012). Studies have also considered the culturally (and historically) variable meanings, for instance, of being an ‘audience’ (Butsch & Livingstone, 2014). In one sense, all human and social sciences are comparative:
concentration and conglomeration – Chapter 4, p. 76; Chapter 5, p. 107
web search engines – Chapter 10, p. 202
regional and local media organizations, p. 219
After we designate researchers who compare across time (historians) and across space (geographers), researchers who compare communications content (content analysts), organizations (organizational sociologists), institutions (macrosociologists), countries (international relations specialists), cultures (ethnologists), and languages (linguists), and researchers who compare individuals in terms of gender, race, social class, age, education, and religion, what remains? (Beniger, 1992: 35) What remains, in media and communication studies, may be, first, a shift of focus from (mass) media toward the diverse communicative practices that various media types enable in different cultural contexts and, second, a renewed attention to the cultural origins also of any theoretical lens through which empirical studies compare cultures. The ongoing globalization of both communication and research infrastructures invites many more culturally comparative
from media toward communication studies – Chapter 1, p. 9
Cultural contexts of communication studies; it also represents an opportunity for researchers to become more reflective of their own cultural origins and knowledge interests. History – the topic of the next chapter – offers one more lens for reflecting on current conceptions of and approaches to communication.
knowledge interests – Chapter 20, p. 419
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12
History, communication, and media Janice Peck
• • • •
an account of ‘the history of history’ as an academic discipline an overview of the fields of media history and communication history a presentation of key methods and sources in historical research on media and communication a discussion of Raymond Williams’s approach to media and communication in the context of culture as a whole way of life • four illustrations of distinctive contributions to the study of media and communication history
There is a need to come to terms with the role of history in the definition of the field, as well as in the study of communication and media. (Hardt,1992: xiii)
INTRODUCTION In 1991, sociologist Michael Schudson (1991: 175) remarked that “the writing of communication history is woefully underdeveloped.” Its deficiency, he argued, stemmed from the fact that “communication media” were treated as “background,” as “carriers rather than creators of the causes and effects historians normally attend to,” when they should be placed in the “event-filled foreground of historical events.” He proposed a corrective: students of communication history should pay closer attention to “the organization and social uses of technologies in specific historical settings” because “the technologies themselves must be seen as social and cultural practices” (p. 189).
Schudson’s assessment appeared as a chapter titled “Historical Approaches to Communication Studies” in A Handbook of Qualitative Methodologies for Mass Communication Research, whose aim, wrote editors Klaus Bruhn Jensen and Nicholas W. Jankowski (1991: xiii), was to address the “qualitative turn” in the field of mass communication. A decade later, with Jensen as sole editor, that project evolved into A Handbook of Media and Communication Research: Qualitative and Quantitative Methodologies (2002), which focused on integrating humanistic and social scientific approaches in the field. In a chapter titled “History, Media and Communication,” Paddy Scannell (2002: 205) noted “how well established this hybrid discipline, split across history and media and communication studies, has become.” In a subsequent edition of the volume, Scannell updated his contribution. Observing that in the interim, historical research had expanded to encompass the internet and
History, communication, and media
institutionalization of media and communication history
typologies of historical research
amend its previous focus on centralized media within nation states to account for the rise of social media in an increasingly global context, Scannell (2012: 234) echoed Schudson in calling for “the historical impact of technological innovation” to be considered “a central issue for all students of media and communication today.” With this third edition, the subfield of media and communication history is well established, having grown in scope and influence, as seen in major overviews (e.g., Starr, 2004; Briggs & Burke, 2013; John, 2010a, 2010b; Poe, 2011) and edited collections (Zelizer, 2008; Hall, 2010; Valdivia & Nerone, 2012; Simonson et al., 2013a), the formation of a communication history division in the International Communication Association, and several academic journals dedicated to historical media research (Media History, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, Journalism History). In this chapter, I follow Scannell’s approach of placing the study of media and communication history within the larger ‘history of history.’ I also heed his and Schudson’s advice to attend to the means of communication in historical research. I diverge from those precedents by arguing for the explanatory power of an approach to media and communication history that integrates theory and method with the goal of providing “systematic explanations of culturally determined social practices within a continuous historical process” (Hardt & Brennen, 1993: 131). Any effort to examine the study of the history of communication and media confronts the immensity of the object of inquiry. John Nerone observed in 2003 that “the boundaries of media history are very hard to describe” (2003: 4) and a decade later lamented it was a “still anarchic field” (Valdivia & Nerone, 2012: 3). Several scholars have tried to bring order to the anarchy. Schudson (1991: 177) delineated between “macro-history” that treats the place of media in “human evolution,” “institutional history” that looks
at the development of media, and “history proper” that considers the relationship of communication and social change. George Lipsitz (1988: 155) proposed three frameworks for studying the history of mass communication. He distinguished between “apparatus-centered criticism” that focuses on media infrastructures and institutions, “socially-based criticism” that examines the reception of media creations, and “textually-oriented criticism” that considers the ways media “texts reflect and shape the historical contexts in which they’re produced.” James Curran (2002) compared media history in terms of the narratives that have been used to frame it: liberal, feminist, populist, libertarian, anthropological, and technological determinist. Scannell (2002, 2012) drew an initial distinction between communication history and media history and further differentiated between media histories and histories of the press and of broadcasting. In repeated efforts to give coherence to the domain of communication/media history, Nerone (2003) has proposed analytical boundaries between the history of media technologies and the history of media institutions; between conceptualizing media through the lenses of the history of technology, the history of the book, and the history of the public sphere (2006); and, most recently, between historical studies of media that foreground theoretical approaches, technologies and practices, or contexts (Valdivia & Nerone, 2012). From a poststructuralist perspective, Jeremy Packer (Valdivia & Packer, 2012) suggested a triad of “media forms, institutions and technologies” to be explored with Michel Foucault’s archeological and genealogical methods. The communication history division of the International Communication Association offered its own organizing schema, dividing the research terrain into the history of communication praxis, the history of the academic field of communication, and the history of how communication has been conceptualized over time
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Janice Peck (https://communicationhistory.org/aboutchd/, accessed November 15, 2020). Hoping to establish some semblance of boundaries, the editors of The Handbook of Communication History (Simonson et al., 2013b: 1) proposed a landscape so expansive it includes “ideas, practices, and processes, institutions, materialities, and events of communicative expression, circulation and exchange” as well as “the past study of all of those things.” The struggle to impose conceptual order on this unruly domain arises in part from the challenge of dealing with something that resides at the very heart of human experience. As Dan Schiller (1996: viii) noted in his study of the history of communication theory, the sweep and import of communication have become virtually uncontained. To study communication, it is now widely evident, is not only to be concerned with the contributions of a restricted set of media, either to the socialization of children and youth or to buying and voting decisions. Nor is it only to engage with the ideological legitimations of the modern state. It is, rather, to make arguments about the forms and determinants of sociocultural development as such. Given such complexity, it is useful to start our journey by proposing one possible unity behind the quest to understand communication and media. At a basic level, we might consider all scholarly inquiry in the field – whether it issues from the tradition of post-positivist based effects research, the “critical paradigm” associated with the intersection of political-economy and cultural studies, or the intersecting paths of rhetorical and discourse analysis – media effects research – Chapter 8 critical media and communication research – Chapter 20, p. 420
as being guided by an underlying, if not always explicitly expressed, question: What is the nature of the power of media and communication? Different traditions of communication research may diverge in terms of the specific objects they examine, the theories and theorists they hold dear, the methods they employ to gather and analyze data, and what they count as meaningful evidence, but they all begin from a common set of assumptions: that communication and media are important, perhaps central, in humans’ past and present existence; that this centrality is itself evidence of the power of media and communication, which issues from the capacity to produce and circulate meanings; that the meanings humans create, distribute, and encounter necessarily condition what they do and thus who they are; and, in consequence, that making sense of the extent and the limits of that power is a vital scholarly endeavor. In the field of media studies – and especially in media literacy education as it has become institutionalized – a common pedagogical tool is the “media triangle” used to represent the triad of determinant relations within the communication process, as illustrated in Figure 12.1. This heuristic device signals the complexity of media and communication – not only in terms of conducting analyses but also as institutionalized practices and lived experiences. As media researchers, creators, and users, we cannot lose sight of the manifold intersections among these three dimensions. In the case of television, for example, one might focus on a particular program and conduct a close textual, ideological, or discursive analysis with an eye toward disclosing its meaning and social impact, but to produce a substantive argument, it is necessary to also take into account the complexity within a given text (genre, signifying codes, commodity, discourse, intertextuality), the multiple bases of its creation (industry,
rhetoric – Chapter 2, p. 29 discourse analysis – Chapter 6
media literacy – Chapter 20, p. 425
the power of media and communication
History, communication, and media
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TEXT/MESSAGE/PRODUCT
PRODUCTION/MEDIUM/INDUSTRY
RECEPTION/RECEIVER/AUDIENCE
Figure 12.1 Media triangle
sociological imagination
finance, ownership, technology, law, policy, profitability), and its intended and actual reception (audience, market, textual competence, social positioning). It is equally critical to locate these sets of relations within a social, political, economic, and cultural context. And, most crucially for our purposes in this chapter, to situate the entire ensemble of relations within a larger historical context that Scannell (2012: 234) has characterized as “the changing material conditions of life in historical societies and the experience of those changes by its members.” It is with this larger historical contextualization process that this chapter is centrally concerned. In his book of the same name, C. Wright Mills (1959: 4) described the “sociological imagination” as a method of analysis that “enables us to grasp history and biography and the relations between the two within society.” In his view, the power of this relational method is the capacity to shift from one perspective to another – from the political to the psychological; from examination of a single family to comparative assessment of the national budgets of the world; from the theological school to the military establishment; from considerations of an oil industry to studies of contemporary poetry. It is the capacity to range from the most impersonal and remote transformations to the most intimate features of the human self – and to see the relations between the two. (p. 7)
Borrowing from Mills, I argue for the explanatory power of such a relational approach to the study of media and communication history that we might term the “historical imagination,” which is grounded in a synthesis of theory and method and strives to grasp the extraordinarily complex set of relations always in play in the study of media, past or present. The chapter considers the study of communication and media history by locating it within the history of history as a field of research; outlines an approach to studying media and communication history by drawing on the thought of British cultural historian Raymond Williams; addresses the process and method of investigation, synthesis, and interpretation involved in historical research on communication and media; and explores the value of the approach through application to a selected set of studies.
historical imagination
DEFINING OUR TERMS: COMMUNICATION, MEDIA, HISTORY In considering approaches to the study of the history of media and communication, it is worthwhile to begin with some clarification of terms. Scannell (2012: 220) prefaces his examination of communication and media history with a brief tour through the “history of history” as an academic discipline, from its professional institutionalization in the nineteenth century through the mid-twentieth century, when “media history began to emerge as a distinctive subfield.” That is, Scannell starts with “historiography,” which
the history of history
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historiography
communication history and/vs. media history
Janice Peck refers to the study of the writing of history, including the methods used by historians in developing the discipline of history itself and which can also refer to a body of historical work on a particular subject, such as media and communication (see Breisach, 2007, for a history of historiography; for a historiography of communication history, see Simonson et al., 2013c). Scannell draws a distinction between “communication” and “media” in terms of temporality and scale; the former, paralleling the span of human existence, is “constitutive of human being” (2012: 221), whereas the latter, as a means of communication, arises historically with writing systems (p. 223). Another distinction is made by David Crowley and Paul Heyer (2007: 2), who define “communication” as the primary and fundamental human process of exchanging information and “communications” as the subsequent creation of “media to store and retrieve [a] growing volume of information.” In Keywords (1983/1976: 72), Raymond Williams observes that the modern meaning of communication – to impart or make common – emerged in the fifteenth century and was expanded in the late seventeenth century to include “means of communication” in concert with the major development of canals, roads, and railways – hence, the link between communication and transportation. “Media” is the newer term, coming into use in the early twentieth century and popularized in the 1950s to refer to print and broadcasting; a similar pattern occurred with the term “communications” to refer to the industries involved in the creation and distribution of information (p. 72; see also Briggs & Burke, 2013: 1). The history of media and communication history has also undergone reformulations. In Willard Rowland’s account (2007: xi), what began as a relatively narrow focus on the “story of the press” (including key figures and institutions), viewed through the lens of its place in the historical development of representative
democracy, was later revised by setting that story into larger political, legal, economic, and cultural contexts. A more sweeping conceptual shift, Rowland contends, located the history of media and their particular contexts within “the whole of human history, to examine the role of communication in the development of the human species and its forms of civilization.” A key theorist identified with this latter reformulation is Canadian political economist and historian Harold Innis, whose Empire and Communications (1950) and The Bias of Communication (1951) made a case for the centrality of communication in processes of social and historical change. Although Innis has been labeled a technological determinist – Denis McQuail (1994: 97–98), for example, claimed Innis represents “the most complete and influential variant of media determinism” – such assessments misapprehend his views on the historical relationship between communication and social order. Making a case for the continuing relevance of Innis to the study of communication and history, Menahem Blondheim (2004: 129) suggests that in writing about communication technologies, Innis placed greater emphasis on the process of communication than on the character of the technologies in conceptualizing historical change. Because Innis “considered processes of communication and the institutions associated with them to have tremendous effects on the nature of societies and cultures, and on the course of history,” he is better understood as a “communication determinist.” As Blondheim notes, “since Innis believed that communication history was the key to world history, he went on to read the history of the world as a history of communication” and in so doing contributed to the creation of the academic field of communication history. In Heyer’s (1981: 250) view, Innis was “the first writer to create a distinct medium theory – Chapter 2, p. 26 technological determinism – Chapter 1, p. 2
communication determinism
History, communication, and media field of inquiry using the social and economic consequences of developments in communication as subject matter.” A strength of Innis’s work is its holistic philosophical and interdisciplinary approach. Innis did not just identify communication as one “aspect of history,” according to Blondheim (2004: 129), but believed that the historical development of the means and forms of communication might be “a key to unlocking the vicissitudes of mind, matter and their interface.” That is, Innis was not simply making a case for the interdependence of communication and transportation in the movement of people, goods, and ideas across space but was arguing that the means of communication are also integral to the modes of social relations; thus, ontological foundations of inter- and intra-subjectivity that are centrally involved in “the conditions in which human social relations are constituted, that is, understood and undertaken” (Crowley, 1981: 242; see also Williams, 1981b). Reflecting on the implications of Innis’s approach, with its claims regarding the connections between modes of consciousness, patterns of social relations, and forms and systems of communication, Rowland (2007: xii) mused: “if these relationships between communication systems and broad patterns of human thought and experience are so strong, then the story of communication is much more central to human history than the formal academic discipline of history has recognized.” It is to the question of the relationship of communication in/and history that we now turn.
HISTORIOGRAPHY: THE PROBLEM OF THE HISTORY OF HISTORY Asa Briggs and Peter Burke open The Social History of the Media (2013: viii) with the fifteenth-century development of the printing press and conclude in the early twenty-first century with the internet, cyberspace, and social media, seeking
to demonstrate “the relevance of the past to the present by bringing history into media studies and the media into history.” I share their goal of putting media and history into productive relationship. I also begin my historiographical journey in the fifteenth century, when the development of the printing press and the explosion of the world of print with its “vast heaps of information” intersected with a major epistemological shift in historical knowledge provoked by Europeans’ discovery in the 1490s of what would be called the “New World” (Grafton, 2011: xi; Grafton, 1992; Schiffman, 2011). In New Worlds, Ancient Texts (1992: 13) Anthony Grafton argues that for literate Europeans in 1500, the world represented in books was a “narrow, orderly place” – one in which readers could assume that “a basically complete and accurate body of knowledge already existed” and “few surprises could await the explorer of the past or the present, the reader of the Bible, or the student of the cosmos.” The encounter with a previously unimagined, radically unfamiliar world would upend that certainty. The notions of “old” and “new” worlds that emerged from exploration and sustained contact between previously separated regions of the globe marked the beginning of what would be designated the European “Early Modern Era,” whose globalizing character was one of its most important features. The transformative effects of that encounter contributed to the development of a new vision of the past and a new historical perspective. In their exploration of global historiography, Georg G. Iggers, Q. Edward Wang and Supriya Mukherjee (2008: 6) view the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries as a particular stage of globalization, where the “emergence of a capitalist world market together with an early phase of colonization by the West” supported a more “global outlook” in historical writings than would be the case in globalization – Chapter 11, p. 229
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Janice Peck histories produced during globalization’s second stage – “the age of imperial expansion after 1800” (p. 8). A number of historians have proposed that alongside the scientific revolution that sought to replace metaphysical explanations of nature with “laws that could be validated empirically,” (Iggers, Wang, & Mukherjee, 2008: 23), the development and expanded application of printed communication was a major force in Europe’s transformation from the Middle Ages through the Early Modern Era (see Mumford, 1947; Eisenstein, 1979; Darnton, 1979; Febvre & Martin, 2010/1976; Chartier, 1994). Introduced in the 1450s in Germany by Johannes Gutenberg, the printing press played a prominent role in that historical transformation by making possible the rapid, widespread dissemination of information in vernacular languages. By 1500, presses had been established in more than 250 places in Europe (Briggs & Burke, 2013: 13), with 20 million books circulating among a population of 100 million (Febvre & Martin, 2010/1976: 248–249). The history of printed communication has also been linked to the rise of capitalism in the West – as Ronald Zboray and Mary Zboray (2013: 282) describe it, the two developments “shared a cradle.” Benedict Anderson (2006: 37–38) used the term “print capitalism” to denote the union through which the growth of printed material in vernacular facilitated a sharing of ideas across distance and in the process fostered a new form of “imagined community”: nationalism. Crowley and Heyer (2007: 82) suggest that by virtue of its being “a technology that influenced other technologies – a prototype for mass production,” the printing press “comes close” to qualifying as a “historical prime mover.” Thanks to their intellectual debt to Innis, they sidestep technological determinism by citing an ensemble of social conditions that facilitated the development
and spread of printed communication; as they note, it would take some two hundred years for “most of the definitive changes to knowledge and society produced by print to fall into place” (p. 83). Those two centuries – from the late 1500s to late 1700s – spanned the Renaissance, the Protestant Reformation, the birth of modern science, and the emergence of the Enlightenment, all of which have been described as stations in the West’s passage to “modernity.” It is crucial to keep in mind, however, that the “West” – as concept or entity – exists only by virtue of its relation to its Other, the “non-West,” within a global political-economic system (Wolf, 1982). Which is to say that neither “modernity” nor “Enlightenment” are exclusively European features or accomplishments. Sebastian Conrad (2012: 1008) points out that from its inception, Enlightenment was a “global phenomenon” rooted in a “long history of entanglements and systemic integration of the world.” Similarly, Sanjay Subrahmanyam (1998: 99–100) has argued that “modernity” is “historically a global and conjunctural phenomenon, not a virus that spreads from one place to another. It is located in a series of historical processes that brought hitherto relatively isolated societies into contact.” During this early stage of globalization, when “print became central . . . not only because there was more of it, but also because it insinuated itself into other forms of mediation” (Siskin & Warner, 2010: 10), the concept of communication gained increasing attention in philosophical discourse. Amidst the rise of newspapers in the seventeenth century (Briggs & Burke, 2013: 15), John Locke (1632– 1704) seized on the concept of communication to account for the operation by which thought passed between individual minds on the way to becoming common ideas (Peters, 1989). The concept of communication also appeared in the writings
imagined communities – Chapter 11, p. 217
modernity – Chapter 11, p. 216
the Enlightenment
the concept of communication
History, communication, and media of Francis Bacon (1561–1626) and Isaac Newton (1643–1727), who emphasized its function for sharing scientific knowledge and thereby advancing reason (also Heyer, 1988; Siskin & Warner, 2010). Indeed, Bacon (2000/1620: 100) credited the printing press, gunpowder and the nautical compass with having “changed the face and condition of things all over the globe . . . and innumerable changes have followed” – further indication of a growing awareness of global integration. Reflections on the place of language and communication in history figured prominently in the works of thinkers associated with the French Enlightenment, including Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778), Etienne Condillac (1714–1780), Nicolas de Condorcet (1743–1794), and Anne Robert Jacques Turgot (1727–1781) (Heyer, 1988; Siskin & Warner, 2010). In his introduction to the French Encyclopédie, Jean le Rond d’Alembert (1717–1783) identified communication as a “fundamental process in the historical organization of society” (d’Alembert, 1751/1995, cited in Simonson et al., 2013c: 17; see also Darnton, 1979; Blom, 2005). In his multi-volume intellectual history of the European Enlightenment from 1650 to the final decades of the eighteenth century, Jonathan Israel (2001, 2006, 2010, 2011) attributes the centrality of new forms and means of communication to the growth of a broad-based European intellectual culture that was integrated by mostly newly invented channels of communication, ranging from newspapers, magazines and the salon to the coffee-shop and a whole array of fresh cultural devices of which the erudite journals (invented in the 1660s) and the ‘universal library’ were particularly crucial. (2001: vi) Jürgen Habermas (1989/1962) had earlier identified these same communicative
institutions and practices as necessary conditions for the rise of the “bourgeois public sphere.” What has been called the “republic of letters” grew out of this intersection of the proliferation of printed communication and new forms and sites of sociality. Comprising an extensive network of written correspondence among intellectuals in Europe and the Americas in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the “republic of letters” also depended on the growth of scholarly journals, a flourishing book market, and an expanding number of lending libraries (Iggers et al., 2008: 29; Warner, 1990; Goodman, 1991, 1994; Fumaroli, 2018). Clifford Siskin and William Warner (2010: 1) take these same developments as the basis for their argument that “Enlightenment is an event in the history of mediation.” Conceptualizing mediation as “the work done by tools, by what we would now call ‘media’ of every kind – everything that intervenes, enables, supplements” in the process of developing knowledge and understanding (p. 5) – they propose that the “conditions of possibility of Enlightenment” rested on four “cardinal mediations”: • a “new infrastructure” (e.g., postal systems, public gathering places) “to enable the transmission and reproduction of information”; • “new genres and formats” (e.g., newspapers, published essays, magazines, political party papers) that “extended the reach of print and speech and enabled more of both” (p. 12); • “new associational practices” (e.g., voluntary associations, clubs, societies, political parties) facilitated by the new infrastructure and genres; • and “new protocols,” such as “rules, codes and habitual practices that help to secure the channels, spaces, and means of communication” (p. 13).
the public sphere – Chapter 1, p. 18
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relational thinking
Janice Peck Given these new infrastructures, genres, practices, and protocols, it is not surprising that a new perspective of history would also develop during the Enlightenment period. Of particular importance is the emergence of a relational, contextual perspective capable of grasping both the particularity of specific places and times and the “general social rules” by which they could be compared (Schiffman, 2011: xi). Zachary Schiffman (2011: 206) argues that the Enlightenment’s “analytical innovation” of relational thinking, which posited that any historical phenomenon could only be understood by situating it in relation to other phenomena, was the basis of the emergence of the modern historical view of the world. The development of this relational orientation reflects the material realities of an increasingly interconnected world. With the extension of Europe’s territorial reach across the globe came an expansion in the horizons of its understanding. The “incorporation of the ‘world’ into European systems of knowledge” necessarily worked in two directions, as Conrad (2012: 1011) argues: The intellectual discussions of eighteenth- century Europe not only were situated in a global context, they were also received, appropriated, and indeed made globally. The history of Enlightenment debates was a history of exchanges and entanglements, of translations and quotations, and of the co-production of knowledge.
history as an academic field
This relational and contextualizing orientation informed the birth of history as a field of research in the nineteenth century, which was inaugurated as an academic discipline with the founding of the University of Berlin in 1810. The first chair in history was instituted at Oxford University in 1848, and the first US doctoral program in history was established in 1876 at the newly founded Johns Hopkins University (Scannell, 2012: 220; Iggers et al., 2008: 129–130). Professional
organizations and journals followed; by the end of the century, professional history associations were established across Europe, the United States, and Japan. William Riordan (2013: 70) argues that concomitant with the establishment of history as a “rigorous discipline” in the nineteenth century was “the emergence of one of history’s central protagonists, the nation.” Regardless of their geographic location, what the new historical professions shared, according to Iggers et al. (2008: 130), was an “intensely nationalistic” orientation that focused on “politics at the state level, on diplomacy and the military, to the exclusion of social and cultural history” (see also Ranciere, 1994; Scannell, 2002, 2012; Breisach, 2007: 228–247; Tosh, 2010: 15). Professional historians were also united by a commitment to a positivist methodological approach, reflecting the influence of German historian Leopold von Ranke (1795–1886), whose introduction of the use of primary sources and emphasis on narrative history – which Elizabeth Clark terms a focus on “facts, archives and documents” (2004: 64) – became “the model for historical research and writing in the nineteenth century” (Iggers, 2011: xi). A Rankean approach based on “narrative histories supported by archival research into primary documentary source material” (Scannell, 2002: 192) is evident in the numerous national histories of journalism in France, Britain, Germany, and the United States that appeared in the second half of the nineteenth century (Simonson et al., 2013c: 19–20). Such works fit into the “story of the press” approach that Rowland (2007) identifies as part of the initial phase of communication history. Scannell (2002: 191) suggests that the historical sensibility that emerged in the nineteenth century issued from “the unprecedented speeding up of technological innovation, economic, political and positivism – Chapter 16, p. 336 the “story of the press,” p. 236
primary sources narrative history
national histories of journalism
History, communication, and media
annihilation of space by time
visual media
other social change – in short, the phenomenon of modernity.” Perhaps chief among technological innovations was the application of steam power to the processes of transportation, production, and communication, all of which were crucial in accelerating the development of industrial capitalism in the nineteenth century (Hobsbawm, 1996; Mattelart, 1996). The invention of steam-powered trains and ships for transporting people, resources, and information; the application of steam power to the printing press that made possible the expanded production and distribution of mass-circulation newspapers and magazines; and the development of the telegraph, telephone, and phonograph severed the tether between communication and geography, auguring what Karl Marx (1993/1939: 524) termed the “annihilation of space by time” (see also Mumford, 1934; Carey, 1981; Harvey, 1989; Solnit, 2003b). The development of photography, its subsequent extension to print in newspapers and magazines, and its ultimate adaptation to motion pictures was a further expression of the profound transformations looming as these new means and forms of communication became systemic features of the modern social order. In her exploration of the nineteenth century inventions of photography, the railway, and the telegraph, Rebecca Solnit (2003b: 11) observes, Annihilating time and space most directly means accelerating communications and transportation. The domestication of the horse and the invention of the wheel sped up the rate and volume of transit; the invention of writing made it possible for stories to reach farther across time and space than their tellers and stay more stable than memory; and new communication, reproduction, and transportation technologies only continue the process. The study of history would undergo a significant reformulation in the twentieth
century as communication and media became central concepts, practices, institutions, and cultural forms. The practices and priorities of professional historians established in the nineteenth century – following the Rankean model – came under criticism for having privileged one form of writing (narrative), the activities of one subset of persons (political and military elites), and one object of inquiry (the nation) over all others. An important intervention came in the 1920s with the birth of the French Annales School, named for the journal Annales d’histoire économique et sociale founded in 1929 by Marc Bloch and Lucien Febvre, which rejected “event-centered” narrative history organized around individuals and their roles in the political adventures of the nation-state (Clark, 2004; Dosse, 1994; Flynn, 2005). Part of a broader twentieth-century shift toward structural analytical approaches that included Ferdinand de Saussure’s structural linguistics, Annales scholars offered an alternative mode of conceiving and writing history: an “investigation of structural and functional relations” in which “longer time spans and larger socioeconomic entities formed the subjects of inquiry” (Clark, 2004: 66). Thus was born the history of the longue durée (long-term) focused on slowly evolving material structures and forces – including geography and demography – that constituted the conditions that produced events and individual attitudes and actions. This “problem-oriented history,” according to the Annalistes, as they came to be known, would illuminate the historical experiences of whole populations rather than foregrounding the actions of a limited number of “great” individuals. One of Annales’ major contributions to the field of communication history is The Coming of the Book: The Impact of Printing 1450–1800 (1976/2010), by Lucien Febvre and Jean-Henri Martin. A comprehensive study of the technological, social, structuralism – Chapter 2, p. 42
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the Annales School
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the history of the book
mentalités
social history
Janice Peck economic, and cultural history of the first 350 years of printed books, the work helped launch a new interdisciplinary subfield: the “history of the book” (Darnton, 1982; Schudson, 1991). During the latter half of the twentieth century, the critique of elite-centered history and the inclination to focus on structural forces fostered new historical approaches, both within the Annales School and beyond it. Beginning in the 1960s, Annalistes began shifting their attention from socio-economic to socio-cultural questions by means of the concept of “mentalités” (attitudes). Conserving their structuralist origins, Annales scholars conceived of mentalités as structures or forms (e.g., images, linguistic codes, rituals, gestures, customs) that guide mental activity and shape the expression of ideas. In identifying, cataloging, and describing these structures, the “historian of mentalities maps the mental universe which furnishes a culture with its essential characteristics” (Hutton, 1981: 238) and thereby reveals “the social, economic and political embeddedness of ideas” (Clark, 2004: 70). Similar questions about the nature of the relationship between consciousness and conditions were being raised around the same period by scholars in the United Kingdom in the emerging field of cultural studies (Dworkin, 1997; Peck, 2001; Popp, 2013). Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, the subfield of “new social history” was experiencing major growth in the United States, in part as a response to the burgeoning social and political movements of the time. Influenced by both the Annales’ emphasis on the relationship of popular mentalités to underlying structures and by a resurgent Marxian tradition that explored the connections of consciousness to the social relations of production, the new social historians embarked on “in-depth local studies” employing oral history, cultural studies – Chapter 2, p. 51
ethnography, and demographic analysis to capture “the material realities of existence” (Kessler-Harris, 1990: 166–167). In their account of the trajectory of historical practice in the twentieth century, Roessner, Popp, Creech, and Blevens (2013: 262) note that historians increasingly “integrated Marxist, feminist, psychoanalytic, and poststructuralist thought into their narratives” and, taking cues from Annales, “drew on the theories and methods of psychology, anthropology, sociology, and eventually cultural studies in their attempts to recover the past. They took the interpretative turn.” The influence of the Annales approach to history can also be traced to “microhistory,” which first emerged in Italy in the 1970s. Borrowing from cultural anthropology, especially anthropologist Clifford Geertz’s (1973b) method of “thick description,” microhistory focused on small units of analysis, such as an event, individual, or community (Clark, 2004: 76; see also Ginzburg, 1976/1980; Davis, 1983; Darnton, 1984). The work of Michel Foucault (1965, 1973, 1979) was also shaped by the Annales mentalités approach, both in his view of history as driven by forces more powerful than and largely outside the awareness of individuals and in his adoption of structuralist principles. Patrick Hutton (1981: 252) notes Foucault’s “methodological similarities” to the Annalistes: both “search for common attitudes not in world-views but in common codes of knowledge through which the world is perceived.” What Annales labeled mentalités, Foucault called “discourses,” but in both cases, the term refers to “the verbal expression of the mental structures (the ‘words and things’) through which man [sic] organizes his activities and classifies his perceptions of the world.” Following the 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union, prematurely hailed as the end of the Cold War, the multiple strands of the “cultural and linguistic turn” that
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History, communication, and media
cultural history
media and communication history
THEORY AND METHOD IN MEDIA AND COMMUNICATION HISTORY RESEARCH
had shaped historical writing in the 1970s and 1980s were congealing into a “new cultural history” marked by a convergence of concepts, objects, and methods from cultural studies and poststructuralism. Iggers et al. (2008: 367) identify the ascent of cultural history as one of five trends in historical writing worldwide since 1990. The others include a continuing expansion of feminist and gender history, a “new alliance between historical studies and social sciences,” “challenges to national historiography” issuing from studies of postcolonialism, and the rise of world history and the history of globalization. All of the conceptual and methodological currents we have encountered in the history of history since the fifteenth century have left their traces across the varied landscape that is the field of communication and media history. True to its interdisciplinary nature, media and communication studies executed the “cultural turn” between the 1970s and 1990s by borrowing theories and methodologies from a range of fields, including cultural studies, critical theory, political economy, and sociology. Richard Popp (2013: 3) has suggested that media scholars have looked to the field of cultural history for “cues and insights into how theories of culture can be translated into historical projects that help us better understand the many ways in which media have fit into social experience.” Embarking on a project of historical research in media and communication inevitably involves deciding which of many conceptual paths to follow; which theoretical and methodological threads to take up; and how, where, and why to proceed. Such questions bring us back to the notion of the “historical imagination” and the task of theorizing and conducting historical research on communication and media.
Tracing the “paradigm shift” in media studies from the “ ‘mainstream’ American behavioral science” that reigned from the 1940s through the 1960s to the “emergence of an alternative, ‘critical’ paradigm” in the 1970s and 1980s, Stuart Hall (1982: 57) observed that “theoretical and methodological questions” in a field of study “cannot be isolated from their historical and political contexts” (see also Schiller, 1996; Czitrom, 1982). As we have seen, the conceptualization of history, communication, and communication history has been subject to ongoing reformulation, which is to be expected given that the activity of theorizing is itself a historically conditioned practice. In 2013, four scholars produced a multipart essay for American Journalism titled “A Measure of Theory: Considering the Role of Theory in Media History” (Roessner et al., 2013: 263). Concerned that journalism history remained mired in anti-theoretical positivism and had isolated itself from the fields of history, sociology, and cultural studies with which it could be fruitfully aligned, they urged fellow scholars to “overtly grapple with theory” and “restore relevance to journalism history.” Two decades earlier, Hanno Hardt and Bonnie Brennen (1993) had issued a similar plea to media scholars in their introduction to a special issue on communication, theory, and history in Communication Theory. Noting the growing interest in culture and communication across a range of disciplines, they encouraged media researchers to overcome their positivist predispositions and engrained suspicion of theory and welcome “historical consciousness” into their work (p. 135). Forging a “synthesis of history and theory” (p. 131), Hardt and
the historical imagination, p. 235
theorizing as historically conditioned practice – Chapter 20, p. 411
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Raymond Williams
Brennen argued, would reward “researchers with the experience of how history discloses itself in the discovery of the detailed structure or composition of the work while directing them to yet different sets of questions that demand creative insight and intellectual independence” (p. 135). This statement could describe the scholarly itinerary of Raymond Williams, who consistently argued for and sought to enact a synthesis of theory and method capable of grasping the complex relationships among communication, culture, social formation, and historical change. Early in his career, Williams offered his theory of culture in The Long Revolution (1961: 46–47) as “the study of relationships between elements in a whole way of life” and proposed that the analysis of culture is the attempt to discover the nature of the organization which is the complex of these relationships. Analysis of particular works or institutions is, in this context, analysis of their essential kind of organization, the relationships which works or institutions embody as parts of the organization as a whole.
sociology of culture
He reiterated this holistic approach in Marxism and Literature (1977: 80), where he advocated for a “sociology of culture” that began with “the indissoluble connections between material production, political and cultural institutions and activity, and consciousness” as the basis for analyzing “the interrelationships within this complex unity” (p. 140). Williams pointed to the study of books and reading as an area that would benefit from such an approach. “Everything can be known about a reading public,” he wrote, “back to the economics of printing and publishing and the effects of an educational system, but what is read by that public is the culture as a whole way of life – Chapter 11, p. 215
neutralized abstraction ‘books.’ ” Similarly, he observed, everything can be known about the books, back to their authors, to traditions and influences, and to periods, but these are finished objects before they go out into the dimension where ‘sociology’ is thought to be relevant: the reading public, the history of publishing. Such gaps and abstractions, in his view, were what a sociology of culture needed to “overcome and supersede” (p. 140). In Williams’s (1961: 140) call for a method of analysis that situates its object of inquiry within “a whole and connected social material process,” we can hear echoes of Mills’s (1959: 7) argument for the “sociological imagination,” with its “capacity to range from the most impersonal and remote transformations to the most intimate features of the human self – and to see the relations between the two.” Williams’s example of “books” versus the “reading public” as an area in need of theoretical and methodological attention is intriguing, given that in The Long Revolution (1961), he had tackled this very object of inquiry in an examination of culture in 1840s England. His analysis begins with a discussion of a range of “documents,” including novels, newspapers, philosophical, historical and religious prose, and poetry, because they offered a vital entrée to a former cultural formation whose “living witnesses are silent” (p. 49). Williams relies here on the notion of a “selective tradition,” understood as the surviving record of a given society as determined by its particular processes of historical change. Through the surviving records, he argues, “the culture of a period can be very carefully studied, until we feel we have reasonably clear ideas of its cultural work, its social character, its general patterns of activity and value, and in part of its structure of feeling” (p. 50). the sociological imagination, p. 235
selective tradition
History, communication, and media
social character structure of feeling
This documentary analysis necessarily points the researcher outward toward social history and related changes in cultural institutions (e.g., new kinds of periodicals, libraries, popular theaters, music halls). Such changes at the institutional level, Williams observes, are connected to a “variety of causes that take us far out into the whole history of the period” (p. 56). There, one encounters technological developments – steam-powered printing, rotary presses, railroads – which rebound back to new reading needs, new points of distribution of reading materials, and new occupations connected to all of those developments. From there, the analyst must consider the wider political and social history of the period, including the 1834 Poor Law; legislation around the length of the working day; laws regarding public health; and, more broadly, the political-economic consequences of the expansion of heavy industry, growth of capital investment, and the British empire’s global hegemony, with necessary implications across all of the previous dimensions of social and cultural life. Once having situated the texts, Williams (1961) returns to consider the relation of their content and form to the context of their production, circulation, and reception, and to their potential readers, by means of the concepts of “social character” (p. 47) and “structure of feeling” (p. 60). In a masterful analysis, he weaves together this multiplicity of threads to make a case that the popular literature of 1840s England contained and conveyed the full range of contradictions, dissatisfactions, and aspirations of the period. As Williams argues: If we compare art with its society, we find a series of real relationships showing its deep and central connections with the rest of the general life. We find description, discussion, exposition through plot and experience of the social character. We find also, in certain characteristic forms and
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devices, evidence of the deadlocks and unsolved problems of the society: often admitted to consciousness for the first time in this way. (p. 69) He concludes with the observation that although his was a condensed examination to illustrate what such an approach involves, he was confident that the “exploration of relations between apparently separate elements of the way of life” was not only feasible but promised to be “illuminating” (p. 71). Through this method, he argued, “Every element that we analyze will be in this sense active: that it will be seen in certain real relations, at many different levels. In describing these relations, the real cultural process will emerge” (p. 53) (see Williams, 1973, for further application of the approach). In considering historical approaches to media and communication, we might listen also to another scholar who similarly came down on the side of holism. In a 1982 essay, “What Is the History of Books?,” Robert Darnton considered the state of theory and method in his subfield, which had thrived since the 1960s with the appearance of Febvre and Martin’s original L’Apparition du Livre (1958). By the 1980s, historical study of books had spread across Europe and the United States, along with new journals, conferences, and research centers. The “history of books” had so flourished, Darnton noted, that “it now looks less like a field than a tropical rain forest” that researchers had difficulty navigating. Hoping to cut a path through the overgrowth, he proposed “a general model for analyzing the way books come into being and spread through society” (1982: 67). Referring to the “life cycle” of a book as a “communications circuit” that encompasses the author, publisher, printer, shipper, booksellers, and readers, Darnton argued, “Book history concerns each phase of this process and the process as a whole, in all its variations over space and time and in
communications circuit
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Janice Peck all its relations with other systems, economic, social, political, and cultural, in the surrounding environment.” Given the scope of the field, individual scholars typically “cut into one segment of the communications circuit,” but Darnton advocated that in every case, they should take a holistic view of books as a means of communication to “avoid being fragmented into esoteric specializations.” As Williams had done with popular publications in 1840s England, Darnton illustrated his method’s explanatory value through application to the “publishing history” (p. 69) of Voltaire’s Questions sur l’Encyclopédie during the late eighteenth century, hoping “to show how its disparate elements can be brought together within a single conceptual scheme” (p. 75). Granting that the history of books is both international in scope and interdisciplinary – “neither history nor literature nor economics nor sociology nor bibliography can do justice to all the aspects of the life of a book” – Darnton maintained it was nevertheless possible to provide “conceptual coherence” to the study of the history of books because the model of a communications circuit is able to reveal “consistent patterns” (p. 81; see also Darnton, 1979). The emphasis on patterns brings us back to Williams’s view of cultural analysis as the study of relationships among elements within a whole. As he characterizes the method (1961: 47): A key-word, in such analysis, is pattern; it is with the discovery of patterns of a characteristic kind that any useful cultural analysis begins, and it is with the relationships between these patterns, which sometimes reveal unexpected identities and correspondences in hitherto separately considered activities, sometimes again reveal discontinuities of an unexpected kind, that general cultural analysis is concerned. The ability to identify and interpret patterns is a key analytical skill in historical
research and in research generally. Also fundamental to historical research is the ability to think relationally and chronologically, to analyze patterns of historical duration or continuity, and to recognize historical change – in other words, to put the past and present into productive relationship. As E. H. Carr (1961: 35) has characterized the study of history, “it is a continuous process of interaction between the historian and his [sic] facts, an unending dialogue between the past and the present.”
THEORY AND METHOD IN PRACTICE: SELECTED WORKS IN MEDIA AND COMMUNICATION HISTORY Any research project in media and communication, whether historical or contemporary, must formulate a central question and make a compelling case for its significance; identify and justify the choice of the overarching theoretical and methodological framework that will guide the work; define the scope of the study (i.e., location – one place or comparison across places; time – one instance or several instances over time; one medium or genre or multiple examples, organizational scheme – thematic, chronological, etc.) and explain the reasons for the choices; identify the relevant and available sources of evidence/data that will be used to answer the question; and explain the specific methods that will be used to gather and analyze that data. (For further resources, see Startt & Sloan, 2019; Porra, Hirscheim, & Parks, 2014; Godfrey, 2006; Smith & Lux, 1993). Beyond these basic components, historical research also requires the capacity to think historically – to employ the “historical imagination” – by putting the present into dialogue with the past. Historical elements and levels of empirical research – Chapter 16, p. 332 the historical imagination, p. 235
History, communication, and media
Media and the American Mind
research generally begins with a concern or question arising from the present; for example, How and why did this communicative practice, medium, text, institution, technology, or state of affairs come to exist in this particular form? What was the historical context of its emergence and development? What is the state of received knowledge about it and how, when, and why did it come to achieve acceptance? What can we learn about the present by exploring that history, and what is the value of that knowledge for possible futures? In formulating such questions, the media and communication historian begins forming hypotheses about social causes and cultural meanings for both the past and the present that will inform the research process. To get a sense of this process put into practice, we will look at four works of communication and media history, selected in part because they were influenced to varying degrees by the thought of Raymond Williams; consider how they engage with the “media triangle”; and examine their uses of theory and method in pursuit of answers to their research questions. In Media and the American Mind: From Morse to McLuhan (1982), Daniel Czitrom seeks to illuminate the media present by taking a journey into the media past. Describing the book as an “intellectual history of modern communication” whose goal is “to get behind what the media are today” and “place in historical context the ways we have come to measure and interpret their cultural import” (p. xi), Czitrom states his core questions (pp. xi-xii): How have the attempts of Americans to comprehend the impact of modern communication evolved since the mid-nineteenth century? How have these efforts fit into the larger realm of American social thought: What has been the relationship between these the media triangle, p. 235
ideas and changing communications technologies and institutions? What role did early popular responses play in the development of new media forms? To answer his questions, Czitrom organizes the work into two sections to provide what he terms “two angles of vision” on his object of inquiry: the first section treats three new media forms – the telegraph, movies, and radio – refracted through public responses to their introduction and application. The second section addresses three traditions of twentieth-century thought on the power of modern media: Progressive-era thinkers John Dewey, Charles Horton Cooley, and Robert Park; behavioral “media effects” researchers affiliated with Paul Lazarsfeld; and Canadian media theorists Harold Innis and Marshall McLuhan. Czitrom relies on a typical menu of primary sources (archives, government documents, newspapers, and periodicals from the periods under study) and secondary materials (academic articles and monographs) and employs a writing and citation style aimed at a general readership in his desire to reach a broader audience by unveiling “the hidden political and social agenda attending technological progress” (p. 196). The work engages the media triangle at every point: it is a cultural history of the introduction of media institutions/ industries and, in its examination of their public reception, a combination of textual and audience analysis. It also contributes to the intellectual history of the field of communication through its treatment of schools of thought about media at different historical junctures. Throughout the book, Czitrom is attuned to the “contradictory elements embedded in the history of all modern means of communication.” He concludes that for the three media forms and the three research traditions, the primary “contradictions have been expressed in terms of the tension between the progressive or utopian possibilities offered by new communications
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Advertising the American Dream
Janice Peck technologies and their disposition as instruments of domination and exploitation” (p. 184). Roland Marchand’s Advertising the American Dream: Making Way for Modernity, 1920–1940 (1985) tackles the social content of US advertising in the early twentieth century. Devoting nearly a decade to the project, he approached it from two vantage points: a focus on the “texts,” using some 180,000 ads from 13 magazines and 2 newspapers to look for “persistent patterns of verbal and visual expression,” and a focus on production and institutions using individual, advertising agency, and corporate archives, advertising trade journals, and memoirs to discern “the social backgrounds of those who shaped the advertisements by listening to their shoptalk about themselves, their audiences, and their working conditions” (p. xx). He placed both sets of primary data into a larger social, political, and economic context by relying on extensive secondary literatures from a range of subfields, including media and communication history. Marchand’s project was driven by the question of the nature and extent of advertising’s social power. Admitting to starting with a “naïve optimism” that advertisements were a “social mirror” and imagining that analyzing them would reveal “the attitudes and values of an era,” Marchand found that the deeper he delved into the project, the more he confronted the complexity of the relationship of advertising to the world in which it was produced, circulated, and received – the challenge faced by all media scholars. A strength of the book is its embrace of that complexity. Acknowledging that it is impossible to infer direct audience effects from advertising content, Marchand speculated that ads may nonetheless be superior windows into popular values compared to other historical sources because advertisers have such a “direct and intense need to understand and communicate effectively with their audiences” (p. xix). Linking his
analysis of ad industry actors to the dominant themes in the advertisements gave Marchand an indirect angle of vision into the audience, thus incorporating all three points of the media triangle. Through this process of triangulation, he proposes that “by disseminating certain incessantly repeated and largely uncontradicted visual clichés and moral parables” (p. xx), advertising in the early twentieth century played a “therapeutic role in helping Americans adapt to new social and technological complexities” (p. xxii) with its dual promise that “the psychological costs of scale could be finessed” (p. 360) and the “American dream” could be attained through consuming goods. That is, consumption and the “American dream” were ideologically conflated. Marchand concludes that through a careful historical analysis of advertising of the period, focusing on the “social and cultural dilemmas” presented in the ads, “we will discover accurate, expressive images of underlying ‘realities’ of American society in the 1920s and 1930s” (p. 360). As Czitrom imagined popular reactions to new media as expressions of deep desires and anxieties driven by social and political-economic changes and Marchand used advertising as avenues to the same assessment, my work used Oprah Winfrey’s ascent from television talk show host to a position of singular cultural authority as a means to explore the political and social tensions generated by the process of capitalist neoliberalization from the “Reagan Revolution” in the 1980s to the election of Barack Obama in 2008. The Age of Oprah: Cultural Icon for the Neoliberal Era (Peck, 2008) seeks to understand the nature and structure of Winfrey’s appeal by tracing the history of her vast enterprise (talk show, book club, magazine, website, personal growth tours, and philanthropic activities) and the extensive popular and scholarly literatures on Winfrey and her media empire and contextualizing both in relation to major nineteenth- and twentieth-century
The Age of Oprah
History, communication, and media
diagnostic critique
currents in American political, economic, cultural, and religious history. My method of analysis was informed by Williams’s (1977: 80) guiding principle – to look for “the indissoluble connections between material production, political and cultural institutions and activity, and consciousness” – and by Douglas Kellner’s (2003: 33) method of “diagnostic critique,” which tacks back and forth between text and context with the aim of providing “critical readings of media texts” that “illuminate the contemporary era.” Coupling analysis of Winfrey’s programs, magazine articles, and website with investigation of popular and trade press treatments of her multifaceted media empire, my study directly engaged with the “text” and “industry” points of the media triangle. Less directly, it also explored the “audience” angle through analysis of broadcast ratings and magazine circulation data, online discussions on Oprah.com, letters to Winfrey’s magazine, and audience/fan comments in newspaper and magazine articles. Situating Winfrey’s career in relation to the legacy of mind cure and self-help cosmologies originating in the nineteenth century and connecting it to the bipartisan US political project since the 1980s to advance the priorities of neoliberalization – both of which fetishize “personal responsibility” and undermine structures of solidarity – I argue that her media enterprise can be understood as an ensemble of ideological practices that help legitimize a world of growing inequality and shrinking possibilities by promoting forms of subjectivity compatible with that world. The contradiction at the heart of Winfrey’s ascent to cultural icon is that in “an era when people’s actual power over their lives has declined while the power of capital has expanded,” she “ascended to the position of cultural icon of mainstream America by telling us we can do anything we put our minds to” (Peck, 2008: 225). Returning to the early twentieth century and traveling across the globe to
Indonesia, Rianne Subijanto offers a communication history of the communist anti-colonial movement that contributed to the nation’s independence. In Media of Resistance: A Communication History of the Communist Movement in the Dutch East Indies, 1920–1926 (2016), Subijanto employs Williams’s theoretical and methodological perspective in her study of the relationship between social movements and what she labels “communicative socio technical systems” that comprise social practices, processes, and technologies. She rejects approaches that treat media as mere tools of social movements – recalling Schudson’s (1991: 175) objection to media being reduced to “background” rather than significant actors in their own right. Instead, Subijanto (2016: 1) holds that “communicative sociotechnical systems and a social movement are indispensable to each other. Already from the beginning, communicative sociotechnical systems are central in the emergence, development, and success/demise of a social movement as a circuit of struggle, as well as the new order that comes about.” Conceiving communication systems as networks of mobility and sociability, she formulates her core research questions: How did the development of new communicative sociotechnical systems occurring within the Indies and abroad – railways, steam shipping, print, telegraph, legal products for the natives, education, and the rise of global anti-colonial consciousness – facilitate the emergence and development of the early communist movement and shape its new character? How did the communicative developments intended to strengthen Dutch control and extend capitalist infrastructure . . . actually create the condition of possibility for the revolutionaries to organize and propel the movement more successfully than had been the case for previous anti-colonial movements? (p. 6)
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Janice Peck Subijanto’s primary sources include radical newspapers, reports from Communist International meetings, colonial government reports, a sailor’s memoir, and data on economic production and railway and shipping development. The research uses an innovative combination of qualitative and quantitative methods, where close reading of radical newspapers is supplemented with a content analysis of keywords – one of which was “meetings” that yielded 865 reports of “public meetings” (openbare vergaderingen) between 1920 and 1926. Those meeting accounts were then coded with several variables, including location, and turned into visual maps using historical Geographic Information System (GIS). Subijanto used the maps to explore the historical relationship between the “geography of colonialism” and the “geography of resistance” (p. 72) and support her argument that through the emergent communicative sociotechnical system, the communist anti-colonial “movement was mobilized for the first time across widespread geographical areas, as well as across different cultural borders and identity markers” (p. 4). The work touches all points of the media triangle: it is an explicit study of media texts and communication institutions and infrastructures. When combined, they created a gateway to the “audience,” in that the publishers and writers of the radical newspapers were also leaders and members of the social movement being mobilized, the newspapers published readers’ letters and opinion pieces, they were read aloud and debated at the public meetings, and those debates would be incorporated into subsequent issues of the papers (see also Subijanto, 2017). Additionally, the data derived from historical GIS mapping is a visual representation of the praxis of the “audience” as the movement spread across the Indonesian archipelago. Subijanto’s work demonstrates the new opportunities for historical research afforded by the digitization of media and archives, which opens access to new online material
that once required physical presence and provides new tools for visualizing and mapping data.
CONCLUSION: WHAT IS HISTORY FOR? The dynamic, relational, holistic approach to the study of the history of media and communication seen in these studies reflects the influence of Raymond Williams, who, according to Cornel West (1992: 6), “taught us how to think historically about social practices.” The strongest work in media and communication history is grounded in this kind of “historical imagination,” which includes immersing ourselves in the differences between the past and present, affirming the necessity of careful contextualization, and wrestling with the complexities of historical process. One of the best means of developing such an awareness is to become deeply familiar with the history and historiography of communication and media – a basic requirement for scholars who want to do historical research in the field. But even research into current issues in media and communication can benefit from embracing historical awareness, whether it ends up enriching the process of analysis and interpretation or becomes a component of the finished work, because it is an acknowledgment that the current moment is never born fully formed, like Athena from the head of Zeus. Economic historian Charles Beard (1934: 228) described writing history as “an act of faith” in which historians engage in “selection and organization” guided by their “frame of reference composed of things deemed necessary and of things deemed desirable.” The same could be said of contemporary research. In both cases, media and communication scholars begin by asking research questions that matter to them, apply theories and methods from relevant disciplines to significant digital methods – Chapter 15
History, communication, and media bodies of primary and secondary sources, and carry out the exacting labor of contextualization to produce works that they hope might shed some light on “the real cultural process” (Williams, 1961: 53). Historical studies are always speculative to some degree, because they are part of never-ending conversations about the interpretation of the relationship of past and present. One of the strengths of historical research is its ability to reveal the wide range of social, political, economic, and cultural practices and relations that have existed in the past and continue in the present. In sharing their knowledge, historians can help open our imagination to different possible future relations and practices and, in so doing, John Tosh argues (2010: 333), “fulfil their potential
as providers of social wisdom.” Catalyzed by problems in the present, the four studies discussed above are engagements with the past based on the authors’ visions of possible futures. In Attitudes Toward History (1937/1984: 159), Kenneth Burke suggested that “a history of the past is worthless except as a documented way of talking about the future.” In the view of French historian Jean Chesneaux (1978: 11), the collective past “is experienced as both constraint and need. The past weighs on us, and we strive to break its hold.” The explanatory possibilities of this dynamic dialogue between past, present, and future is the appeal and the promise of historical research in media and communication studies. It is, as well, the animating force of the “historical imagination.”
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dialogue of the present with the past, with a view to the future
PART
III
Practice
SCIENTIFIC APPROACHES AND SOCIAL APPLICATIONS Doing media research Media and communication research has developed a range of analytical procedures, drawing on the social sciences as well as the humanities. In overview, empirical studies have relied on six different prototypical methods, laid out in Figure III.1. The methods are characterized by their forms of data collection and the resulting types of evidence, in addition to their orientation toward either a qualitative or a quantitative form of inquiry. The following chapters are premised on a further distinction between such methods and methodologies – the concrete instruments of research as compared to the wider research designs that are motivated by theoretical or practical purposes. In a next step, both methods and methodologies raise epistemological and political questions that are part and parcel of doing research. Qualitative
Quantitative
Speech/verbal language
interviewing
surveys
Action/behavior
participating observation
experiments
Texts/documents
discourse analysis
content analysis
Figure III.1 Six prototypical empirical methods
Empirical research designs The first group of four chapters presents key concepts, criteria, and procedures of doing empirical research. Two chapters characterize and illustrate the logic of qualitative and quantitative research processes, respectively; one chapter addresses digital methods for media and communication research; and the fourth chapter reflects on the complementarity of qualitative and quantitative methodologies. •
•
•
Quantitative studies (Chapter 13) are covered both in terms of basic categories and operations and with reference to the relevance of surveys, experiments, content analyses, and structured observations for different research questions; Qualitative studies (Chapter 14) rely on interviewing, participating observation, and textual or document studies to explore contexts and experiences of communication, and present specific challenges of data analysis; Digital methods (Chapter 15) increasingly deliver distinctive variants of data collection and data analysis, as exemplified by ‘big data’ or computational communication science;
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Practice
• The complementarity of different qualitative and quantitative forms of research (Chapter 16) is addressed with reference to concrete examples from media and communication studies and in relation to classic issues in the theory of science, such as generalization. Multiple media, multiple methods The second group of three chapters provides examples of empirical media and communication studies, with special attention to the application and explanatory value of different methods and methodologies. •
•
•
Personal media (Chapter 17), specifically mobile telephones, but also the internet as such, are addressed in a national baseline study that combined quantitative log data with qualitative interview and diary evidence; Collaborative industry-academic research (Chapter 18) on the production and reception of television formats relied on ratings and qualitative interviews, as well as evidence from social media, to account for audiences’ engagement with media; Participatory action research (Chapter 19) into youth and media explored the potential of such research for policy change and the development of critical consciousness.
Unification in the final instance The premise of the Handbook is that qualitative and quantitative methodologies are different but equal – they are complementary and can and should be combined, depending on the domain and purpose of inquiry. Research traditions may be unified, not in the first instance, through a standardization of the categories and procedures of research, but in the final instance, through a comparison of the kinds of information that different methodologies can yield and of the inferences that they will support. Communicating research (Chapter 20) Like the media themselves, media and communication studies are integral elements of the societies and cultures from which they originate, feeding back findings and insights into professional and public practices of communication. The last chapter returns to the social sources and applications of science and to the interests guiding different types of media and communication research. Most students and researchers will want to make a difference through their studies. As an institution constitutive of contemporary social life, media and communication studies necessarily make a difference. Like other social institutions, research cannot not communicate. The question is how, in whose interest, and through which empirical methodologies and theoretical frameworks the field will make a difference in the future.
Empirical research designs
13
Quantitative approaches to media and communication research Jacob Ørmen
• • • • •
definitions of variants of both random sampling and nonprobabilistic sampling an overview, with examples, of the key means of data aggregation in quantitative media and communication research: surveys, experiments, and structured observations a presentation of the stages and procedures of data analysis, including cleaning and coding, with specific reference to content analysis and to descriptive and inferential statistics a discussion of interpretation as a constitutive element of quantitative research a consideration of ethical issues in quantitative research, including new challenges in the digital media environment
INTRODUCTION Quantitative approaches have played a key role in media and communication research since the beginning of the field. Early communication scholars used surveys and content analyses to study the spread and consequences of propaganda during World War II (Lasswell, 1948). Likewise, surveys have been fundamental to understanding the link between mass and interpersonal communication (Katz & Lazarsfeld, 1955), as well as people’s motivations for using media (Katz, Gurevitch, & Haas, 1973). Journalism studies have depended on content analysis to understand agenda setting (McCombs & Shaw, 1972) and framing (D’Angelo & Kuypers, 2010). Media psychology and political communication scholarship have made use of experiments to understand the effects of media messages (Stroud & Haenschen, 2018). And, lately, audience research has integrated
‘big data’ analyses of the behaviour of users on the web and social network sites into the study of communication (Webster, 2014). Quantitative approaches constitute an essential component of the methodological toolkit of contemporary media and communication research. Quantitative methods work by reducing the messiness of the real world to measurable quantities. In this capacity, quantitative methods are inherently reductionist and simplistic. However, the simplicity makes it possible to operate with standardized measurements (variables) of phenomena across time (comparing history to the present) in longitudinal studies and across space (comparing individuals, groups, countries, and regions to each other) in cross-sectional research. Thus, quantitative methods can tell us something about the regularity of digital methods – Chapter 15
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Jacob Ørmen phenomena (such as communication habits), the consistency of relations (such as the relationship between media coverage and public opinion), and the magnitude of effects (such as the connection between media use and aggressive behaviour). By reducing the world to numbers, it becomes possible to see patterns writ large that would be difficult to detect with qualitative approaches or through theoretical deductions. This chapter outlines the core elements of the quantitative research process with an emphasis on how media and communication scholars have applied such methods in practice. The logic of the chapter follows the key steps of empirical research: sampling, data aggregation, and analysis. In conclusion, the chapter offers reflections on some of the limitations and challenges to quantitative approaches.
SAMPLING The ideal of random sampling
population and sample
In most cases, researchers do not have access to all the entities (people, documents, tweets, etc.) of the population they wish to study. Accordingly, researchers must select a subset of the population; they have to sample. Sampling essentially means choosing which entities to include and exclude in a study. This step is common to all research that deals with empirical materials in one way or another. Nonetheless, sampling plays a particular role in quantitative research; it is the foundation on which the researcher estimates the population parameters (the characteristics of the population in question) using sample statistics (the characteristics of the group included in the empirical study). The gold standard of sampling is random selection. In such cases, all members of the population one wishes to study have an equal chance of being selected to sampling in qualitative research – Chapter 14, p. 289
Population
Coverage error
Sampling frame
Nonresponse error Self-selection error
Sample Figure 13.1 Sampling process
participate in the study. This entails that they are all available in a list (sampling frame) from which researchers draw the cases (the sample). The sampled cases can be anything from participants in an experiment to respondents in a survey and text units in a content analysis. Figure 13.1 illustrates the sampling process (we return to the different types of errors subsequently). Since every member of the population has an equal chance of being included in the study, it follows that any differences between the population parameters and the sample statistics occur by chance (random errors) rather than as a result of choices made by either the researchers or the participants (systematic errors). If these criteria for random sampling can be fulfilled (full eligibility of the members of the population and random selection), then the relationship between sample statistics and population parameters is a purely mathematical relationship that can be estimated using probability theory. Probability theory describes the likelihood that the chosen sample reflects the population. As more entities (e.g., human participants or news articles) are included in the sample, the probability that the
sampling frame
random errors
probability theory
Quantitative approaches
the Law of Large Numbers
sample statistics and population para meters match each other increases; in fact, it approaches perfect equality. This is known as the Law of Large Numbers and is illustrated in Figure 13.2 using the example of dice rolls. We know that the average (the mean) of a fair dice is equal to the sum of all values on a dice divided by the number of values, which is 3.5. If we toss one die a few times and calculate the average of these rolls, it is unlikely to be 3.5 exactly. However, if we toss the dice many times over (about 500 times), it is very likely that the average of all tosses will be just around 3.5 since all sides of the dice will eventually turn up at about the same rate. If we continue tossing dice after that, we are actually unlikely to gain more precision. Thus, the Law of Large Numbers suggests that there is a sweet spot for sampling, so that one can attain high levels of precision without throwing dice forever or selecting many thousands of cases. This explains why a randomly
Figure 13.2 Law of large numbers
drawn sample of a relatively small size can be used to estimate the parameters of a population whatever its size. In survey research, it is common to operate with samples of around 1,000–1,500 respondents for studies on a national scale, such as the whole of the US population. However, most empirical research cannot meet the criteria of perfect random selection. This is often due to both systematic errors in the sampling process and the operational costs of sampling. To start with the latter, in practice, most research never really considers making random samples, as the cost of a research project would explode. For instance, if one were to randomly sample 1,200 high school students in the US for a survey regarding their social media habits, it would require a sampling frame including all enrolled high schoolers in the country. Even if it would be possible to construct such a list by contacting all institutions of secondary education in the US, it would
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systematic errors
coverage error
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Jacob Ørmen be extraordinarily labour-intensive and expensive. Therefore, researchers apply other strategies that maintain the ideal of randomness but still make such research projects feasible; we return to such strategies subsequently. The issue of systematic errors is a more severe threat to the ideal of random sampling at different steps in the sampling process (see Figure 13.1). In the first step from population to sampling frame, there is often coverage error. Coverage error occurs when it is not possible to include the full population (e.g., a national population) in the sampling frame and those that are excluded deviate from the rest in systematic ways (e.g., they are poorer, do not use the internet, or are not included in relevant registers). The most famous example of this is a 1936 opinion poll mistake (summarized in Salganik, 2018) where the magazine Literary Digest relied on a sampling frame of registered telephone and car owners to survey more than two million Americans about who they would vote for in the upcoming presidential election. The problem was that, compared to the general population, telephone and car owners were much more likely to lean Republican at that time (during the Great Depression), which meant that the magazine not only picked the wrong winner in the presidential race (the Republican candidate Langdon) but also underestimated the share of votes for the incumbent president (the Democrat Roosevelt) by about 20 percentage points. Thus, even a massive sample comprising more than two million survey respondents can be off target if there is systematic coverage error between population and sampling frame. In the next step, there is likely to be a systematic bias between those included in the sampling frame and those selected in the sample. A common error here is nonresponse, that is, people declining to participate when approached. The problem in sampling terms is that those participating probably deviate from those
refusing. For instance, in a survey of social media usage, it is likely that people who spend more time on social media will be more willing to participate than those who rarely use such services. The former group might find it more appealing to participate, as the subject is close to their interests, whereas the latter might take little interest. This skews the sample composition towards the most active social media users rather than all types of users. A common way to mitigate nonresponse error is to repeat invitations so that people that initially refused or ignored requests eventually participate. Sometimes individuals have the opportunity to choose to participate in a study themselves rather than waiting for researchers to approach them. This introduces another type of error between sampling frame and sample: self-selection. As with nonresponse errors, those that sign up for research on their own are likely to deviate from the general population (e.g., being more tech savvy, more in need of money for participating, or just more interested in the phenomena under study). In the 1936 opinion poll mistake, Literary Digest sent questionnaires to 10 million individuals. People then had to fill out the questionnaires on their own and return them to the magazine by mail. This introduced self-selection issues, as participants could opt in or out based on their preferences and interests.
self-selection error
VARIATIONS OF RANDOM SAMPLING Due to such difficulties, researchers have developed alternatives that seek to preserve a probability mechanism while mitigating the challenges to simple random sampling. Popular variations of random sampling include clustering and stratification. In clustering, the population is divided cluster into appropriate groups (either pre-sampling existing or constructed by the researcher), and the researcher then selects among
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Quantitative approaches the groups at random. Sometimes, this involves a second step in which individual cases (e.g., persons) are selected at random within the group. If we return to the high school example, clustering can make the sampling process more feasible by grouping students by school and schools by district or state. In that way, the researcher can randomly select a number of schools matching various criteria (such as geographical distribution). To make the selection even more feasible, researchers can randomize the selection of classes instead of covering all classes in each school. Thus, clustering eases the sampling process for a population that is hard to cover in a sampling frame while retaining the core aspect of randomization. Nevertheless, the issues of sampling frame errors, non-response, and self-selection still pertain. If the groups chosen deviate substantially from all groups, then the sample will be skewed (coverage error). Likewise, if schools refrain from participating (non-response) or are particularly eager to be included in the study (self-selection), then it could introduce errors as well. The left side of Figure 13.3
demonstrates the sampling process for clustering with circles representing cases. In a first step, two groups are selected at random in the population (in this case, the black and white circles), and then a number of cases are selected at random within the clusters to reflect their size in the population (six cases selected with four from the black-circle group and two from the white-circle group). In stratification, the goal is to ensure the representation of various subgroups in the population by sampling with reference to existing statistics. The population is divided into distinct strata based on criteria (e.g., age group, ethnicity, place of living, educational background), and the sample is composed to reflect the distribution of these strata in the population. Within each stratum, cases are randomly chosen. Returning to the example of high school students, stratified sampling could be used to divide students by racial/ethnic background. General statistics from national agencies or previous studies would then be used as the baseline for sampling. If 12% of the general population of high school students identify as
A – Clustering Figure 13.3 Clustering and stratification sampling techniques
B – Stratification
stratified sampling
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Jacob Ørmen African-American, then 12% of the sample should also be African-American. As such, stratified sampling is particularly relevant if researchers are interested in comparing known subgroups in a population. To the right in Figure 13.3, the sampling process for stratification selects a number of cases (here circles) equal to the distribution of the values (here symbolized by the fill of the circles) in the population.
Nonprobabilistic sampling strategies
quota sampling
In recent years, scholars have taken a greater interest in alternatives to random selection. These alternatives do not apply the probabilistic criterion (randomization) but instead depend on research-driven criteria. Nonprobabilistic sampling strategies can be divided into three groups: quota sampling, purposive sampling, and convenience sampling (for an extensive overview, see Battaglia, 2008). In quota sampling, the researcher sets up categories with quotas attached to them (200 of category x, 300 of category y, etc.) and then includes cases until the sample meets the quota. In that way, it is a nonprobabilistic correlate to stratified sampling. Quota sampling has become popular with the rise of professional survey providers. These companies operate with panels of potential participants who from time to time take part in surveys for a compensation (usually monetary gains or a chance to win prizes). The panels function as sampling frames for studies of both academic and non-academic kinds. This allows researchers at universities, companies, and organizations to access individuals with known characteristics and to follow the same group of people over time (through longitudinal studies). However, panels suffer heavily from known sampling errors. First, since the sampling frame is not a randomly selected slice of the population, coverage error is likely to occur. Second, there is an issue of self-selection, as people sign up to be part of the panels out of interest or for
monetary gain. Third, when contacted about specific surveys, people choose to participate based on their own preferences, which gives rise to nonresponse issues. To mitigate these limitations, survey providers often maintain large panels to sample from and make efforts to recontact individuals, as well as introducing statistical weights to compensate for groups that are hard to reach and, as a result, become underrepresented in samples. Purposive sampling describes a directed strategy in which the researcher predefines the sample composition according to the objective of the study. This may apply to specific groups that one wishes to compare or subcultures within a population. If these groups are hard or expensive to sample through probabilistic techniques, then a purposive approach can be a way forward. Research has shown that a variant of purposive sampling, snowball sampling, whereby study participants refer other potential participants, can be used fruitfully to study groups that are otherwise hard to reach through traditional modes of contact, such as small minority groups, drug users, or sex workers (Salganik & Heckathorn, 2004). Finally, convenience sampling is, as the name alludes to, a way of sampling cases based on their availability. If, for instance, a researcher goes to a nearby mall and interviews whomever she encounters, it would be a case of convenience sampling. Convenience sampling sounds unattractive in its haphazard nature, but it is a popular strategy when non-probabilistic samples are less problematic for the aim of the study. In laboratory experiments, for instance, researchers often rely on students from their home university, as they are easy to recruit and can be expected to participate more readily in the experiment at odd hours. As we return to in the section on data aggregation, the factor that matters most for experiments is random assignment rather than random sam random assignment, p. 265
purposive sampling
snowball sampling
convenience sampling
Quantitative approaches pling. In such situations, the convenience approach can be an attractive and valid sampling strategy. Most recently, non-probability sampling through digital platforms like Google and Facebook has become a popular way of collecting study participants quickly and cheaply (Stern, Bilgen, McClain, & Hunscher, 2017). These samples are problematic if treated in their raw form. However, researchers have demonstrated that if such data are carefully weighted (with reference to measures that are drawn or estimated from well-established population parameters), then non-probabilistic techniques can produce samples that are as reliable as the much more expensive random sampling techniques in use by national censuses or large survey companies (Goel, Obeng, & Rothschild, 2017). In the end, for most research projects, it is unlikely that the actual sample, whether probability or non-probability based, perfectly reflects the population one wishes to make inferences about. As this discussion of sampling has shown, the sampling technique being used tells us something about accuracy (how likely it is that sample statistics match population parameters), whereas the number of entities included in the sample says something about consistency (how certain we can be that another sample based on the same sampling frame would not differ substantially). Together, the sampling strategy and the size of the sample indicate how confidently we can make claims, or inferences, about the entire population: the issue of generalizability. We return to this issue in the section on data analysis.
and existing data that researchers can access through books, archives, or databases (‘data found’) (Jensen, 2013a). When data are made, it is the data aggregation method that creates the empirical material. Here we find traditional research methods such as surveys, structured observation, and experiments. When data are found, the aggregation method retrieves existing and preformatted material. Here we find quantitative document studies (e.g., of journalism archives) and log data studies (e.g., of data from social network services). This section introduces the fundamental methods for making data (surveys, experiments, and researchdriven observations) and one method for working with found data (observations using existing databases). Content analysis, which turns semantic units such as words and sentences into numbers, is covered in the data analysis section.
Surveys
The second step in the quantitative research process is the aggregation of data. Roughly speaking, we can distinguish between data that have to be generated by the researcher (‘data made’)
As a method for collecting data on people’s attitudes and behaviours, surveys are as old as state administrations. The first known census (survey of a full population) took place about 4,000 years ago in China, and the first attempts at systematically studying a population over time began in Sweden in the mid-eighteenth century (Andres, 2012). As such, the survey is an ancient method for collecting data about people (typically called respondents in survey research) and making inferences to large populations. In media and communication research, scholars have relied on surveys to study how people use media (notably in the media repertoire tradition, see Hasebrink & Domeyer, 2012), why they use media (notably in uses and gratifications research, see Katz et al., 1973), and how media use is related to people’s attitudes and actions in the wider world (notably in political communication, see Verba & Nie, 1972). Surveys have
generalizability – Chapter 16, p. 343
content analysis, p. 273
DATA AGGREGATION
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data – made and found
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Jacob Ørmen been and remain a powerful instrument for studying how the demographic and socio-economic background of individuals relates to the way they use media as well as the attitudes and beliefs they hold about issues. In recent years, surveys have become more accessible to researchers and students due to the opportunities that the internet affords for reaching respondents and delivering questionnaires quickly and easily. Survey studies differ primarily in their mode of administration, the form of questionnaires, and the temporal and spatial scope of studies.
researcheradministered surveys
Modes of administration A central step in survey research is the decision on how to deliver the questionnaire to respondents. There are two general approaches: researcher-administered surveys (researchers or their collaborators contact respondents directly and collect data) and self-administered surveys (respondents receive the questionnaire and fill it out whenever it suits them). In researcher-administered surveys (also called “structured interviews,” Bryman, 2016), the researcher or a collaborator (typically a survey company) will interview respondents in face-to-face encounters or over the phone. The synchronicity of the situation gives the interviewer a great deal of control over the survey process. First, the interviewer can verify the identity of the respondents and can encourage people to take part in the study if they seem unwilling to participate. The opportunity to talk directly to potential respondents matters for the share of contacted people that participate in the survey (the response rate), in particular when dealing with disenfranchised or vulnerable groups (Blom, Leeuw, & Hox, 2010). Second, the interviewer can make sure that the respondent goes through all questions in the questionnaire. The interviewer can be instructed to make follow-up questions on specific topics (such as probing for an answer when respondents are in doubt); they can also withhold certain
options (such as “don’t know” or “refuse to answer”) until other answers have been exhausted. In this way, respondents are less likely to skip over questions, answer at random, or avoid certain questions. The downside is that interviewers might affect the way respondents answer questions (an issue known as the interviewer effect). Researcher-administered surveys are, in many situations, a preferred mode of administration, but it is an expensive and exhausting way to collect survey data. By contrast, self-administered questionnaires are usually less expensive and less demanding for researchers as well as respondents. Self-administered surveys used to be print questionnaires mailed by post but have now been overtaken by email and web-based formats as the dominant ways of distributing surveys (Dillman, Smyth, & Christian, 2014). As there is no interviewer involved, there is no need to worry about interviewer effects. At the same time, self-administered surveys allow for more user-friendly ways of answering such as branching (where respondents are guided through only the parts of the survey that is relevant to them, based on their previous answers). Conversely, the absence of human interviewers might lead to poorer response quality, as respondents can answer half-heartedly, skip individual questions, or drop out of the survey altogether. With the diffusion of the internet and digital devices (notably smartphones), it has become more feasible for scholars to reach a large part of the population with self-administered surveys. In many countries in the Global North, internet penetration is now so high that it is possible to sample respondents from the full population using internet-based modes of surveying (Levay, Freese, & Druckman, 2016). Format of questionnaire Questionnaires differ in which types of questions they include and how they present questions. Apart from baseline background questions (such as age, gender, ethnicity, education, and occupation),
the interviewer effect
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Quantitative approaches
behavioral, attitudinal, and knowledge questions
closed and open-ended questions
there are three types of survey questions often used in social research (for a discussion of question types, see Bryman, 2016: 250–251): behavioural questions (what do people do), attitudinal questions (what do people think about issues), and belief/ knowledge questions (what do people know and believe more generally). In media and communication research, it is common to rely heavily on behavioural questions to map media use patterns (e.g. how often people read the news, watch TV, use social network services, or play video games) and to relate these patterns to other activities such as political or civic participation. Often studies combine behavioural questions with attitudinal or belief questions in order to link media use patterns to public opinion (McCombs, 2004), feelings of well-being (Orben & Przybylski, 2019), or knowledge of the political landscape (see, e.g., Curran, Iyengar, Brink Lund, & Salovaara-Moring, 2009). Surveys also have the advantage that it is possible to study behaviour across different media and to compare new (such as mobile phones and social media) with older media (such as newspapers and television) to assess which media complement or displace other media (see Hasebrink & Domeyer, 2012). Although surveys are a popular way to measure behaviour on a large scale, it is important to remember that surveys do not measure what people do but what they say (think) they do. Survey questions also differ in their presentation. Overall, we can differentiate between closed and open-ended questions. Closed questions present respondents with a range of answers to choose from, whereas open-ended questions provide a blank field for respondents to fill in. Closed questions usually take the form of lists (select one out of a series of options), multiple choice (select one or more options from a list), scales (select a number in a given range), or dichotomies (select one or the other), with supplementary options to skip or refuse to answer.
Lists and multiple-choice questions are commonly used for behavioural questions (e.g., “Choose all the media that you used yesterday”), whereas scales are a popular format for attitudinal questions (e.g., “On a scale from 0, meaning strongly disagree, to 5, meaning strongly agree, how would you evaluate the following statement”). A variant of the list question, vignettes, have become a popular way to stimulate more thoughtful answers by presenting respondents with a scenario (e.g., “Imagine that you are about to buy a new mobile phone. What would be the most important concerns for you?”). Closed questions are easier to analyze than open-ended questions, as they involve minimal recoding. On the other hand, they restrict respondents and run the risk of oversimplifying the phenomenon under study. In contrast, openended questions offer respondents more flexibility but are demanding not only to answer but also to analyze, as the answers have to be recoded into numbers or categories. Therefore, most surveys operate with predominantly closed questions and supplement these with a few open-ended questions or open-ended options for certain questions, such as an “other” option where respondents can fill in their own answer. Scope of study The survey is a method that is relatively easy to replicate from one year to the next and to translate into other languages. Therefore, surveys are well suited for comparative research both in time and across space. Figure 13.4 presents the space and time dimensions on the two axes. On the time dimension, research may take place at one point in time (cross-sectional studies), or it may include multiple points in time (longitudinal research). The space dimension goes from studies that occur in one site (single-site) to studies that contrast a variety of sites (multi-site). Site refers here to populations and is usually understood
vignettes
cross-sectional research longitudinal research
Jacob Ørmen
Cross-sectional Multi-site
Longitudinal Multi-site
Cross-sectional Single-site
Longitudinal Single-site
Space
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Time Figure 13.4 Scope of study
in terms of geographical areas, such as the population of country or a region. But it can also include the population of a company, an organization, or another more abstract entity. Most survey studies in media and communication research belong to the lowerleft corner of the figure, covering one site (typically the population of a country) at one point in time. Such one-off studies can be instrumental in understanding anything from the relationship between the life situation of individuals and their media usage to emerging phenomena such as social network services. For example, studies of who does and does not use various services on the internet have contributed to the understanding of digital inequality across generations, gender, race, and socioeconomic position (see, e.g., Hargittai, 2007). Cross-sectional single-site studies also have the attraction that it is easier to fit survey questions to the specific cultural context and the time of surveying. This is a great strength in times when the media landscape is constantly evolving. Likewise, such delimited studies allow for experiments utilizing
new techniques for distributing questionnaires and recruiting respondents (Boase, 2016). Cross-sectional multi-site studies form the basis of culturally comparative research. Here, researchers study the association between media and communication and other social and cultural phenomena and assess the strength of these associations across regions or countries. In a study of the relationship between news media use and knowledge of politics, scholars distributed the same survey in 11 countries that had been selected to represent different types of media systems (Soroka et al., 2013). They found that in countries with a strong publicservice broadcaster (such as the Nordic countries), people generally had a higher awareness of politics. In this way, cross-sectional studies across countries can shed important light on individuallevel factors (political knowledge) and systemic factors (media systems and political contexts) in conjunction. The longitudinal single-site survey is also a popular variant in media and communication research. In many countries, universities, government agencies, and large organizations conduct continuous surveys of topics such as media use and political participation. In the United States, the American National Election Studies (ANES) and the National Annenberg Election Survey (NAES) have been analysed in hundreds of publications in political communication. In longitudinal research, it is possible to track the development of a phenomenon over time and, in contrast to cross-sectional research, to assess the direction of causality. Typically, researchers study the same individuals over time (panel studies) or follow the development of distinct groups in a population such as generations (cohort studies). A study assessed the relationship between culturally comparative research – Chapter 11, p. 223
panel studies cohort studies
Quantitative approaches social media usage and general well-being over time with a panel design (Orben & Przybylski, 2019). Because the researchers gave the survey at multiple points in time to the same respondents, they were able to assess whether social media use was a likely cause of negative well-being later on or whether negative well-being could be considered a cause of social-media use. With the spread of smartphones, it has become easier to conduct longitudinal studies, as researchers may distribute surveys at multiple points in time to track the development of media use and communication patterns (see, e.g., Bayer, Ellison, Schoenebeck, Brady, & Falk, 2018). The most demanding form of the survey is the longitudinal multi-site design. Such studies tend to be carried out by international organizations with continuous funding such as the World Internet Project (www.worldinternetproject.com/) or national organizations committed to comparative research such as the Pew Research Center (www.pewresearch.org/). However, occasionally research centres commit to longitudinal as well as international data collection. The continuous survey of news users across all regions of the world carried out by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford University (https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/) serves as a case in point. Scholars have used this data resource to compare the distribution of news audiences across media (offline and online) as well as across regions and at various points in time (Fletcher & Nielsen, 2017). Such research offers unique perspectives on the diffusion of media and the trajectory of use patterns in various regions of the world.
Experiments Experiments make use of manipulation, referred to as treatments, to uncover the causes of preferences and behaviour. Such treatments are typically distributed at random to participants in order to bracket out other factors that might interfere with the results. Thus, the focus in experimental designs is on random assignment to treatment groups and control groups rather than random sampling. The major strength of experiments is that, if welldesigned, they can make claims about causal relationships; the weakness is that the results rarely apply more generally (notably outside the lab) or for a more varied group of people (across social groups or ethnic/religious backgrounds) (Stroud & Haenschen, 2018). There are a plethora of different experimental designs in the literature (see, e.g., Campbell & Stanley, 1967; Gerber & Green, 2012; Salganik, 2018); this section focuses on the core designs. Table 13.1 lays out four prototypical experimental designs along two dimensions. On one dimension, we can distinguish between treatments that are distributed through a randomization mechanism and treatments that are not. Strictly speaking, only the randomized treatment designs can be categorized as experiments in a traditional sense. The non-randomized types instead emulate experiments in the way they are set up or analysed. For this reason, they are often called “quasi-experimental” designs (Campbell & Stanley, 1967). Along the other dimension, we can discriminate between experiments that take place in artificial settings (a physical or digital lab) and in natural settings (in the
Table 13.1 Types of experiments (based on Salganik, 2018; Ørmen, 2018)
Treatment: randomized Treatment: non-randomized
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Setting: artificial
Setting: natural
Laboratory experiment Laboratory test
Field experiment Natural experiment
random assignment
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Jacob Ørmen real world). By crossing these dimensions, we get the four prototypical designs: laboratory experiment (randomized, artificial), field experiment (randomized, natural), laboratory test (non-randomized, artificial), and natural experiment (non-randomized, natural).
treatment and control groups
Laboratory experiment The traditional approach is the laboratory experiment, sometimes called the randomized controlled experiment (see, e.g., Salganik, 2018). Here the researcher sets up the conditions for experimentation (the ‘laboratory’), samples participants, allocates them at random to treatment or control groups, exposes them to the treatment or control intervention, measures the outcome, and compares differences in outcome across treatment and control. There is a multitude of ways to adjust the design to include more groups (e.g., several groups with different treatments and one control) and to expand instances of measurement (e.g., including a pre-test measurement). The distinguishing feature of laboratory experiments is that since the experiment is carried out in a controlled setting (the ‘lab’), any difference between treatment and control groups is assumed to be a result of the intervention rather than other confounding or unknown factors such as pre-existing differences between people in the groups. For this reason, laboratory experiments have been a popular method in media effects research, for instance, in film and media psychology (Reeves & Nass, 1996; Tan, 1996; Vraga, Bode, & Troller-Renfree, 2016), and in recent years as digital lab experiments in political communication research (Messing & Westwood, 2014). A classic example of a communications-related laboratory experiment is the ‘Bobo doll’ study (Bandura, Ross, & Ross, 1961), in which researchers wanted to study if children mimic aggressive behaviour they watch on TV. To do this, the researchers sampled a group of kids aged 3–6 (36 boys and 36 girls) and
measured their level of aggression in a pre-test through observations of play in a nursery. They then assigned the kids to two treatment groups and a control group with similar levels of aggression in each group and exposed them to treatments: one group watching a video of an adult behaving aggressively toward a doll, another group watching a video without aggressive behaviour, and the control group watching no video. Subsequently, the researchers again measured levels of aggression in the kids in a posttest phase, where researchers observed how children acted toward a Bobo doll and other toys. The study did find that those children who had been exposed to a video featuring an aggressive adult were more likely to act aggressively toward the doll than those who had watched the non-violent video or no video at all (the control group). The study in question has been influential in the media effects tradition in suggesting that kids may imitate negative social behaviour they watch through media. A major challenge with laboratory experiments is that they are inherently artificial. First, the lab is a setting removed from real-life situations, which affects the way people behave. In the lab, people are isolated as individuals and are asked to carry out tasks (such as watching a video or playing a game) that they might other wise never engage in. For instance, the Bobo doll experiment has been criticized for creating an unrealistic situation, as children rarely watch grown-ups demonstrate how to beat up toys and then are given the opportunity to have a go at similar toys (Durkin, 1995). Second, since participants are aware that they are part of an experiment, it is likely that they will alter their behaviour because they are uncomfortable in the situation (observation bias), wish to present themselves in the best light (social-desirability bias), or try to behave in a way that they believe will media effects research – Chapter 8
Quantitative approaches
observation bias, socialdesirability bias, response bias
physical field experiments
help the researcher reach the goal of the project (response bias). To mitigate these issues, laboratory experiments often make great efforts to disguise the real treatment (e.g., by introducing mock treatments), which makes it harder for participants to adjust their behaviour. Field experiment Field experiments resemble laboratory experiments by combining random assignment to treatment and control groups with post-exposure measurements (and sometimes pre-exposure measurements); they differ by moving the experiment from the lab setting to a real-world context, thus overcoming the artificiality issues inherent in the controlled experiment (Gerber & Green, 2012). At the same time, it is often easier to avoid experimental effects (people adapting to the experimental situation) in field studies because participants may be less aware that they are participating in an experiment. Sometimes they are completely unaware, which can create ethical problems. An essential question for field experiments is how one defines a field (Gerber & Green, 2012). Traditionally, the ‘field’ has encompassed physical interactions in naturalistic settings (such as parks, shopping streets, or other public spaces). An example of a physical field experiment in communication research is a longitudinal study of how interpersonal encounters with volunteers that advocated for an issue affect people’s opinions on that issue (Broockman & Kalla, 2016). In the study, the researchers randomly assigned households to a treatment group (where volunteers advocated for transgender rights) and a control group (where they advocated for a different issue) and then measured attitudes to transgender rights (using a survey) several times from a few days to three months after the encounter. The study found that the treatment had a ethical problems in quantitative research, p. 284
consistent and long-lasting effect on attitudes toward transgender rights. In media and communication research, the internet has enabled new types of field experiments. Through digital services (such as websites, mobile applications, search engines, and social network services), it is possible for those with server- side access to carry out experiments with users as they interact with the service. In its simplest form, this is known as A/B testing (Dumas & Redish, 1999): An organization tries out two different versions (treatment and control) of a product (e.g., a website banner) and measures the performance of the two versions (e.g., the amount of clicks each receives). This can take place unobtrusively and in real time as users navigate the website, thus strengthening the validity of the study greatly. In news organizations, among other places, field experiments have played a major role in determining which news stories to produce and how to present them to audiences (Hindman, 2017). Field experiments have also become popular within political communication and journalism research (for an overview, see Stroud & Haenschen, 2018). For instance, researchers have applied digital field experiments to study the effects of moderator roles on political communication (Stroud, Muddiman, & Scacco, 2017), the role of social network services for mobilizing people to vote in elections (Bond et al., 2012), and the importance of news exposure for deliberation (King et al., 2017), as well as how ratings of online content affect other people’s rating of the same content (Muchnik, Aral, & Taylor, 2013). Beyond the unobtrusiveness of experimentation in real-life situations, the digital field experiment design is attractive because it enables researchers to study effects over longer periods of time (through digital cookies or other tracking methods that can identify the same user whenever she returns to a service), as well as including thousands or millions of participants (Salganik, 2018). This helps
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Jacob Ørmen overcome attrition, which is the tendency for participants to leave a study before it is fully completed. For both these reasons, the field experiment has become the gold standard for many communication research projects that want to study causal relationships. The challenge to field experiments, apart from ethical concerns, is practical: They require access to a field – the visitors to a specific website, the audience of a news outlet, or the users of a social network service. For physical field experiments, this is a costly affair, and for digital field experiments, it requires negotiating access to digital services through gatekeepers (notably the owners of largescale digital services such as big internet companies, news publishers, or other media organizations).
usability tests
Laboratory test In laboratory tests, participants are invited into a lab setting and asked to conduct specific tasks such as interacting with a digital device to achieve specific goals. As participants complete tasks, their activities are tracked either automatically (as digital trace data on the device) or manually (as recordings conducted by an observer). The key difference from laboratory experiments is that, in lab tests, either there is no difference between the interventions (treatments) that participants receive or the assignment to treatment and control groups cannot be randomized. An example of the former would be ‘usability tests,’ in which participants are asked to perform the same tasks with a given media object, typically a website (Dumas & Redish, 1999). A case of the latter is a study that examined the effect of age, gender, and educational background on people’s ability to use the internet (Hargittai, 2002). As age, gender, and education are constitutive features of individuals that cannot be randomized at the moment of experimentation, it is only possible to assess causality indirectly as the difference between the background characteristics for a measure of internet skills
(in this example, various tasks performed in the laboratory in front of a computer that logged people’s actions on screen). Laboratory tests have also been a popular way to study film and media reception, for example, through eye-tracking software (Granka, Joachims, & Gay, 2004; Shimamura & Smith, 2013). Natural experiment Natural experiments are, strictly speaking, not experiments but a type of observation study, sometimes called “quasi-experiments” (Campbell & Stanley, 1967). Nonetheless, it is often included in the literature on experiments, since the approach mimics true experiments in the way comparisons are made and inferences are drawn. Natural experiments are different from other types of experiments in that the assignment to treatment and control groups cannot be randomized, since it is not under the researcher’s control. Instead, studies construct treatment and control groups by relying on observational data and observing differences between them with reference to an outcome variable. The classic example of a natural experiment is the London Cholera outbreak in the 1850s (summarized in Bynum, 2013). Here, the physician John Snow identified the sources of the spread of cholera by comparing cholera infections in the various districts of London with nearby water supplies. As areas with high levels of cholera tended to get drinking water from the same wells (treatment) and those with lower levels got their water elsewhere (control group), Snow could single out specific water sources as the likely causes of the outbreak. In media and communication research, natural experiments have been used to study how the diffusion of media affects the lives of individuals and communities. In a ground-breaking study, researchers wished to understand the consequences of the introduction of television for local communities (MacBeth, 1986). To isolate television as an explanatory factor,
quasi- experiments
Quantitative approaches the researchers compared three otherwise similar towns in Canada that differed primarily in terms of when television reception became available. By studying these communities before, during, and after the introduction of TV, the research team could make inferences about the impact of television viewing on various social and community-oriented activities. With the increase in data available through social network services and search engines, natural experiments have become more accessible to researchers. For instance, one study used changes in the layout of a petition website to examine differences in how people mobilize online (Hale, John, Margetts, & Yasseri, 2018). Likewise, digital tools such as Google Trends (https://trends.google. com/) and Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/) have made aggregate user behaviour available for natural experiments in media and communication research (Taylor, Schroeder, & Meyer, 2014). The feasibility of such digital natural experiments depends on the availability of quality data in archives or databases.
Observation
the observer effect
In media and communication research, quantitative studies of media content and media-related behaviour often take the form of structured observation. In structured observation, the researcher makes systematic recordings of the phenomena under study (e.g., social media activity or news articles published during a given period). In contrast to surveys and experiments, in which data are created in response to an intervention (either a questionnaire or an experimental treatment), the researcher attempts to interfere as little as possible with the observed phenomena. The goal of collecting data unobtrusively is the greatest strength of observation studies but also the hardest challenge to overcome in practice. A known caveat in observation studies is the observer effect, also known as
the Hawthorne effect after the location of the research project in which the problem was initially identified (Landsberger, 1958). An observer effect occurs when the entity under study (e.g., a person) changes behaviour as a consequence of being observed. In other words, if the observation had not taken place, the behaviour would have been different. Although observer effects are typically discussed in the context of observations involving human participants, it has also become an issue in communication research when researchers try to study the behaviour of algorithms (e.g., on social media or search engines): Algorithms adapt to the act of observing (e.g., by delivering personalized results, see Ørmen, 2018). Thus, observer effects are a key concern in observational studies of both humans and adaptive systems such as algorithmically guided digital services. Structured observation studies can be divided into three main types: studies of already existing records (such as libraries and databases), studies of dynamic entities (such as websites or social network services), and observations of individuals (through manual or automated tracking). Existing databases The traditional way to do structured observation in media and communication research has been to rely on documents in libraries or databases. Newspaper archives have frequently been used for content analyses of journalism over time and across countries (e.g. Curran, Esser, Hallin, Hayashi, & Lee, 2017; Kristensen & Ørsten, 2007). Likewise, databases such as Box Office Mojo and IMDb have been used to study the popularity of films across countries (Fu & Govindaraju, 2010). These types of databases offer researchers a strong sampling frame that often includes the full population (of news articles published in a country or films premiered in cinemas) content analysis, p. 273
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APIs
or an approximation of it. While this makes sampling more straightforward, the strength of the research project still depends on the quality of the data available. If the database has coverage issues (non-random missing entries) or relies on poorly measured statistics (e.g., unreliable estimates), it can be hard for researchers to check and correct the flaws. Furthermore, these kinds of databases lend themselves primarily to the study of media content and are less suited to researching user behaviour and attitudes. To get behavioural data on large populations, media and communication researchers tend to use commercial audience data such as TV ratings and website usage offered by companies like Nielsen, Comscore (both US), and BARB (UK). This kind of data has been used to study the popularity of individual programs, TV series, and websites among different demographics (for overview, see J. Webster, Phalen, & Lichty, 2006), as well as audience behaviour across the whole universe of TV offerings or websites on the internet (see, e.g., Taneja, 2016; Webster, 2014). In a recent study, Wu & Taneja (2016) used commercial audience data from Comscore to map internet usage across the world, finding evidence for significant variations in how different regional cultures access the web. Research-generated databases For most research questions, there are no publicly or commercially available data sets. Accordingly, researchers need to create their own archives for subsequent analysis. In recent years, it has become a widespread practice to use application programming interfaces (APIs) to retrieve data on internet use, notably to study social media activity. Researchers extract data on user activity (e.g., content posted by a user and interactions with it by other users) and the available meta-data such as the time of posting, the popularity of content, and the links between users.
These data have formed the backbone for a plethora of studies in social network analysis (SNA) and information studies to understand how connections are made online and how content spreads through digital platforms (for an overview, see, e.g., Rogers, 2013). As researchers rarely have access to the full database of social media posts (the population) and no way to assess their composition and characteristics, sampling often occurs in haphazard conditions. Typically, the researcher must select a search query (e.g., a keyword, a hashtag, a user profile) to begin sampling (for an overview, see e.g. Sloan & Quan-Haase, 2017). In addition, there are usually limitations on how many posts it is possible to retrieve and how far back in time one can go in a search. All these limitations entail that the sampled material will depend on the timeframe (and sometimes the geographical location) of sampling, the keywords chosen, and additional unknown factors that condition access to the API (Bruns, 2018). Some researchers have turned to more manual ways to retrieve, or scrape, data from the internet. This technique has been used to study the popularity of news stories over time by scraping the ‘most read’ boxes on news websites at regular interval, thereby creating dedicated databases with indices of popularity for all published stories from a given news organization (Bright, 2016; Ørmen, 2019). Likewise, scraping has been used to study variations in Google search results for the same keywords but across different user profiles (Diakopoulos, Trielli, Stark, & Mussenden, 2018). While scraping is a viable way to retrieve data from the internet, one should pay careful attention to the Terms of Service (ToS) on websites to avoid unethical and illegal research practices.
social network analysis – Chapter 15, p. 320
scraping data
Quantitative approaches
digital trace data
Research-driven observations Last, scholars have explored ways of tracing and observing the behaviour of individuals. This is the original form of structured observation, in which researchers make systematic, quantifiable records of activities. The method has been used extensively to study the workings of media organizations (Gans, 2004), as well as media use in organizations (Martinko & Gardner, 1990) and in public spaces (Lyons, Jain, Susilo, & Atkins, 2013). With the spread of mobile devices, scholars have taken up structured observation as a method to study communication patterns through digital trace data (Freelon, 2014). For instance, by installing tracking applications on participants’ smartphones, it is possible to log which applications people use for how long, when, and where (Mollgaard, Lehmann, & Mathiesen, 2017; Ørmen & Thorhauge, 2015). Likewise, by installing web trackers on participants’ computers, researchers have documented the information-seeking behaviour of individuals across websites (Menchen-Trevino, 2013). Digital trace data constitute a promising method for unobtrusively collecting observations of behavioural patterns that are otherwise hard to study. However, it is also a volatile method, as it requires the dedicated participation of people for the full duration of the observation period, which creates issues of privacy as well as non-compliance. Furthermore, the method itself often presents technical issues (such as draining the battery on smartphones), which may increase observation effects and harm the validity of the study.
Combining methods One way to mitigate the challenges and limitations of individual data collection methods is to combine several methods in a research design. Although mixedmethods research typically addresses the mixed-methods research – Chapter 16, p. 347
combination of qualitative and quantitative methods (Creswell & Plano Clark, 2018), researchers are also increasingly exploring ways of having several methods complement each other within quantitative research. Typical strategies of combining quantitative methods include integration, enrichment, and contestation. Integration describes the combination of different methods in one data collection process. A classic case of methods integration is the original agenda-setting study (McCombs & Shaw, 1972). Here, the researchers analysed newspaper content (structured observation) to identify which issues the news media featured most prominently and compared this to the issues that the American electorate cared most about (through a survey). Another variant of integration is the survey-experiment, in which respondents answer a survey with an experimental component (typically, one or more questions that vary across treatment and control groups). This approach has been used, for instance, in political communication research to understand how people react to diffe rent framings of a news story (Brewer & Gross, 2010) or how they engage with a story differently based on who shares it on social media (see, e.g., Anspach, 2017; Turcotte, York, Irving, Scholl, & Pingree, 2015). Enrichment entails the addition of one data source to another to create a more valuable dataset (Salganik, 2018). Researchers have added surveys with individuals to observational data of their web-browsing activities to get a clearer picture of who reads which kinds of news online (Dvir-Gvirsman, Tsfati, & Menchen-Trevino, 2016; Möller, van de Velde, Merten, & Puschmann, 2019). Likewise, an experimental study (summed up in Boase, 2016) relied on digital trace data collected through a mobile app to deliver treatments (onscreen messages) that had been personalized to fit
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Jacob Ørmen participants’ communication patterns, followed by a survey. In these cases, it was possible to link behavioural data from digital traces with data about motivations, attitudes, and perceptions of use from a survey. Last, it is possible to juxtapose methods to understand the strengths and weaknesses of various measures. Studies have demonstrated that asking people about their media use through surveys yields different results from observing their use patterns through logged or digitally traced data (Boase & Ling, 2013; de Vreese & Neijens, 2016; Prior, 2009; Vraga et al., 2016). Whether this follows from the inability of research methods to measure empirical phenomena exactly, or from the multifaceted nature of the reality under study, leads into further ontological and epistemological debates. By contesting the results deriving from different methods, it is at least possible to shed new light on the validity of each method as well as considering empirical phenomena from alternative perspectives at once.
DATA ANALYSIS A central question in data analysis is how an empirical construct (the indicators used to measure a phenomenon, such as time spent with media) can say something about a theoretical construct (concepts and arguments regarding, for example, motivations for and experiences of media use). Analysing data quantitatively entails moving from the empirical to the theoretical levels through at least three steps: preparation, calculation, and interpretation. The first analytical task in any quantitative project involves cleaning and formatting data, dealing with missing data, and recoding variables. Next researchers often code data (i.e., add meta-data) before they move on to statistical analysis. A popular approach to ontology and epistemology – Chapter 16, p. 330
coding is content analysis, through which human analysts code entities in databases (such as articles, films, or TV shows) for manifest and latent meaning. The section outlines traditional forms of content analysis and compares them to automated forms. Then, the section turns to calculation and presents the central components of statistical analysis. Along the way, various ways of visualizing analyses are introduced. This is followed by a brief discussion of interpretation.
Preparation After data have been collected, they need to be reformatted to fit a particular analytical purpose. Although this may seem like a trivial task, data preparation easily takes up the same amount of time (or more) as the actual analysis. While preparing data, researchers often make key decisions that affect the kinds of inferences that can be made from the analysis and its results. Therefore, it is important to be conscious and upfront about decisions made during this process. Data preparation includes three steps (Seale, 2018a): cleaning, coding, and deciding on the level of measurement. Cleaning In the data-cleaning phase, the researcher converts data into a format that is ready for analysis. Survey questions, experimental records, and observational notes are translated into standardized and measurable variables. This involves importing data into a statistical program (e.g., R, Excel, SPSS, or Stata), dealing with missing data, recoding open questions into quantifiable variables, and transforming data into meaningful categories (e.g., dealing with “don’t know” answers in a survey). In this phase, the researcher makes decisions about incomplete observations (e.g., respondents that have skipped several questions in a survey) and problematic data (e.g., values that are extreme or otherwise seem suspicious).
Quantitative approaches
cases, variables, observations
content analysis
A typical clean dataset consists of multiple cases (survey respondents, experiment participants, or observational units such as social media posts) and a series of variables (such as age, gender, and media use activity). For each case, there is an observation (a numerical score or a category) on each variable. Coding In the next phase, researchers code material. This entails reformulating data or adding information – meta-data – to the data. Almost all quantitative analyses involve a great deal of recoding. Typically, researchers are interested in analysing data with reference to higher-level concepts (such as types of communication or social class) rather than staying with lower-level concepts in the raw data (such as survey questions about the specific uses of different media or questions about the length of respondents’ education). Coding also forms the basis of a particular analytical technique – content analysis – which is a codified approach to transforming content (articles, films, social media posts) into quantifiable information. In traditional content analyses, the researcher first decides on a unit of analysis (e.g., full news articles, individual sentences, headlines, words, or images). Next, the researcher develops a codebook, which is a guide to categorizing material. In general, codes should be non-overlapping and exhaustive so as to identify and include all relevant categories (Krippendorff, 2013). Human coders are recruited and trained in applying the codebook to the sample (or population) of content. To assess the reliability of the coding process, researchers commonly compare the agreement/disagreement between codes applied to the same material by different coders. Statistical measures like Krippendorff’s alpha (Krippendorff, 2013) or Cohen’s kappa (Cohen, 1960) can be used to evaluate the inter-coder reliability (agreement) between coders. In journalism and political communication research,
such traditional content analyses have played a major role in identifying news criteria (coders determine the amount of coverage that different topics receive [Harcup & O’Neill, 2017]) and in framing analysis (coders categorize news content according to the way a certain issue is covered [D’Angelo & Kuypers, 2010]). More generally, as a quantitative approach to textual analysis, content analysis has been used in a range of subfields such as film studies, game studies, gender studies, and social media research (Neuendorf, 2016). As computers have become more powerful, studies have conducted automated content analyses, in which computer algorithms identify categories and themes in the material without the involvement of human coders (Grimmer & Stewart, 2013). The algorithmic approach makes it possible to analyse larger corpora of texts than is possible with human coders (from thousands to millions of lines of text). As a result, automated content analysis is increasingly applied in media and communication research as a method to analyse large textual and audio-visual collections (Boumans & Trilling, 2016). For example, it has been instrumental in analysing the type and extent of censorship in Chinese social media (King, Pan, & Roberts, 2014), as well as in assessing the development of news coverage over time and across platforms (Burggraaff & Trilling, 2017). Content analysis, thus, is a burgeoning method showing new possibilities for communication research but also facing a number of challenges, notably how to handle the complexities of natural language (such as irony, memes, and jokes). Levels of measurement The last step before moving into actual analyses is to decide on the level of measurement. This choice is constrained by the type of data one has generated or collected during data aggregation. The levels of news criteria – Chapter 5, p. 98 framing – Chapter 8, p. 169
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Jacob Ørmen measurement represent a taxonomy going from the least to the most information-rich types. Higher levels of measurement can always be converted into one of the lower levels, but not the other way around. At the bottom, one finds the nominal level (the least information-rich type). Here, the values of the variable are distinct categories that can be compared but cannot be ordered in any meaningful way. Examples would be names (of people, countries, media, brands, etc.) and general characteristics (such as gender and occupation). By contrast, the ordinal level makes it possible to rank-order values (from most to least or biggest to smallest), but there is no meaningful distance between the values. For instance, a survey question that asks how often a respondent accesses the internet, with the possible answers being “Nearly all the time,” “Daily,” “Several times a week,” “A few times a week,” and “Rarely,” would be an ordinal-level question. Although daily is more often than several times a week, we cannot say how much more or less one is in relation to the other. The nominal and ordinal levels are jointly called categorical variables (Blaikie, 2003). At the last two levels, we get richer information and can start to make more sophisticated calculations. The interval and ratio levels have an equal distance between items on a scale. They are often grouped together as metric variables, but, strictly speaking, do not belong to the same level of measurement (see, e.g., Blaikie, 2003). At the ratio level, the data have an absolute zero, whereas this is not the case for interval data. A temperature scale
would be an example of interval-level data (0 degrees is an arbitrary value that does not mean ‘no temperature’), while time spent watching TV would represent ratio-level data (0 minutes means that a person has not watched any TV). In media and communication research, ratio variables are much more common than interval variables. And for most analytical purposes, the two levels are treated as one (in the statistical software SPSS, they are just called ‘interval’). Because we are able to calculate the distance between values, the metric level allows for more advanced statistical operations. Key terms of statistical analysis are summarized in Table 13.2 and elaborated upon in the following section.
Calculation When the data have been prepared, the analysis moves on to the core reason for quantifying the world, namely to conduct calculations. This step is commonly referred to as statistical analysis. Of course, the sequential distinction between data aggregation and data analysis is somewhat artificial, as the various stages of empirical research interact in practice. During data aggregation, the purpose of later analyses plays a big part in how a study is designed. Often researchers rely on pilot interviews in surveys, trial runs in experiments, and test samples in observations to adjust the measurement instrument so that it can accommodate specific analyses. Moreover, in practice, researchers move between preparation and analysis in the process of realizing what kind of data and level of measurement are needed.
Table 13.2 Levels of measurement Level of measurement
Measures of central tendency
Calculations
Nominal (Categorical) Ordinal (Categorical) Interval/Ratio (Metric)
Mode Mode, Median Mode, Median, Mean, Range, Standard Deviation
Frequency Tendency Variation
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Quantitative approaches Sometimes, it is even necessary to return to data aggregation because of issues that come up during the analysis. Thus, like other models of academic research, the present framework is an idealization that helps to delineate the necessary steps of empirical research. Most generally, we can distinguish between descriptive and inferential statistics (for a discussion of more types, see, e.g., Blaikie, 2003; Seale, 2018b). Descriptive statistics are used to assess the distribution of one or more variables using measures of so-called central tendency for a sample, whereas inferential statistics are used to make claims about the data that go beyond the sample (drawing inferences from the sample to a population). Typically, one starts by examining individual variables and comparing variables using descriptive statistics to get an overview of the data. Later in the process, one may apply inferential statistics to test the strength of relationships in the data or to discover patterns that are hard to detect using only descriptive statistics. This section introduces some of the most popular statistical techniques in media and communication research and demonstrates appropriate figures and tables for visualizing data (for a good introduction to visualizations, see Healy, 2018). As statistical tests tend to apply complex formulas, only a few simple tests are introduced here. Step-by-step guides to all tests can be found in standard statistics textbooks (e.g., Blaikie, 2003; Bryman, 2016; Cumming, 2012; Seale, 2018b). It is also important to notice that most of the statistical tests mentioned assume that the sample reflects a random slice of the population. As we saw in the section on data aggregation, that is rarely the case. We return to this issue in the section on challenges to quantitative approaches. Descriptive statistics When we examine the characteristics or distribution of a single variable (e.g., all answers to a specific survey question), we
work with univariate descriptive statistics. Depending on the level of measurement, we can use different statistical concepts to describe the distribution (as seen in the middle column in Table 13.2). For nominal variables, we can describe the frequency of observations for each value (category). The value that occurs most frequently constitutes the mode. By looking at the distribution of observations across values, we can evaluate whether we need to recode or collapse categories to make for meaningful analyses (e.g., if some categories have very few cases assigned). Typically, univariate statistics with nominal data are visualized as bar charts with raw counts or percentages displayed. For ordinal data, we have the opportunity to rank-order observations from the lowest value to the highest value and thus to calculate the median (the middle value going from low to high). Here again, we can evaluate whether all levels (the ranked values) are equally relevant or if we need to recode or collapse the categories. Ordinal data are also visualized with bar charts, ordered from low to high levels (Figure 13.5 A). Metric-level data allow for a much richer set of statistics and visualizations. With metric variables, it is possible to calculate a mean (the average, that is, the sum of all values divided by the number of cases), a range (the difference between lowest and highest values), and a standard deviation (the average variation from the mean). These measures further allow us to estimate how equally distributed the observations are across the variable, which matters for the types of inferential statistics we can run. Typical visualizations of metric variables are histograms and boxplots. Histograms (Figure 13.5 B) visualize the distribution of observations across all the values of a variable. Boxplots (also called box-and-whisker plots) show the distribution of data around the average and are particularly well suited to illustrate the range of observations and to identify extreme values. The boxplot
univariate statistics
mode
median
mean range standard deviation
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Figure 13.5 Standard visualizations of univariate and bivariate analyses
bivariate statistics
in Figure 13.5 C shows the median (the horizontal line within the box) and the interquartile range (the 50 percent of the observations that are delimited by the top and bottom edges of the box). The vertical line, called whiskers, shows the full range of observations minus the ‘outliers,’ which are observations far away from all other observations, and which are represented by dots in the boxplot. When we are interested in examining the relationship between two or more variables, we need bivariate descriptive statistics. Here, we compare the distribution of one variable with the distribution of the other variable(s). If we compare two categorical variables, we are typically looking for categories in one variable that tend to be strongly affiliated with categories in the other. Grouped bar charts (Figure 13.5 D) are helpful in illustrating the affiliation between categorical variables by comparing the frequency of one variable (here,
social media usage) across the groups in the other variable (here shown as black and grey bars). Categorical and metric variables can be compared using boxplots (Figure 13.5 C). The metric variable is displayed on the y-axis for each of the values of the categorical variable (termed “1” and “2” in the figure). Longitudinal data can be represented as a time series using a line plot that portrays the development over time (x-axis) for a metric variable (y-axis) (Figure 13.5 E). Time series plots can identify trends over time such as whether the sale of cinema tickets increases or decreases over the years. Two metric variables (x and y) are typically visualized with a scatterplot, in which each case is positioned in the space according to the observations for variable x and y (Figure 13.5 F). Bivariate statistics, in sum, give us indications of relationships in the data but do not allow us to assess whether the similarities and differences
Quantitative approaches we observe for the sample are also to be found in the population. For that, we need inferential statistics. Inferential statistics Typically, we are not interested in analysing a sample in itself (e.g., the 1,200 high school students we sampled earlier); we want to use the sample to infer something about the population it derives from (e.g., US high school students). In all but censuses, we have to rely on sample statistics (such as the mean of a given variable in the sample) to make meaningful statements about population parameters (the ‘true’ mean for the whole of the population). Inferential statistics is a family of tests that guide researchers in making appropriate statements in this regard. All statistical statements are uncertain estimates, exactly because we rely on a sample rather than the full population, and are based on measures of statistical significance. Whether a statement (e.g., the
Figure 13.6 The normal distribution curve
result of a test) is statistically significant depends on the confidence level chosen by the researcher. The confidence level is a central concept that captures the certainty that one wishes to have about statistical statements. To illustrate how confidence levels work, we need to introduce the idea of the normal distribution (Figure 13.6). In a normal distribution, the mean (µ) constitutes the midpoint (mode and median) with an equal amount of observations on either side. This is illustrated by the standard deviation (σ). Within –1 and +1 standard deviations (SDs) lie 68.27% of observations, and within +/–2 SDs lie 95.45% of all observations. It is important to notice that the sample itself might not be normally distributed; many reallife phenomena such as media use patterns are not. However, the sample mean of any variable is normally distributed around all possible sample means that one could have ended up with. In other
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Central Limit Theorem
confidence interval
Jacob Ørmen words, if we were to draw, for instance, 1,000 different samples from a population, then the means (e.g., of time spent watching TV) of all samples would be normally distributed, with most sample means lying around the mean of means and a relatively few much lower/higher. This principle is called the Central Limit Theorem. In practice, we are rarely able to draw several samples but must rely on the one sample we have to make inferences about the population. Thus, when we choose a confidence level, we decide on how sure we want to be that the sample we have collected reflects all the possible samples we could have drawn from the same population. Typically, researchers in the humanities and social sciences rely on the 95% confidence level equal to almost 2 SDs from the mean (1.96 to be precise), which means that they accept that there is 5% risk (1 in 20) of the sample mean being more than 2 SDs larger/smaller than the true population mean. In simple terms, we accept a 5% risk (written as α = .05) that the sample is among the most extreme samples we could have collected. In the end, every statistical statement is inherently uncertain; the confidence level describes how uncertain. The simplest form of inferential statistics is the confidence interval (CI). Here, one asks how likely it is that the sample mean reflects the true average in the population. Using the standard deviation and a chosen confidence level, it is possible to construct an interval around the mean, which reflects the likely position of the true average in the population. For instance, a researcher estimating the CI for a survey response on daily TV viewing would take the mean (e.g., 45 minutes) and the standard deviation (e.g., 30 minutes) of the time spent as reported by the sample (e.g., 120 respondents). To get the confidence interval, one first has to calculate the standard error (SE) of the mean, which is created by dividing the standard deviation (s) with the square root of sample size (n): SE = s/√n . In the example, SE would be 30/√120 = 2.74.
Next one identifies a constant based on the chosen confidence level and the characteristics of the normal distribution (Figure 13.6). We know that 95% of all means would fall within 2 standard deviations, or 1.96 to be exact. Thus, if we stick to convention and choose a confidence level of 95% (p < 0.05), this would produce a CI of between 39.6 minutes [45 – (1.96 × 2.74)] and 50.4 minutes [45 + (1.96 × 2.74)]. In sum, in 95% (19 out of 20) of samples, this interval would include the true population mean. If the confidence level is set to 99% (p < 0.01), the confidence interval increases to between 37.9 and 52.1 [45 –/+ (2.58 × 2.74)]. Thus, the trade-off is that the greater the certainty one wishes to have (confidence level), the more imprecise the statements will be (confidence interval). Confidence intervals are used, for instance, in opinion poll estimates to calculate the likely share of a population that supports a given candidate or policy proposal. The most well-known branch of inferential statistics assesses the likelihood that patterns in the data did not occur by random chance. This is called null hypothesis significance testing (NHST). As the name suggests, NHST depends on a null hypothesis (H0), which states that the observed differences in the data are the result of randomness in sampling. NHST simply calculates the probability of getting the observed differences in the data if H0 is true. This is called a probability value, or p-value. Based on the selected confidence level, we either reject the null hypothesis (meaning that the observed differences are unlikely to be found in the population by chance in sampling) or accept it (meaning that we cannot rule out that the results would occur simply by chance). The decision to reject or accept the null hypothesis simply depends on whether the p-value is greater (p > α) or smaller (p < α) than our chosen confidence level. The goal of NHST is to reject a false hypothesis and fail to reject a true hypothesis. The risk is to fail to reject a
the null hypothesis
p-value
Quantitative approaches
correlation analysis
false hypothesis (false positives, called Type I error) or to reject a true hypothesis (false negatives, called Type II error). These errors depend on various factors such as sample size, type of statistical test, and confidence level. Type I errors typically occur if one selects a low confidence level as the baseline for evaluating the null hypothesis. For instance, if one selects a confidence level at the 90% margin (p < .1), it would mean that just by chance, 1 in 10 (or 10%) of the observed results would be wrong, statistically speaking. Conversely, if one were too cautious in selecting one’s confidence level (e.g., p < .0001), many true findings would be rejected solely because we cannot be 99.99% sure that they are not the result of random chance. Tests that are less likely to rule out true relationships (Type II error) are said to command greater statistical power. It is very important to notice here that NHST can only tell us whether we should reject or accept the Null Hypothesis (H0), not whether we can trust any alternative hypothesis that we have formulated (H1, H2, . . . etc.). Thus, through NHST, we are, strictly speaking, only able to reject or fail to reject H0, not to confirm or disconfirm a particular hypothesis. Two of the most common ways to conduct NHST are correlation and regression. The typical way to compare the distribution of two metric variables (x and y) is to rely on the Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient (Pearson’s r). This measure estimates the degree to which two variables vary in the same way (the full formula can be found in statistics textbooks, e.g., Blaikie, 2003: 108). Pearson correlation produces a coefficient between –1 (perfect negative correlation, or each time x increases y decreases and vice versa) to 1 (perfect positive correlation, or each time x increases y also increases and vice versa). For instance, it is possible to test the strength of the confirming and disconfirming hypotheses – Chapter 16, p. 337
relationship between the variables in the scatter plot in Figure 13.5 F. A Pearson correlation shows that the variables have a significant relationship at the 99% confidence level (p < .01) and a correlation coefficient, r, of .31. This is a medium-sized positive correlation (Blaikie, 2003: 110–111), suggesting that cases that have a higher score on x also tend to, but do not always, have a higher score on y. Correlation analyses are frequently used to indicate whether two media use variables co-vary either positively or negatively (such as social media usage and TV viewing). Often researchers will want to do more than explore associations between variables and to explore the explanatory power of variables. To do so, they rely on techniques such as regression, which predicts the values of one outcome variable (normally called ‘Y’) based on the values of one or more predictor variables (termed ‘X’s). The most popular forms of regression use a linear formula (ordinary least squares, or OLS, for metric outcome variables and a logistic function for categorical outcome variables) to predict a straight line (the formulas for various forms of regression can be found in statistics textbooks, e.g., Blaikie, 2003: 124–140). Taking Figure 13.5 F, we could try to predict the values of Y (the variable on the vertical y-axis) based on the values of X (the variable on the x-axis) by using an OLS regression. This regression shows a significant (p < .001) positive prediction fit so that a one-unit increase in the X variable is associated with a 0.43-unit increase in Y. The result of the regression can be fitted as a straight line onto the scatterplot, as shown in Figure 13.7. As can be seen from the figure, the line does not fit the data perfectly (many points lie above or below the predicted line), but it represents the best fit in the attempt to minimize the average distance of the individual data points to the line. Regression analysis further makes it possible to predict values on the outcome variable
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Figure 13.7 Regression line with error margins
multiple regression
using several different predictor variables (which is called multiple regression). Multiple regression is used, for instance, to compare the relative effects of sociodemographic variables (age, gender, education) on media use and communicative patterns (e.g., the likelihood of using social network services or participating in political activities). With multiple regression, it becomes possible to compare the explanatory power of different variables with each other (e.g., whether education or gender best explains social media use), thereby considering more variables at the same time. The inferential statistics covered so far all make strict assumptions about the distribution of data. Correlation and regression require the data to be normally distributed (or, at least, that the errors are normally distributed). Typically, this can be assessed through various tests of normality (such as QQ plots or the ShapiroWilk test) or of equality of variance (such as Levene’s test) and by visualizing data.
Figure 13.8 illustrates the problem of running tests without considering the distribution of data or controlling for outliers; all four datasets (commonly known as Anscombe’s Quartet) have the same correlation and regression coefficients, yet they obviously describe different empirical phenomena. If the data violate the core assumptions of a test, the test results might be distorted or downright wrong. In such cases, the researcher either must transform the data or shift to a different test. Common data transformations include the removal of outliers (that is, values that are much higher/lower than all other values), scale transformation (e.g., from a normal to a logarithmic scale), or the recoding of values (e.g., collapsing different categories into one or excluding some categories from the analysis). In other cases, it is more useful to shift to a test that analyses the data at a lower level of measurement (e.g., treating metric as ordinal variables)
Quantitative approaches
Figure 13.8 Anscombe’s Quartet
non- parametric tests
or using a test that does not require strict assumptions about the distribution, or parameters, of data. This last family of tests are therefore called non-parametric tests. They are less sensitive to outliers, large differences in variance between groups, and abnormal distributions. A common non-parametric test is the Pearson chi-squared test (X2). It is useful for estimating the likelihood that an observed distribution would occur by pure chance and serves as a test of hypotheses for categorical data. The null hypothesis (H0) is estimated directly from the data by calculating an expected distribution based on the observed distribution of the variables. Taking differences in social media use across groups as a case (visualized in Figure 13.5 D), we can estimate how much the observed distribution deviates from what we would expect by chance, the expected distribution. Table 13.3a and b indicate the observed distribution at the top (the number of
respondents in a survey that use social media across the two groups, here termed “Group A” and “Group B”) and the expected distribution at the bottom (calculated for each cell as the product of the row and column totals divided by the total observations, e.g., for men not using social media, 40 × 15/100 = 6). As we can see, the observed and expected distributions have the same column and row totals and differ only in what is in each cell regarding the social media use of men and women. The chi-squared test calculates the difference between the observed and expected cells and produces an estimation of how much the observed distribution differs from random chance (the exact calculation can be found in standard introductions to statistics, e.g., Blaikie, 2003: 97–102). Here, the result of the test reveals that we cannot reject the null hypothesis (H0) at a confidence level of 95% (p = 0.57, which means that p > 0.05). Thus, we cannot confidently report
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Do not use social media Use social media Total (columns)
Group A
Group B
Total (rows)
5 35 40
10 50 60
15 85 100
Table 13.3b Expected distribution
Do not use social media Use social media Total (columns)
Group A
Group B
Total (rows)
(40 × 15)/100 = 6 (40 × 85)/100 = 34 40
(60 × 15)/100 = 9 (60 × 85)/100 = 51 60
15 85 100
the observed differences in social media use between the groups as statistically significant. The chi-square statistic, in sum, can help to evaluate how meaningful differences between groups are. There exists a range of other alternatives to parametric tests for variables at all levels of measurement (see overview chart in Blaikie, 2003: 353). In media and communication research, data tend to deviate from normal distributions, and it is often necessary to rely on non-parametric tests to make meaningful inferences. Non-parametric tests are, however, less powerful and will often produce too-conservative estimates (Type II errors). Parametric tests such as correlation and regression are therefore to be preferred when possible.
After statistical analyses have been carried out, the results have to be interpreted. As in any research project, this involves drawing theoretical inferences from findings and discussing their meaning and relevance (Blaikie & Priest, 2017). If the researcher has formulated hypotheses prior to data collection and analysis (hypothetico-deductive research designs),
interpretation mainly entails evaluating the various hypotheses and accepting or rejecting them based on the statistical tests applied. This is an approach typical of quantitative studies in political communication, for example, agenda-setting research (McCombs & Shaw, 1972). Here, statistics is mainly used to test the continued relevance of consolidated theories of communication. In studies that take a more exploratory path, researchers introduce theories to explain surprising results (abductive designs). Here, the goal is not to confirm or reject existing theories but to come up with suitable explanations of the observed patterns in the data. This approach has been a fruitful way to expand upon, and sometimes invent new, theories of communication (see, e.g., Jensen & Helles, 2011). Apart from these general considerations, there is one specific concern regarding the interpretation of quantitative results: one has to make a critical assessment of the real-world relevance of statistical analyses. As the statistician David Spiegelhalter puts it: the results might very well be statistically significant, but are they practically significant (2019)? Lately, statisticians and social
hypothetico-deductive research – Chapter 16, p. 337
abductive research – Chapter 16, p. 339
Interpretation
statistical and practical significance
Quantitative approaches scientists have urged researchers to be more careful in how they apply statistics in their analyses, in particular when using NHST (see, e.g., Benjamin et al., 2018; Cumming, 2012). In short, critics argue that statistical significance in itself is a poor standard for assessing the importance of results. Instead, significance tests need to be combined, or even supplanted, by statistics that bring out the strength of the associations in the data. One way to illustrate the problem is to note the link between confidence levels and sample size. The sole purpose of confidence levels is to estimate the likelihood that a sample statistic (e.g., a correlation between two variables) reflects the population parameter (the actual relationship between the two variables). As the sample size grows, it becomes increasingly likely that the sample statistics match the population parameters and thus that the statistical test is significant, no matter how small the correlation between variables. Thus, with large samples (such as in national surveys or in big data analyses), we might very well find statistically significant results for minuscule observed differences, even with very conservative confidence levels that err on the side of caution. To overcome this problem, researchers need to consider measures of effect size, which assess the magnitude of differences. In the case of a Pearson correlation, scholars often use the coefficient squared (r2) to assess the effect size, that is, how much of the variation between the variables is actually explained by the correlation coefficient. For example, the correlation coefficient used earlier (r = .31) was significant at the 99% confidence level (p < .01) due to the large sample size (n = 1,200). However, the size of the correlation coefficient squared (r2= .0961) is so small that it explains less than 10% of the variation between the two variables. Thus, while one would agree that the correlation is likely to be found in the population, the effect size should lead us to question how meaningful that difference is in the real world; certainly
there are other important factors at play explaining the remaining 90% of the variance. For most statistical tests, effect size measures exist that can enrich the interpretation of the relationships in the data.
LIMITATIONS AND CHALLENGES TO QUANTITATIVE APPROACHES Simplification Some researchers champion quantitative approaches (notably experiments) as the only true way of studying causality because experimental designs can isolate effects through randomization and measure differences (see, e.g., Babbie, 2014). Others argue that qualitative methods and case studies specifically are more suited to capturing causality through careful consideration of complex realworld phenomena (see e.g. Flyvbjerg, 2006). The two positions regarding causality suggest different methodological priorities. Whereas quantitative research tends to provide a structural account of causality by focusing on relationships between entities (e.g., individuals) and external forces, qualitative studies typically offer a processual account emphasizing the interdependence of entities and additional reinforcing factors (Bryman, 2006). Simply put, qualitative research focuses on complexity, while quantitative approaches foreground simplicity. When we quantify the world, we simplify the complex relationships of phenomena. As mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, quantification makes it possible to compare entities (such as individuals, groups of people, or nations) directly through standardized variables. However, quantification also reduces the world to what can be measured. In experiments, we only observe differences in a few variables and often manipulate one variable at a time. Likewise, in surveys and observation studies, we are limited to making inferences about behaviour evoked through standardized questions
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Jacob Ørmen or collected through observational tools. The causality captured is not deterministic but probabilistic; we do not measure regularities but tendencies. On top of that, a host of unobserved conditions affect the direction and strength of causality. These factors do not nullify any talk of causality, but they do require us to speak of “thin” (Cartwright, 2004) forms of causality. A given quantitative method can illuminate aspects of the causes or mechanisms at work but often needs to be combined with other approaches (quantitative or qualitative) to give a thicker or stronger indication of the phenomena in question.
Idealization The logic of statistical tests builds on mathematical probability theory. As mentioned, the ideal underlying most forms of inferential statistics is that the sample is drawn at random from a larger, unknown population and that the data exhibit a specific form (e.g., follows a normal distribution). The messiness of actual research rarely matches such an ideal. Often, we are not able to sample randomly but must rely on nonprobability samples and must deal with issues of non-response and self-selection errors. The errors between sample and population, as a result, are systematic rather than random. Likewise, the type of data researchers collect about media and communication patterns frequently deviate substantially from normal distributions. The only solution is to recognize these problems throughout the processes of sampling, aggregation, and analysis. Another problematic assumption is that we can measure the activities and opinions of human beings without altering their behaviour. Yet the tools we use cannot be separated from the objects of study. Humans are reflexive beings that adapt their behaviour to the context they are in, including the presence of and perceptions by researchers. This aspect of data aggregation, which applies equally to quantitative and qualitative studies, is being
addressed by a growing number of comparative studies exploring the strengths and weaknesses of different methods for collecting data on human participants (see, e.g., Boase & Ling, 2013). Quantitative researchers employ two concepts to evaluate the quality of a research design: validity and reliability. Validity describes the capacity of a project to reflect real-world behaviours or other social patterns. Validity is commonly divided into at least two types: internal validity (does the project accurately measure what it claims to measure?) and external validity (does the conclusion of the project hold true outside the particular context of the study?). The related concept, reliability, refers to the consistency of findings. If, for example, researchers were to carry out a similar project with the same research design but arrive at very different findings, then the project would have low reliability. Challenging and testing idealized notions of research, the concepts of validity and reliability help to differentiate between the studies that provide a sound description of real-world phenomena and those that are the results of artificial research constructs.
internal and external validity
Ethics and privacy Ethics is a general concern in empirical research across quantitative and qualitative approaches. Nevertheless, new types of quantitative data and analytical tools have reemphasized the importance of ethics, specifically in digital observation studies and experiments. First, behavioural data on individuals are normally anonymized (removing names, addresses, contact information, etc.) before publication to protect the identity of study participants. However, through the combination of values for different variables, it is sometimes possible to reconstruct (reverse-engineer) the person behind the statistics (de Montjoye, Radaelli, Singh, & Pentland, 2015). This puts the privacy of individuals validity and reliability – Chapter 16, p. 342
anonymity
Quantitative approaches at risk, and it is therefore advisable both to analyse data at a more general level (for instance, working with groups rather than individuals) and to limit the distribution of original datasets. Second, the basic requirement for conducting research with human subjects is to obtain informed consent. This requirement is challenged by the opportunities the digital media landscape offers research to observe and manipulate people unobtrusively and without their consent. A classic case of unethical research practices is a field experiment that Facebook carried out with users of the site without their awareness (Kramer, Guillory, & Hancock, 2014). Here, researchers manipulated the emotions of thousands of users by designing the Facebook news feed to include more or less positively charged content. This form of manipulation, of course, occurs on a daily basis through advertising and various digital services (notably by digital intermediaries like Google). It is, nonetheless, ethically problematic to extend the practice to scholarship without consent. In massive digital field experiments, which offer the field rich new avenues for research, it is a major challenge to maintain high ethical standards without harming the validity of the study.
CONCLUSION Quantitative approaches offer scholars strong research tools for studying trends
informed consent – Chapter 20, p. 429
and developments. If carried out with care and consideration, quantitative studies can provide powerful accounts of media and communication phenomena as well as of the mechanisms that constrain and enable these phenomena. Traditional methods such as surveys, experiments, and structured observation have played an important role in the field for decades. New approaches based on digital data are emerging that offer novel perspectives on the kinds of questions and empirical materials that can be the basis of research. In both cases, researchers need to carefully consider sampling strategies, methods for data aggregation, and appropriate techniques for data analysis. Unfortunately, there is not much room for methodological considerations in academic publications; such discussions are often relegated to special issues, put in footnotes, or left out entirely. At the same time, quantitative approaches are currently undergoing rapid development in disciplines such as statistics and sociology, as well as the burgeoning field of data science. At this juncture, it is important that the field of media and communication research continue the discussion of the merits and pitfalls of quantitative approaches, old and new, for understanding the digital communication landscape that is reshaping our world. Through critical reflection and creative solutions, it remains possible to apply the ideal types of quantitative research to the messiness of real-world research.
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14 • • • • •
The qualitative research process Klaus Bruhn Jensen
definitions of basic concepts in qualitative media and communication studies: meaning, as articulated in naturalistic settings and examined by researchers who are themselves interpretive subjects a presentation of systematic design and sampling as key considerations in qualitative research an overview, with examples, of the main empirical approaches to qualitative media and communication studies: interviewing; observation; and analyses of texts, documents, and artifacts a discussion of data analysis as a central challenge for qualitative research a review of resources for computer-supported qualitative research
INTRODUCTION In some earlier reference works, humanistic and other qualitative media and communication researchers would refer to their own contributions as “nonscientific” (Farrell, 1987: 123). For some, this terminology served as a way of securing a (negatively defined) niche for reflections on human communication outside the social ‘sciences.’ For others, ‘critique’ represented the preferred alternative to a mainstream ‘science’ that would limit itself to describing, rather than changing, predominant media and communicative practices. While many methodological, theoretical, and political fault lines remain, recent decades have witnessed two important developments for qualitative research. First, more dialogues – between qualitative and quantitative traditions, between ‘critical’ and ‘administrative’ researchers, and across the classic divide between arts ‘critical’ and ‘administrative’ research – Chapter 20, p. 421
and sciences (Snow, 1964) – have been developing; the chapters in this volume, and many of the works cited, trace this development. Second, journal, textbook, encyclopedia, and handbook publications have served to establish standards and procedures for qualitative research. The present chapter reviews the state of qualitative methodologies in media and communication studies, with special reference to the requirements of systematic qualitative research projects. The chapter, first of all, identifies some of the key concepts of contemporary qualitative research, with sources in anthropology, sociology, and the humanities. Next, the planning of empirical studies is described in terms of several strategic, tactical, and technical choices that must be made at different stages of the qualitative research process. These overviews lead into a review, with illustrative examples, of three prototypical methodologies in qualitative media studies, as defined by their means of data collection – in-depth
arts and sciences
The qualitative research process interviewing; participating observation; and various forms of textual, document, or discourse analysis. In each case, data analysis – the coding, categorization, and interpretation of data – presents both a special challenge for qualitative research and an interface with the quantitative research process. The final section, accordingly, outlines and discusses various procedures for the analysis of qualitative data, with specific reference to discourse analysis, thematic coding, and grounded theory, including computer software as a resource for qualitative data analysis.
BASIC CONCEPTS IN QUALITATIVE RESEARCH
meaning
The consolidation and institutionalization of qualitative research is witnessed in a number of standard reference works, handbooks, and anthologies (e.g., Alvesson & Sköldberg, 2018; Bryman & Burgess, 1999; Denzin & Lincoln, 2018; Huberman & Miles, 2002; Miles, Huberman, & Saldana, 2014) (for practical techniques, see, e.g., Flick, 2018; Silverman, 2018) – in addition to a growing number of journals, monographs, and textbooks in different disciplines and fields. While media and communication research has produced its own reference works (e.g., Jensen & Jankowski, 1991; Lindlof & Taylor, 2019), it is characteristic that this field has also taken on board a variety of interdisciplinary influences. Across theoretical and methodological inspirations and traditions, however, qualitative communication studies today have at least three common denominators. First, qualitative research focuses on meaning, both as an object of study and as an explanatory concept. Humans interpret their ordinary lives as well as the extraordinary events that they encounter, increasingly through communication technologies, as inherently meaningful. Researchers, in turn, interpret the interpretations that individuals and groups have of themselves and
their communications. People engage in interpretation for a purpose and in a context; they orient themselves in the world and take up positions from which to exercise agency. These interpretations, next, inform actions, for instance, inside media organizations, such as newsrooms (e.g., Tuchman, 1978), and in audiences’ engagement with news about the world as part of their personal daily routines (e.g., Scannell, 1988). Second, qualitative research normally assumes that communication should be examined, as far as possible, in its naturalistic contexts. While this might suggest classic anthropological fieldwork, qualitative communication studies have taken several different approaches to grasping “the native’s perspective” on his/her reality (Malinowski, 1922: 25). Also naturalistic contexts are selected for particular purposes of research. Like their quantitative counterparts, qualitative projects engage in sampling – of cultures, communities, locales, informants, periods, and practices. As elaborated upon in the next section, empirical communication studies have various sampling strategies at their disposal – from probability sampling within a well-defined population or universe to the selection of a single community or case in which diverse instances of a particular communicative practice may be documented. The naturalistic attitude primarily entails an ambition of considering those contexts in which particular communicative phenomena may be encountered and examined; it also recognizes that many aspects of such phenomena cannot be known – or sampled – in advance. The third common feature of qualitative studies is the conception of researchers as interpretive subjects. In one sense, all scientific research – quantitative and qualitative, natural-scientific and humanistic – is carried out by human subjects as interpretive agents. What distinguishes qualitative studies is the pervasive nature of interpretation double hermeneutics – Chapter 20, p. 411
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naturalistic contexts
the native’s perspective
researchers as interpretive subjects
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Klaus Bruhn Jensen throughout the research process. In the prototypical quantitative study, interpretation is carried out in a delimited and sequential fashion. The quantitative research process aims to segregate phases of conceptualization, operationalization, data collection, analysis, and discussion; it also may delegate some phases to coders and other collaborators and to computerized procedures. In comparison, in the prototypical qualitative study, interpretation is an activity crisscrossing different stages and levels of inquiry, and which typically one scholar undertakes on a continuous basis. In order to characterize this global interpretive activity, research has referred to two interrelated – emic and etic – aspects of the study of communication and culture (Pike, 1967). This conceptual pair, while deriving from linguistics, has been widely applied, particularly in anthropology but also in other social-scientific research. A ‘phonetic’ approach assumes that language constitutes a continuum of sounds, as measured on acoustic scales. A ‘phonemic’ approach, in comparison, focuses on a given language as a distinctive and meaningful set of sounds. By analogy, other cultural expressions can also be understood as either an outsider or a native would. Communication, accumulated as culture, can and should be studied from both internal and external perspectives. The challenge, before and after Kenneth L. Pike’s (1967) seminal work, has been how, concretely, to relate the two aspects of understanding and interpretation (Headland, Pike, & Harris, 1990). For one thing, the emic or internal perspective on culture is not simply there; it is identified from some etic, external, comparative perspective. For another thing, the etic perspective is itself, in one sense, emic: It represents a social setting, a historical period, and an academic (sub-) culture. Emphasizing this last point, some work has questioned the distinction as such, suggesting, from a postmodernist
position, that research findings are not privileged representations but merely provide one more narrative about the culture in question (Clifford & Marcus, 1986; James, 1995; Marcus & Fischer, 1999; Van Maanen, 1988). Whereas repeated cycles of reflection are valuable, the distinction remains both conceptually and practically important. In the different stages and levels of any research project, both concepts and conclusions must be constructed before they can be deconstructed and deliberated on as an input to other social interaction. The three constituents, in combination, begin to suggest how qualitative studies perform their analytical procedures and how these lead into theory development. Concepts and categories are typically articulated in what Robert K. Merton (1968: 39) described as a middle range. Compared to the description or coding of single statements or images, and to grand theories about culture or society, middle-range theories seek to account for a particular process or context, for instance, the two-step flow of media effects or the socially and culturally variable decodings of media content. In short, middle-range theories mediate between concrete research operations and abstract theoretical frameworks. In qualitative communication studies, they are commonly the outcome of an iterative or repeated process through which researchers gradually gain a better insight into – learn from – the field of study.
DESIGNING QUALITATIVE STUDIES Formatting the field To design an empirical study is to identify and bracket a portion of reality – ‘what’ – postmodernism – Chapter 2, p. 45 two-step flow of communication – Chapter 8, p. 180 decodings – Chapter 9, p. 184
middle-range theories
iterative process of research
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conceptualization
operationalization
for further inquiry according to a theoretically informed purpose – ‘why’ – and through a systematic procedure of data collection and analysis – ‘how’ (Kvale, 1987). Whereas most researchers will agree that a preliminary delimitation and conceptualization of the object of inquiry is required, even if a central purpose of qualitative research is, precisely, reconceptualization, the additional operationalization of analytical categories and procedures has been subject to debate. After all, qualitative studies claim to learn from the field. Increasingly, however, operationalization has come to be seen as a sine qua non also of qualitative studies (Schensul, Schensul, & LeCompte, 1999: 50). In methodological terms, only an empirical ‘microcosm’ can be studied in any detail to substantiate ‘macrocosmic’ inferences (Alexander & Giesen, 1987). In epistemological terms, no knowledge can be produced without some preknowledge or ‘prejudice,’ as emphasized by hermeneutics. A classic piece of advice came from the anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski (1922: 9), who noted that although preconceived ideas can get in the way of empirical research, the foreshadowing of problems that may arise in the field is a natural, central consideration. It is helpful to distinguish three aspects of designing empirical research – strategy, tactics, and techniques (Gorden, 1969): • Strategy, first, refers to a general plan for entering a particular social setting and for establishing points of observation and means of communication in order to generate relevant evidence. Strategy builds social relations between researchers and their informants in a designated time and space – a temporary structure for communicating about and reflecting on meaningful events and practices.
• Tactics, next, refer to the researcher’s attempts to anticipate and, to a degree, prestructure social interactions that may yield evidence. A case in point is whom to interview. Interviewees can be approached either as well-placed sources (informants, e.g., within a media organization) or as representatives of a position in a sociocultural system (respondents, e.g., from a specific user segment) (Lindlof & Taylor, 2019: 227–231). • Techniques, finally, are the researcher’s concrete means of interacting with and documenting the field – verbal language but also other sign systems, documents, and artifacts. It is the selection of a set of techniques that most clearly distinguishes qualitative and quantitative research designs. This is in spite of the fact that techniques are prefigured by both strategy and tactics, which, in turn, are anticipated by theoretical purposes and empirical domains. In sum, the ‘why’ and the ‘what’ of research come before, motivate, and justify the ‘how’ (Kvale, 1987).
Sampling cases Having operationalized and accessed the field, the next step of an empirical project is to sample elements or constituents of that field. In communication studies, it is most common to think of samples as subgroups of populations that consist of either people or texts, for example, in surveys or content analyses. Qualitative studies, however, frequently sample other units of analysis, for instance, settings, activities, and events relating to communication (Lindlof & Taylor, 2019: 143– 145). Also, the process of sampling differs from probability sampling in quantitative research: Qualitative sampling is driven by a theoretical and/or practical purpose, not by a principle of probability.
empirical microcosm, theoretical macrocosm – Chapter 16, p. 347 hermeneutics – Chapter 2, p. 31
informants and/vs. respondents
probability sampling – Chapter 13, p. 256
units of analysis
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Klaus Bruhn Jensen Qualitative studies can be characterized further with reference to the two or more steps of sampling that they often involve. While a first step may identify a relevant context of communication, the next step will single out certain of its media, users, or communicative interactions for detailed study. In an early classic of qualitative media research in the United States, Kurt and Gladys Lang (1953) examined the 1951 MacArthur Day parade by relying, first, on 31 observers on-site in Chicago and, second, on 2 observers monitoring the television coverage of the event at home. From each of these contexts, representations and observations (including recorded observations, overheard remarks, and content elements) were documented and compared. The findings indicated that on-site participants and television viewers had witnessed two distinctively different versions of the same event. As the two researchers later emphasized, that important and frequently cited finding was “entirely serendipitous” (Lang & Lang, 1991: 211); they had sampled two separate contexts for breadth and detail and learnt something new about the field as a whole by data from the two contexts in combination. Also, another classic finding, from a quantitative study, was serendipitous, namely the two-step hypothesis concerning media impact (Lazarsfeld et al., 1944); in accordance with a quantitative logic, a common assumption regarding direct media effects had been falsified, or questioned, and the new hypothesis could now be examined through additional studies in other contexts (Katz & Lazarsfeld, 1955). Multi-step sampling is in keeping with the contextual orientation of qualitative research. First, statements and actions are to be interpreted with reference to their context(s). These contexts, importantly, can be extremely varied in nature and scope – from the long discursive sequences of a political campaign or an online game, to media uses in household settings, to nation-states and entire cultures. Second,
qualitative studies depend on access to (primary data about) such contexts throughout the process of analysis and interpretation rather than merely summary measures or second-hand descriptions. In a sense, the qualitative research process amounts to a continuous operationalization of categories and concepts with reference to several stages of analysis and, often, several contexts of evidence. As the Langs (1991) noted, there had been a significant build-up to MacArthur Day in the media, and preliminary suggestions that this had affected the public’s expectations and demeanor in the streets could be tested against other evidence, including “badges and behavioral cues” (p. 212). Several inventories of sampling procedures have been proposed in qualitative reference works (e.g., Lindlof & Taylor, 2019; Miles et al., 2014). Perhaps their main contribution is the fact that, as a group, they are available for considering qualitative sampling, following a long period when this was characterized, en bloc and in negative terms, as ‘non-random.’ Positively speaking, qualitative sampling can be defined as a multi-step procedure – of contexts and within contexts – and with reference to at least three types of criteria: • Maximum variation sampling seeks to capture as wide a range of ‘qualities’ or phenomena as possible. The concrete range is normally suggested by other characteristics of the relevant phenomena, for instance, the ratings of television series and the age of their core viewers. In a study of how American viewers evaluated the quality of television, and possible ways of improving it, the present author compared two groups of viewers, one below 35, the other above 55 years of age. What distinguished the groups was that they had and had not, respectively, grown up with television as a central cultural given (Jensen, 1990b). The study found, among other things, that the
sampling procedures
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The qualitative research process
prototypical, critical, and limit cases
two groups relied on different types of metaphors to describe how more, and more diverse, programming might become available. The older group referred to a ‘library’ of programs to be accessed, whereas the younger group advocated a continuous ‘flow’ of specialized channels. • Theoretical sampling selects its objects of analysis in order to explore concepts or categories, for instance, ‘politics’ or ‘fandom,’ as they relate to communication. Qualitative studies of media organizations have explored the politics of production (what is controversial, for whom, and why) by sampling structures, that is, interviewees at different levels of the organizational hierarchy or in different stages of the work process generating a particular media product. In fan studies (Jenkins, 1992; Lewis, 1991), research may focus on a mainstream, a core group of agenda-setters, or new recruits as either ‘prototypical’ or ‘critical’ cases of fandom; they may also refer to contrasting or ‘limit’ cases, such as a competing fan formation or devotees of atonal music. • Convenience sampling is most often encountered as a derogatory term for studying whatever individuals or materials are most easily available. However, a well-documented convenience sample can generate both valid and relevant insights. An early example in communication research was Cantril’s (1940) study of the public panic in response to Orson Welles’ 1938 radio production of the War of the Worlds. That study relied on various qualitative as well as quantitative techniques, including convenience samples of respondents who could be asked to recollect their experience of being frightened. More generally, because
of the difficulty of gaining entry into certain (levels of) organizations, communities, or subcultures, convenience in the sense of accessibility – physical and social – is a legitimate consideration. (In other instances, concerns about ethics, including the personal safety of informants and/or researchers, may rule out research about an arena.) One variant is snowball sampling, where an initial contact generates further informants. For each roll of the snowball, studies should specify how and why certain selections are made and how more informed choices become possible over time. In addition to these three types of qualitative sampling, a characteristic and primarily qualitative design – case study – should be mentioned. Case studies conduct in-depth research on delimited entities, such as communities and organizations, but also singular individuals and events, in order to understand these as interconnected social systems (for overview, see Gomm, Hammersley, & Foster, 2000; Yin, 2013). In addition to the inherent historical or cultural interest of some cases, a wider purpose, sometimes implicit, is to arrive at descriptions, models, or typologies with implications for other social systems. What case studies share with other qualitative designs is the selection of one, or a few, contexts in which most, or all, of the phenomena of theoretical interest can be explored in empirical detail. Whereas case studies might be considered quintessential instances of qualitative research, comparatively few media and communication studies have been specific or self-described examples of case study, perhaps because ‘the media,’ rather than the diverse communicative processes that they facilitate in social and cultural contexts, long remained the center of attention.
qualitative studies of media organizations – Chapters 4 and 5 The Invasion from Mars – Chapter 9, p. 179
ethics of research – Chapter 20, p. 428
snowball sampling
case study
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Klaus Bruhn Jensen Having formatted a field of theoretical interest, and having sampled from its empirical constituents, a qualitative project turns to the concrete choice of ‘methods’ – techniques for interacting with the field. Whereas Chapter 16 returns to the relationship between methods and methodology, the following sections review the three main instruments of data collection in qualitative research: interviewing, observation, and document or discourse analysis.
INTERVIEWING Interviewing is one of the most commonly used methods of data collection, in research as in journalism and public administration. Common sense suggests that, “the best way to find out what the people think about something is to ask them” (Bower, 1973: vi). Especially in-depth interviews, with their affinity to ordinary conversation, have been considered choice instruments for tapping the perspectives of users (and other communicators) on media. Speech is a primary and familiar mode of social interaction, constitutive of many media genres and of communication about and around media as well. The difficulty is that people do not always say what they think or mean what they say. As in the case of everyday conversation, researchers, as communicators and analysts, must tease out the meanings and implications of what other people – and they themselves – say. It is essential to recognize, then, that statements from either individual interviews or focus groups (or from survey responses) are not simply representations, more or less valid or reliable, of what people think. All interview statements are actions in a context, arising from the interaction between (or among) interviewer and interviewee(s). Interview discourses are, in a strong sense of the word,
‘data.’ They become sources of information through analysis and of meaning through interpretation. For one thing, interview studies ask people to put into discourse certain ideas and notions that otherwise may remain unarticulated, part of practical consciousness. For another thing, interviewers themselves have no perfect insight into either their own performance or the responses that they must process in a split second. The disambiguation of interview discourses (or the conclusion that an ambiguity cannot be resolved) is the outcome of data analysis and will remain an inference, leading into arguments pro and con regarding particular conclusions. These caveats reiterate a classic insight of rhetoric and hermeneutics: There is no way around language when it comes to studying communication and culture. Language is a condition to be embraced, not an obstacle to be removed through formalization or abstraction. On the one hand, language (and other modalities) is the royal, if winding, road to respondents’ self-conceptions, opinions, and worldviews; these must be inferred from narratives, arguments, and other discursive structures. On the other hand, linguistic categories offer means of quality control regarding the ‘language work’ that researchers engage in, as elaborated upon subsequently in relation to data analysis. Figure 14.1 summarizes the dual role of language in qualitative research as a tool of data collection and an object of analysis. In sum, interviews ‘make’ language; document and discourse analyses examine language as ‘found,’ a distinction that has acquired renewed importance in digital media. Regarding observation, the double notation concerning language as an object of analysis suggests that while language is a key source of evidence, it often practical consciousness – Chapter 8, p. 164
methods and/vs. methodology – Chapter 16, p. 333
data as found or made – Chapter 16, p. 334
The qualitative research process
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Language Methodology
Tool of data collection
Object of analysis
Interviewing
+
+
Observation
+
+/-
Documents/artifacts
-
+
Figure 14.1 The role of language in qualitative methodologies
is not analyzed in systematic detail, as discussed further in the section on observation subsequently. Qualitative media studies employ three main types of interviewing. The types reflect basic options of interviewing one or more persons, who may or may not have pre-existing social relations with each other: • Respondent interviews. In comparison to informant interviews (which have tended to be less common in media studies), the interviewee is conceived here as a representative of categories such as gender, age, ethnicity, and social status. The assumption is that these categories are inscribed in, and can be recovered from, the respondents’ discourses about themselves and about media and communication. A central example of respondent interviews has been studies of the decoding of media content. • Naturalistic group interviews. In order to explore, to the extent possible, what normally goes on in social settings, qualitative studies examine naturally occurring groups within both media production and reception. In production studies, interviews typically enter into observational methodologies, although specific (individual) interview methodologies have been employed (Newcomb & Alley, 1983). For audience studies, household interviews
can produce, for example, revealing contradictions in how children and parents, respectively, describe an average ‘media day’ in the home (Jensen, Schrøder, Stampe, Søndergaard, & Topsøe-Jensen, 1994). Also, interviews with fan groups (Spigel & Jenkins, 1990) and with children and youth peer groups (Livingstone & Bovill, 2001) can supplement observations of their more distributed activities. • Constituted group interviews. Groups that are constituted specifically for research purposes represent a compromise between the respondent and naturalistic strategies. Group members are the bearers of individual demographics; they also enter into an approximated natural group dynamic. An example is Liebes and Katz’s (1990) study of the reception of the Dallas television series, for which couples invited acquaintances to their home in order to watch and discuss the program. The classic source on group interviews was the work by Robert K. Merton and his associates, beginning in the early 1940s, on the focused interview (Merton & Kendall, 1955). The general idea became especially influential in the shape of focus groups in marketing research and, later, in media studies (for overview, see Barbour, 2007; Stewart & Shamdasani, 2015). The sometimes crassly instrumental uses of focus groups have been subject to criticism and debate (Morrison,
informants and respondents, p. 289 decoding studies – Chapter 9, p. 184
fan studies – Chapter 9, p. 187
the focused interview focus groups
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Klaus Bruhn Jensen 1998); Merton himself (1987) pointed to some of the discontinuities between the focused interview and focus groups as commonly practiced. In media studies, focus groups have proven useful in articulating socially and culturally distinctive experiences of various media contents and uses (e.g., Schlesinger et al., 1992).
oral history
workshops on the future
It should be added that a further variety of communicative and other techniques lend themselves to qualitative media studies (see, e.g., Marshall & Rossman, 2016; Punch, 2014). Oral history (Dunaway & Baum, 1996; Perks & Thomson, 2006), relying on lengthy oral testimonies, not least from ordinary individuals who can tell history ‘from below,’ has also made its mark on media studies (e.g., Pearson & Uricchio, 1990). Beyond the majority of both qualitative and quantitative studies that ask people to respond to media and society as they now exist, certain approaches invite groups of people to consider forms of communication that do not yet exist, thus stimulating the sociological imagination (Mills, 1959). The study cited previously about old and young viewers’ conception of television (Jensen, 1990b) relied on such a method, workshops on the future (Jungk & Müllert, 1981). Also, other action-oriented varieties of interviewing, such as Delphi and consensus groups, provide alternatives or supplements to focus groups (Barbour & Kitzinger, 1999). Across different interview formats, three issues require consideration and planning: • Duration. Interviews range from brief dialogues to establish the meaning of a technical term at a media production site, to hour-long and repeated sessions with an individual or household about media habits, to comprehensive life-historical interviews (Bertaux, 1981; Chamberlayne, Bornat, & Wen-
graf, 2000). Duration is suggested by the purpose of a study but sometimes determined by practical circumstances. • Structure. Probably the main challenge in qualitative interviewing is how and to what extent to prestructure the interaction. The exchange may cover a predefined set of themes, but in no particular order, or it may follow a particular sequence and structure (see Schensul et al., 1999: 121–164). In all events, researchers need to justify their choices and to make explicit the procedures that may support particular inferences and conclusions. • Depth. Regarding relevant and appropriate depth, the qualitative interviewer’s responsibility becomes acute. Though one might think, ‘the deeper, the better,’ in order to elicit respondents’ terminologies, or to probe their conceptual structures, the research interview has similarities with the therapeutic interview, and may articulate repressed insights that neither respondent nor researcher are prepared to handle. Depth, the hallmark of qualitative research, poses important issues for research ethics.
OBSERVATION Observation refers broadly to the continuous and often long-term presence, normally of one researcher, in one delimited locale. The observer, in a sense, is the method – an instrument of research relying on all sensory modalities and diverse media of information. Apart from the danger of ‘going native,’ or conflating emic and etic perspectives, a special challenge during one’s immersion in the field is continuous documentation, so that various data become available for analysis and so that the steps from observation to inferences and conclusions become transparent. Without such documentation, research ethics – Chapter 20, p. 428
action research – Chapter 20, p. 427
emic and etic analysis, p. 288
The qualitative research process
thick description
participating observation
fieldwork may become similar to artwork, inspired and inspiring but inaccessible to intersubjective reflection and discussion. In anthropology, debates on this issue have a long history. In fact, it is only recently that the sharing of fieldnotes with other researchers has become a common practice (Schensul et al., 1999: 226). One of the most influential metaphors for observation, also in media and communication studies, is the anthropologist Clifford Geertz’s (1973b) term thick description. (Geertz derived the concept from the philosopher Gilbert Ryle [1971: 465–496]). The point is that a very detailed description of social interaction is necessary in order to establish the implications of what people say or do, for example, when they use irony. Rather than spreading one’s resources thinly across a larger field and predefining the phenomena of interest, the efforts should be focused on a small field that can be explored in depth for relevant phenomena as well as appropriate descriptive and analytical categories. This is in keeping with a commonly stated qualitative ambition of finding one’s analytical categories in the field – even though research questions and other premises inevitably orient the enterprise. Some critics have noted that, because researchers enter the field with only a vague notion of what thick description entails, it may instead generate ‘thin’ descriptions (Murdock, 1997). Nevertheless, especially in the early phases of a study, a wide-angle exploration may be indispensable; it is comparable, in some respects, to pilot studies in other empirical research designs. In order to distinguish varieties of observational fieldwork, it is common to refer to their components of observation and participation. In an influential summary, Hammersley and Atkinson (2019) have proposed a scale from full observation to full participation, suggesting that there is almost always a degree
of each element in any fieldwork. Just as any interview question, in a sense, is leading, because it implies a range of relevant answers, so observers participate, and participants observe, as they try to interpret ‘what is really going on here.’ In studies of media use in households and other private settings (Lull, 1980), it is evidently difficult to maintain the observing role of a fly on the wall. The study of media use in public places, however, also involves a measure of participation as the observer moves about and communicates (Lemish, 1982). Being humans, researchers “cannot not communicate” (Watzlawick et al., 1967: 49). (In media and communication studies, one advantage of the reference to specified degrees of observation and participation, and to their interfaces with other data-collection methods, is that it avoids the widespread but questionable terminology of media or audience ‘ethnography.’) Regarding field notes, it is still not common to refer to a benchmark of notations and procedures. This is in contrast to various detailed analytical conventions in interview transcripts (considered in the section of data analysis subsequently) and in some qualitative variants of content studies. The presentation and analysis of verbatim notes in publications have remained exceptions, certainly in media studies. While this state of affairs is explained, in part, by the practice, in the parent discipline of anthropology, of keeping research notes private, a wider assumption in other fields appears to have been that field notes serve as extensions of, or complements to, more essential ‘head notes.’ According to this logic, a valid interpretation of the full set of notes could only be carried out by the researcher who was present at the scene – weeks, months, or years ago. In addition to casting the fieldworker as a singular source, this premise may detract from the legitimacy of a central methodology. When
pilot studies – Chapter 16, p. 348
ethnography – Chapter 9, p. 187
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Klaus Bruhn Jensen the ‘secret’ diary of the pioneer anthropologist, Bronislaw Malinowski (1967), emerged, it revealed, among other things, his contempt for the people he studied, undercutting his descriptive monograph and raising doubt about the validity and legitimacy of the fieldwork. Over time, increasing attention has been given to the systematic production of field records (e.g., Ellen, 1984; Lindlof & Taylor, 2019; Spradley, 1979). One helpful typology has distinguished three purposes of field notes, each with an associated discursive form (adapted from Burgess, 1982): • substantive notes, which capture representations of the scene under study; • logistical notes, which add information about the circumstances under which the data were gathered; • reflexive notes, which initiate the process of analysis and theorizing on the basis of observations and other data.
field notes as working documents
An additional rule of thumb is to focus on substance (what) and logistics (how) in the field and to reserve the main reflexive activity (why) for the later research process. Fieldworkers are better able to serve their own purposes through a differentiated and staggered process of analysis, interpretation, and self-reflexivity. A wider lesson for observational studies is to approach notes not as representations but as working documents – steps in a process of communication with self and others. A final difficulty for observational studies has been how to document a multimodal reality mainly through writing and photography. Compared to interview studies, which have relied on transportable and affordable audiotape recorders since around 1950 (Fielding & Lee, 1998: 28), it is only recently that video recorders and smartphones became available to the same extent. More important perhaps, various disciplines and fields of inquiry
have remained remarkably language centered. In a summary volume on the subfield of visual anthropology, Margaret Mead concluded that anthropology had remained “a discipline of words” (Hockings, 1995: 3). In media and communication research, visual methodologies have, by and large, been applied to film, television, websites, and other media texts and much less to the production and uses of media. To some extent, the multimodal nature of both communication and everyday reality has been recognized in a third and more heterogeneous set of qualitative approaches to communication.
visual anthropology
DATA – FOUND AND MADE What unites the third group of approaches to data collection, compared to observation and interviewing, is that the data are ‘found’ rather than ‘made.’ As such, the records that they produce can be considered comparatively naturalistic or ‘unobtrusive’ (Webb, Campbell, Schwartz, & Sechrest, 2000/1966). Data such as govern ment reports and executive memos, in addition to feature films or computer games, have long been produced as part of the ongoing business of the media sector. With digital networks, data about the uses of media are also, increasingly, there to be found. Digital media use enables new and distinctive forms of meta-communication, which generate meta-data – bit trails – that lend themselves to both quantitative and qualitative research. Whereas quantitative studies conduct, for example, data mining of how information and users flow within and across websites and other media, qualitative studies can rely on meta-data to explore the contexts in which information and users come together and interact. First, the textual, visual, and auditory output of media has been a key analytical meta-communication – Chapter 10, p. 204 data mining – Chapter 15, p. 314
meta-data
The qualitative research process object in qualitative media studies, to such an extent that much humanistic scholarship has focused entirely on ‘texts’ as the site and source of meaning (see the discussions in Chapters 6–7). Some of this work has developed the notion of intertextuality to refer to webs of meaningful discourse, including everyday interactions through as well as about media. Second, a wide variety of discourses serve as input to and output from media production and reception. As complex organizations, media unceasingly generate documents that prepare and feed into ‘contents.’ At the same time, media and their contents have traditionally attracted user responses in the form of audience letters (Collins, 1997), as well as in diaries, autobiographies, and fan fiction. Film studies have relied on such diverse data sources to examine early movie audiences (Stokes & Maltby, 1999). Figure 14.2 categorizes and exemplifies production and reception documents, adding a distinction between evidence that is associated with, and primarily originates from, communication in either private (intimate) or public domains. Third, artifacts and various physical arrangements around media can become sources of evidence. In addition to being means of representation, media are physical objects and constituents of other social interaction. Reading a newspaper on mass transit provides a means of avoiding social contact; in the home, reading can be a way of insisting on one’s personal time and space. Furthermore, both the design of and the advertising for media, such as television sets (Spigel, 1992) or personal computers (Jensen, 1993a), for home or work settings, suggest their anticipated uses. Also cinema architecture establishes an experiential setting not just for movie viewing but for the collective activity of
‘going to the movies’ (Gomery, 1992). In this regard, some publications, overlapping in part with visual anthropology, have suggested the importance of audiovisual methodologies for examining not just non-verbal expressions but also ‘the heard’ and ‘the seen’ (Emmison & Smith, 2000: ix) – the temporal and three-dimensional contexts of communication and other social life (Bauer & Gaskell, 2000; Emmison, Smith, & Mayall, 2012; Prosser, 1998; Rose, 2016). (For a critical discussion of visual methods in media research, see Buckingham, 2009.) A fourth and increasingly central consideration in the choice of research methodologies is the wealth of meta-data that digital technologies make available. The classic on unobtrusive measures (Webb et al., 2000), originally published in 1966, had noted infrared recordings of audiences in darkened cinemas (p. 154) and fingerprints used to determine which print advertisements have been read (p. 44). Standard digital communication systems today document comparable features – the source of information; its connection with other items; their trajectories across sites and servers; the users of the information, who may add their own meta-information, and so on. Qualitative studies are especially suited to explore the transitions and transformations of communication – an unfolding news story or debate, online gameplay, a marketing campaign – that occur within and across contexts (see further Jensen, 2013a). To sum up, qualitative communication studies have a variety of resources at their disposal beyond the most commonly employed interview and observational approaches. In the case of digital media, such resources are becoming preconditions for research in and across diverse media and contexts of communication.
intertextuality – Chapter 10, p. 200 media as resources in action contexts – Chapter 9, p. 186
digital methods – Chapter 15
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Reception
Private Autobiographies by film
Clippings and hyperlink collections for a media stars, journalists, and other media professionals personality or genre
Public
Organizational archives, from policy papers to rewrites and work sheets
Letters to the editor, fan magazines, online news groups, tags
Figure 14.2 Production and reception discourses
DATA ANALYSIS Coding and analysis
analysis and synthesis
The understanding of ‘analysis’ has tended to divide qualitative and quantitative research traditions. In quantitative media studies of, for instance, content, analysis involves coding – rule-governed procedures of segmenting and categorizing the components of content as a basis of interpretation. In comparison, qualitative studies typically perform paraphrases and other redescriptions of long as well as short textual elements – new ‘syntheses’ that already imply a (re-)interpretation of the object of analysis. While multiple forms of analysis are valid and legitimate, depending on the purpose of inquiry, it should be recognized that qualitative research has traditionally been limited by its low degree of specification and documentation of analytical procedures; data analysis remains the Achilles heel of qualitative media studies. Even if most studies do not depend on, or require, mathematical and other operational models, like any scholarly enterprise, qualitative publications must deliver the bases for supporting, or resolving, different and sometimes conflicting interpretations and inferences regarding the evidence presented. References to ‘patterns’ that ‘emerge’ through ‘spirals of interpretation’ will not do. A distinguishing feature of qualitative research is that key terms and concepts are articulated and defined as part of the research process. So is the delimitation of the context or domain of study.
Accordingly, analyses and syntheses are not separate acts but constituents of an iterative process. In this chapter, the concrete elements and procedures of this process are considered in methodological terms; Chapter 16 returns to its epistemological aspects, including abduction as a feature of qualitative research and a complement to inductive and deductive reasoning. Qualitative data analysis can be characterized further with reference to two different conceptions of coding – the mapping of mental categories onto phenomena in reality through words, numbers, and other notations. The two conceptions have been referred to as indexical and representational devices (Fielding & Lee, 1998: 176). On the one hand, a code can offer an account or representation of a part of the domain of study, capturing certain qualities of a person, event, action, text, or other unit of analysis. One purpose is to arrive at a set of mutually exclusive and exhaustive categories; another purpose is to enable later comparisons across cases as well as categories. A common aim of coding as representation, further, is to work with standard descriptions, so that various qualities, for instance, of the experience of a media text can be established without reference to the full text or its context. Decontextualized codes facilitate comparison as well as quantification. On the other hand, a code can serve as an instrument or resource for identifying abduction – Chapter 16, p. 339
codes as representations or indexes
The qualitative research process
interview transcripts and other coded texts as working documents audit trail
and retrieving a portion – small or large – of a text or context. In the next analytical steps, these data can be examined in further detail – broken down into additional units of analysis, characterized with reference to immanent structures and specific qualities, compared to other portions of this or related data sets, and so on. Here, the aim is to rely on an open-ended set of categories and procedures that may be adapted to different contexts and levels of analysis. Contextualized codes facilitate an iterative process of analysis and synthesis. The two conceptions of coding are, of course, the legacy of quantitative and qualitative research prototypes. At the same time, coding offers an interface between the two traditions, since an index may be developed into a representation and vice versa. Typically, a qualitative study will identify subsets and sequences of data that are related thematically or structurally, and which can be singled out for further systematic and comparative analysis. Like field notes, other data and discourses, such as recordings and transcripts with detailed conventions for notations (see Potter, 1996: 233–234), constitute working documents and steps toward final research reports. Importantly, each of these steps – including memoing and modeling, drafting and editing – lends itself to documentation. By analogy to financial audits of companies, the term audit trail (Lincoln & Guba, 1985) has been used to refer to a systematic documentation of the entire process, which may keep it transparent to the researcher in question and accountable to colleagues and readers.
Variants of data analysis The history of qualitative data analysis has been informed by classical rhetoric, hermeneutics, and semiotics. Also much early social science was based on the exploratory study of diverse institutions and practices rather than the coding of well-defined phenomena, partly in search
of theoretical frameworks for emerging disciplines. Case studies were a standard and prevalent approach from the 1920s onwards, notably in the Chicago School studies of urban life but also of media, as in the Payne Fund studies. Another approach – analytic induction – was outlined by Znaniecki (1934), who wanted to replace enumerative induction and probabilistic statements with the intensive and stepwise study of single cases in order to arrive at general, even universal categories of social phenomena. Despite examples of the approach also in media studies (Lang & Lang, 1953), it has not been widely used, partly because of its time-consuming procedures, partly because of epistemological doubts about the status of the resulting categories. Grounded theory, discussed subsequently, derived some of its inspiration from analytic induction. By the 1950s, a noticeable shift had occurred in the social-scientific mainstream that could be summed up as a “transition from case-based to code-based analysis” (Fielding & Lee, 1998: 27). Still, a social-scientific substream – sometimes a counterstream – continued to use and develop qualitative methodologies. It was during this period that media and communication research began to consolidate itself, inheriting that dual legacy and integrating, from the 1960s, additional humanistic approaches to media and culture. Occasionally, proposals have been made for formalizing qualitative data analysis into matrices or truth tables. For example, Charles C. Ragin’s (1987, 1994) comparative method has sought to account for cases (social events, processes, or units) by tabulating the combinations of historical and cultural conditions under which they occur. The common denominator of most qualitative analysis, however, is that it stays close to its original Payne Fund studies – Chapter 9, p. 179 case-based and code-based research – Chapter 16, p. 331
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Klaus Bruhn Jensen data and their context. While a range of more or less distinctive techniques exist (see further Lindlof & Taylor, 2019; Silverman, 2018), it is possible to identify three main analytical types, two of which have been widely used in media studies.
Thematic and narrative analysis
consensual coding
data display
Building on linguistics, literary studies, and, to a degree, anthropology and sociology, one common type of analysis performs an in-depth and iterative categorization of interviews, observational notes, and other texts with reference to their ‘content’ (concepts, metaphors, themes, etc.) and/or their ‘form’ (narratives, arguments, turn-taking, etc.). An early classic identified narrative structures in African-American vernacular speech (Labov & Waletzky, 1967), and much later work has examined narrative as a key aspect of social interaction (Gubrium & Holstein, 2009; Riessman, 2008). By comparing, contrasting, and organizing narrative and other discursive constituents in categories, studies are able to abstract various conceptions of ‘the meaning of’ particular media contents, communicative practices, organizations, or audiences, as far as specific informants are concerned. In a next step, these categorizations support inferences, for instance, concerning journalists’ definitions of a ‘story’ (Tuchman, 1978) or the decodings of news items by different user groups (Morley, 1980). Some qualitative communication studies have relied on consensual or group coding of themes to validate their conclusions (e.g., Neuman et al., 1992: 32–33). Research has also relied on models and other nonverbal tools of analysis: Miles and Huberman (1994) emphasized the role of data display in the form of figures and graphics not just as a presentation of findings but as an integral part of data analysis (see further Miles et al., 2014). Perhaps surprisingly in a field that works with and through visual representations,
such approaches to qualitative communication research have been rare in the published literature. The increasing use of computer software for qualitative analysis, however, is contributing to more multimodal analyses. An inclusive understanding of categorical analysis is compatible, for some analytical purposes, with coding as performed in content and survey studies. In an early, but rarely cited, contribution to qualitative research methodology, Lazarsfeld and Barton (1951) explored different ways of transforming categorizations of empirical data into typologies, indices, and models. While inclined toward formalization, the authors highlighted the many varieties and stages of empirical data analysis; they also acknowledged the necessary interpretive labor throughout the analytical process.
Grounded theory The second variant of qualitative data analysis is grounded theory (Glaser & Strauss, 1967), which became influential in the social sciences from the 1960s as an approach that would legitimate an alternative, not least, to survey research. As suggested by the name, it is a methodology which assumes that theory can and should be grounded in the field of study, that is, generated in a constant interplay with the social actors and interactions in question (for overview, see Charmaz, 2014; Corbin & Strauss, 2015). Whereas media studies have rarely pursued a full-fledged version of the approach, the grounding of research in the domain of study is widely referred to as the hallmark also of qualitative media and communication research (for a discussion of grounded theory in the context of media and communication research, see Rakow & Ha, 2018). Relying on a constant comparative method, the grounded-theory tradition has developed a detailed set of procedures computer-supported data analysis, p. 305
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theoretical saturation
for collecting and analyzing empirical data. One characteristic feature is the several reiterated stages of sampling, analyzing, memoing, and interpreting materials; another feature is a stepwise process of coding data at different levels of abstraction. Most important, the assumption is that these sequences may ultimately produce theoretical saturation – an equilibrium of empirical evidence and explanatory concepts. The approach has remained disputed, however, on several counts (see, e.g., Alvesson & Sköldberg, 2018). The terminology appears more widespread than the practice and is “sometimes invoked . . . to legitimize an inductive approach” (Fielding & Lee, 1998: 178). For one thing, critics have questioned the apparent premise of grounded theory that a researcher may enter the field without theoretical presuppositions. In addition to being epistemologically dubious, the premise may encourage and justify researchers in not reflecting on the theoretical or social conditions and implications of their work. Instead, textbooks have suggested highly detailed procedures that
are designed to ensure a grounding of categories but whose origins or motivations are often not clear. For another thing, at least in Strauss and Corbin’s (1990) widely cited version (see further Corbin & Strauss, 2015), the analytical procedures tend to cut off social events from their context, as each event is analyzed, reanalyzed, and condensed in increasingly abstract categories. The uncertain status of the concepts and procedures associated with grounded theory was part of the backdrop to an unusual confrontation between the two founders of the tradition. Glaser (1992) attacked his coauthor for an “immoral undermining” (p. 121) of their original joint contribution, demanding the withdrawal of Strauss’s coauthored 1990 volume (which has not happened). In the end, it remains unclear what might distinguish grounded theory beyond sampling, comparing, and reflecting on evidence in a reiterated sequence, as conducted by most (qualitative) researchers. As part of a constructivist redevelopment of the tradition, Charmaz (2006: 135) recognized that grounded theory, in fact, has generated little theory.
ANALYSIS BOX 14.1 DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF QUALITATIVE INTERVIEW DATA In a study of the reception of television news by American men at different educational levels, the present author employed a combination of heuristic coding and discourse analysis to explore the experiential qualities and social uses of the news genre (Jensen, 1986). The heuristic coding served to identify references to a set of themes that had been operationalized in the interview guide but which were addressed at various points of each interview. Next, the different textual sequences were examined in further detail through discourse analysis. Referring to categories that are explained in the main text of this chapter, the following illustration pays special attention to the level of continuous discourse or argument. Of special interest at the discourse level are the following categories: • •
Generalizations – summary statements, often signaled by adverbials, conjunctions, and verbal or ‘do’-emphasis and by initial or final placement in a speaker’s turn; Substantiations – the supporting reasons, including examples, given for a generalization; cont.
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• •
Implicit premises – the unquestioned point of departure for an argument, either a logical presupposition or a natural assumption in context; Implications – what follows from a statement with varying degrees of certainty, depending on the speech community, the immediate communicative context, and the wider social and cultural setting.
At issue in the following quotation is the theme of flow (Williams, 1974) – whether the respondent carries over from another television program to the news. Asked by the interviewer (I) whether he does that, this respondent, a junior university professor, says: No. (I: No?). I don’t think so, because I have a real thing, when I was living at home my sister is one who just always has some appliance on (I: H-hm), and I really, something deep in me, I really dislike that (I: H-hm), so that, no, if I get up and if the first story didn’t catch me, or maybe even if I was done with that program I’d turn it off (I: H-hm) and not keep it on just because it had been on the hour before. (p. 177) The generalization – a denial of this possibility – is expressed both in the initial emphatic “no” and in the summarizing “so that, no.” However, two quite different substantiations are offered. The first reference is to a situation where the first story does not catch him; the implied premise of the uncompleted sentence is that if that story did catch him, he would, or might, keep watching. The second substantiation, perhaps on second thought, asserts that if the previous program had ended, he would turn off the TV. The disjuncture between the two substantiations served as one occasion to reconsider other responses by this and other respondents. One conclusion of the study, as also suggested by other research, was that the respondents aimed to offer an implication – to project an image – of themselves as rational and committed citizens, not least in relation to a ‘serious’ genre such as news. Presumably, they ought to select news specifically as part of their media diet. In the interviews, the theme of watching the news as a way of participating in political democracy tied in with other themes, particularly the feeling of being a legitimate member of an imagined political community (Anderson, 1991). In contrast, respondents found it difficult, or impossible, to account for news as a political resource with a concrete instrumental value. At the level of discourse, the brief quotation also contains the rudiments of a narrative regarding family life, specifically the respondent’s sister, with implications for gender-specific media use – and perceptions thereof. The narrative is constituted, both through grammatical choices and at the level of entire speech acts: •
•
•
Personal pronouns – a characteristic feature is the consistent and insistent use of “I,” a self-assured and self-aware position, which the respondent associates equally with living at home and with his current living conditions; Impersonal grammar – in reference to his sister, the respondent seems to suggest that she does not actively use the media, but merely “has on” a semi-autonomous technology, what is derogatorily termed “some appliance.” (It is worth adding that, also in his own case, the first news story is something that must “catch him,” not vice versa.); Metaphor – is not a strong feature in the example. Still, metaphors serve to emphasize the respondent’s distanciating evaluations (“deep in me,” “have a real cont.
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thing”). Similarly, the reference to media as “appliances” (and to a program “catching” a person) signals a distance between the speaker and certain uses of the medium. At the level of communicative interaction, the respondent reemphasizes his position: •
•
Turn-taking – the research design gave respondents the opportunity to elaborate at length, which this respondent did; this was one of his shorter replies. Here, he responded to the verbatim question, “If you were watching the program right before the news program, would that make you more inclined to watch the news?” It is worth noticing that the relativity of “inclined to watch” is canceled by the respondent, who instead frames a clear-cut choice, as signaled initially by a firm “no.” Semantic networks – a longer sequence, preferably the full interview, would be needed to demonstrate further interrelations between the concepts referred to. Still, the lexical choices, including various emphatic formulations (“a real thing,” “just always,” “really,” “something deep in me”), are in line with the respondent’s profiling of himself as a self-assured person – and a rational citizen.
Discourse analysis
‘statistics’ of qualitative research
The third approach to qualitative data analysis in media and communication research draws its inspiration from linguistic discourse studies. It is given special attention here because it holds a specific potential for redeveloping a ‘statistics’ or systematics of qualitative communication research. On the one hand, discourse studies offer a multi-level and multi-step approach to coding and analysis, including consensual and thematic procedures. On the other hand, it may avoid the abstraction and decontextualization of meaning that typically follows from grounded theory. One way of combining the strengths of coding and close analysis is to incorporate two main stages of data analysis: • Heuristic coding – a preliminary assignment of verbal and other codes to different segments and levels of a data set. Examples range from metaphors, expressed in a single word or image, to discourse studies – Chapter 6, p. 117
complex fictional or factual narratives. Heuristic coding allows researchers to produce a summary, outline, or working document concerning the elements and structures of the empirical materials. In later stages, this overview can support, for instance, an assessment of hypotheses and the identification of counterexamples. • Discourse analysis – a more detailed categorization of various data segments and their constituents. As exemplified in Analysis Box 14.1, aspects of both form and content offer relevant units of analysis, from a respondent’s use of pronouns in an interview, to the narratives constructed jointly by a team within a multiplayer online game. Discourse studies grow out of a reorientation of language studies, since the 1970s, from form and norm toward uses and contexts, including the uses of language in research. In his influential functional linguistics, Halliday (1973, 1978) identified three aspects of language use: the ideational aspect of using language to represent, and act on, our
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Klaus Bruhn Jensen surroundings; the interactional aspect of relating to others in communication; and the textual aspect of producing coherent discourse. Speech acts Although commonly thought of as representations of the world, all linguistic utterances perform different types of speech acts, accomplishing purposes in contexts. Orders will be negotiated within a media production team; journalistic sources may be offered a promise of anonymity in return for a statement. In addition, three lexico-grammatical or formal elements of utterances lend themselves to analysis as indicators: • Personal pronouns (I, you, one, they, etc.). Especially in reference to themselves, speakers’ (and writers’) uses of pronouns signal variable degrees of distance from a topic or opinion, and from other people; • Impersonal grammar. Through passive sentences and other linguistic choices, both media organizations and ordinary individuals are often less than precise regarding ‘who did what.’ In some cases, such agent-less structures may imply a view of the world in which things just happen; • Metaphors. Alone, in pairs, and in sequences, metaphors can serve as an organizing principle for a story or argument and hence as a key to respondents’ conception of particular phenomena. Interaction The interaction between two or more individuals, which is the point of departure for most empirical media studies, can be examined for at least two purposes. First, the gradual development of viewpoints, for instance, in a focus group, invites close analysis that traces the articulation and reworking of conceptual distinctions, metaphors, social relations, speech acts – Chapter 1, p. 15
and so on. Second, the researcher’s own role as party to the interaction calls for quality control – what is addressed more generally under headings of the reliability or intersubjectivity of research. In qualitative research, such analyses help to assess whether, in fact, studies explore ‘the native’s perspective.’ For both purposes, two categories can provide indicators of the nature of the interaction: • Turn-taking – a description of the structure, order, and length of the turns taken by respondents and researcher(s) (Sacks et al., 1974). More simply, do researchers listen to what respondents have to say? • Semantic networks – an examination of central terms and concepts, as introduced and redeveloped by both researcher and respondent(s) (e.g., Corley & Kaufer, 1993). Discourses Defined as meaningful wholes with narrative, argumentative, and other communicative purposes, discourses represent the largest unit of qualitative data analysis. In addition to rhetorical and literary traditions, a source of inspiration for this level of discourse analysis has been the study of informal argument (Toulmin, 2003/1958) and other everyday interaction. To exemplify, the actant model of discourse, which was developed from folk tales, has proven applicable to how people narrate and argue about themselves – the ‘Story of Me’ (Jensen, 1995: 137). The analysis in Analysis Box 14.1 illustrates the principles of all three levels. To be clear, the purpose of this presentation of discourse studies as a resource for qualitative data analysis is not to call for exhaustive formal analyses of interviews and other data as language. Instead, the analysis of language (and other signs) as discourse is an auxiliary operation reliability and quality control – Chapter 16, p. 342
the actant model
The qualitative research process
discourse as structure and evidence
terms, concepts, and objects
to better understand how qualitative research evidence arises from communication, with spoken and written language as the primary vehicles. Whereas many discourse analysts examine language as structure, qualitative data analysis emphasizes language and its uses as forms of evidence (Gee, Michaels, & O’Connor, 1992: 229–230). Verbal language and its constituent elements are key in qualitative research. Language enters into a trinity of terms, concepts, and objects of inquiry: In order to relate a conceptual understanding to matters of fact in the world with some degree of intersubjectivity, we must rely on language – in research as in (other) communication. Despite the centrality of visual and other types of data – found or made – language constitutes a privileged modality that can rearticulate other modalities (Benveniste, 1985/1969). Speech interprets images, but images rarely interpret speech, except in aesthetic experiments. Language relays categorical information that can be recategorized – restated and responded to – in ways that no other modality can. Language and its uses in qualitative research for producing as well as analyzing data are analogous to the place of mathematical and logical notations and procedures in quantitative research. Numbers have quite a different relevance for media researchers than they do for mathematicians but are, nevertheless, essential conditions of quantitative media studies. Equally, qualitative researchers need to analyze language, even though they are not linguists. Like many other interdisciplinary fields, media and communication research has transferred and integrated diverse methods; studies also frequently depend on additional interdisciplinary collaboration or the use of consultants from other fields. Quantitative projects routinely consult with statisticians; qualitative projects may involve discourse analysts in interdisciplinary groups or, indeed, as consultants. This is suggested
both by a growing emphasis on systematic and transparent analytical procedures in qualitative research and by the increasing availability of resources for this purpose, specifically computer software.
Computer interfaces Since the 1990s, computer software has come to be recognized as a practical as well as legitimate ingredient of qualitative research (Fielding & Lee, 1998). This followed a surprisingly long period during which such resources were commonly considered alien – and alienating – in relation to the qualitative enterprise, as if binary numbers at the machine level entailed quantitative procedures at the methodological level. In this regard, qualitative communication studies have traveled a trajectory comparable to digital humanities. A variety of software packages for the administration and analysis of qualitative data have been developed, including modules for the examination of sound, still, and moving images (for overview, see Silver & Lewins, 2014). Furthermore, their potentials (and problems) for both research design and theory development have been explored (Fielding & Lee, 1998; Kelle, 1995), including the uses of hypertext in the case of digital media studies (Dicks, Mason, Coffey, & Atkinson, 2005). Probably the main practical relevance so far has been qualitative software as a means of heuristic coding. This is in addition to the basic but essential function of documenting and retrieving large and heterogeneous data sets. Moreover, software facilitates the analysis as well as the presentation of materials in graphic, tabular, and other nonverbal formats. In a wider perspective, digital media can support several stages of the research process as a whole – from theoretical exploration, digital humanities – Chapter 2, p. 52 hypertext – Chapter 10, p. 202 heuristic coding, p. 303
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literature review, and project organization, through data collection, annotation, and analysis, to publication, debate, and collaboration with the various constituencies applying research findings. Not least digital media allow for more extensive data sharing and collaborative qualitative projects, which have been quite rare in the past compared to quantitative studies. In a longer-term perspective, the sharing of evidence and findings can involve not just colleagues but respondents, as well as policy circles and the general public. Computer-supported research facilitates member checks – conferring with respondents about the interpretation of data (even while conclusions remain the researcher’s right and responsibility). Digital media also provide another link from qualitative research to public and policy debates, which traditionally have been a domain dominated by quantitative research and arguments. One final perspective has to do with the publication of qualitative research pro-
jects, which frequently require so much space that they may not make it into some of the journals that typically define a field. Particularly for qualitative research, but for media and communication studies at large, a growing number of differentiated publication formats can serve both as ‘mass communication,’ disseminating complementary evidence and background information, and as interactive fora for theoretical, methodological, and policy discussion. At the same time, digital media may provide a concrete interface between qualitative and quantitative research traditions, addressing coding, analysis, and other shared categories and enabling interaction in the spirit of what, 70 years ago, Lazarsfeld and Barton (1951: 155) described as a logic of complementarity: “There is a direct line of logical continuity from qualitative classification to the most rigorous form of measurement.” Before revisiting and updating this logic in Chapter 16, the following chapter elaborates on digital methods.
15 • • • • •
Digital methods for media and communication research Rasmus Helles
a description of digital media as both objects of analysis and methods of analysis an elaboration on digital media as sources of data that are found rather than made illustrations of the collection and analysis of big data a characterization of digital methods as redevelopments of and complements to other quantitative and qualitative methods a discussion of ethics and data quality as specific concerns in the application of digital methods
INTRODUCTION Up until just a couple of decades ago, a study of the development of a political scandal in national newspapers would have required either sifting through stacks of paper copies or speed-reading smudgy reproductions on microfilm. Once identified, relevant articles would have been copied, read, and examined in detail, for example, by content analysis or discourse analysis. Today, many of these time-consuming steps can be completed through a standard computer, often in a fraction of the time: Digital archives of newspapers as well as their online versions are available to researchers through library portals. At least some of the work of a content analysis has become much easier thanks to the searchability of digital archives. And the analytical tools of, for instance, text mining can be used content analysis – Chapter 13, p. 273 discourse analysis – Chapter 6, p. 118 text mining, p. 323
not just descriptively but also heuristically to identify changes over time in the presentation of the main figures of a scandal, such as their degree of agency or the evaluative themes associated with each of them (Berendt, 2017). Simultaneously and importantly, digitalization has expanded the empirical domain of media and communication research: A study of a political scandal today would typically include the role of communication on social media alongside and overlapping with coverage in established news media, for which the printed paper increasingly represents a minor platform – if a paper version still exists. Both the advent of digital media as such and innovations in the methodologies for capturing their distinctive features have greatly facilitated the understanding of different types of technologically mediated communication. In this respect, the field of media and communication studies, like other social sciences and humanities, has benefitted from what amounts
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Rasmus Helles to a digital revolution in research methodology (Arnold & Tilton, 2015; Graham, Milligan, & Weingart, 2016; Snee, Hine, Morey, & Roberts, 2016). But the media and communication field occupies a special position because researchers here approach digital technologies as both objects of analysis and means or methods of analysis. This means, on the one hand, that theories and methods from this field may acquire added relevance for other fields and disciplines. On the other hand, media and communication research has also taken on board contributions from adjoining areas to account for the complexity of the contemporary media environment. Specifically, computer science offers methods for the collection and analysis of large data sets as key elements of different types of empirical inquiry into media and communicative practices. Across all forms of science and scholarship, it is, at the same time, essential to recognize that digital methods do not replace but rather complement and frequently redevelop tried and true methods from the analog domain. Apart from the new availability and (relative) accessibility of vast or big data, a distinctive feature of digital methods is that they lend themselves to a particularly desirable form of data collection: unobtrusive methods (Webb, Campbell, Schwartz, & Sechrest, 1966) that record events as they unfold, undisturbed by the presence of a researcher. Furthermore, several of the most commonly used sources of unobtrusive evidence, such as Twitter, can be considered complete, constituting what Salganik (2018, p. 21ff.) has termed always-on data sources: When dramatic events occur, researchers need not stage complex, ad-hoc data collection efforts but may simply wait for the drama to unfold and collect data after the fact. While the distinction between unobtrusive and other methods – and between data that are either found or made (Jensen,
2012b) – marks a difference in modes of data collection, it further draws attention to the different ways in which various methods can be specifically digital. The point is suggested by the traditional distinction between qualitative and quantitative methods. Digital qualitative methods, most notably in the form of virtual ethnographies (Hine, 2008), were an early addition to the methodological toolbox of the field as unobtrusive methods delivering found data. Since then, qualitative methodologies have increasingly come to traverse and integrate data from online and offline settings (Hine, 2017; Daniel Miller et al., 2016; David Miller & Slater, 2000) (see further Chapter 14 in this volume). Digital quantitative methods, in comparison, are distinguished by their specific focus on digital media forms. As such, they provide the main frame of reference for the overview of the present chapter. The chapter introduces and discusses some of the digital methods most commonly used in media and communication research, with a particular emphasis on their application to digitally born media, for instance, social media, websites, and digital interpersonal communication. After a capsule account of how digital data are created, transmitted, and stored, the chapter opens with reflections on two classic topics with added relevance and urgency for digital data: research ethics and data quality. This is followed by a presentation and illustration of methods for collecting and analyzing big data: social media posts, server logs, and other large quantities of information. The chapter moves on to characterize social network analysis and text mining techniques as exemplars of digital methods. In doing so, it addresses some found and made data – Chapter 14, p. 296 virtual ethnographies – Chapter 16, p. 334 research ethics, p. 309 data quality, p. 312
big data, p. 313
social network analysis, p. 320
unobtrusive methods – Chapter 14, p. 297
text mining, p. 323
Digital methods of the similarities and differences between digital methods and other empirical techniques, including their complementarity for further research. This is especially important because the technological and institutional conditions for doing research on digital media and communication are subject to change. Following a period of potential and promise for digital methods, substantial limitations have recently been imposed by service providers, entailing a de facto closure of access to collecting data at scale from some of the most widely used social media platforms, with Twitter and Facebook as cases in point. Not only will this shift curtail research into vital arenas of contemporary social, cultural, and political life (Bruns et al., 2018), it also reactualizes methodological debates about the kinds of research questions, empirical claims, and theoretical inferences that especially large-scale quantitative data could and should support.
THE CREATION AND CAPTURE OF DIGITAL DATA The potential of digital methods rests on the creation and capture of data that have come to permeate every aspect of private and public, political and commercial life in the developed world. As a local and global infrastructure, the internet allows for the simultaneous creation, dissemination, and retention of data on all sorts of human communication and other social interaction, from the most intimate aspects of personal experience (love or illness) to the most mundane activities (grocery shopping or navigating an unfamiliar neighborhood). Being digital, an exchange of information is always already also stored, typically in several places at once. Unlike a face-to-face conversation, an online communicative exchange, such as sending an email, can create any number of copies of the text being sent from its author to its recipient(s): A copy exists on the hard drive of the author’s laptop, on the server of her email service, on the corresponding
server of the recipient’s email service, and on his laptop. (And, if both parties use a US-based email service, copies are also likely stored on servers operated by the National Security Agency.) It is this distinctive feature of digital technologies that explains why digital data can be found with such relative ease, in large quantities and in formats that can be re-made to generate diverse qualities of expression and experience. As data for research, this output opens up a greatly expanded array of communicative activities for further analysis and interpretation. The digital revolution in research methodology, in short, is an outcome of the fact that digital archives have become as ubiquitous as digital communication. Even though it is far from all of these archives that are accessible to researchers, many are, which has prompted intense and still-ongoing efforts to develop adequate methods to capitalize on this new source of data. Along the way, researchers have learned that although some aspects of digital methods are fairly straightforward extensions of the existing methodological repertoire of the field – as illustrated by the introductory example of newspaper coverage of a political scandal – other aspects require more substantial and sometimes fundamental deliberations concerning what could be done but also what ought to be done with digital data. The massive opportunities for collecting, storing, and analyzing data on digital communication offer up several old and some new ethical problems and dilemmas calling for methodological innovations and resolutions.
HOW (NOT) TO DO THINGS WITH DIGITAL DATA Until the advent of the internet, data about the contents and uses of media and other communications were collected and stored deliberately and with some effort: Microfilm copies of newspapers were paid for by governments or universities to
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Rasmus Helles preserve sources for future historians and media scholars. Records of phone calls were used to calculate phone bills or (in rare cases) as part of police investigations. Similarly, data on mass media distribution and consumption were collected by specialized entities, primarily to benchmark advertising prices (Bermejo, 2009). These social practices meant that the data and metadata available to media and communication scholars were, for the most part, produced to be public: Newspaper articles were written for large audiences, and participants in television broadcasts knew that their faces and voices would end up in other people’s living rooms. This near-universal public-by-default status of relevant research materials for analog media has presented new challenges for online research ethics and has prompted important extensions and amendments. A key question has become whether online communications should be understood as texts or as people (Lomborg, 2018). The answer to this question might seem straightforward: A tweet that someone makes on their public Twitter profile is a text, voluntarily placed in the public domain for anyone to find. However, it is also obviously an utterance that a particular someone makes, and which in many cases clearly references them as a uniquely identifiable person. In that sense, a tweet is also data about the person writing it. Accordingly, it is an ethical obligation of researchers examining tweets both to treat the people in question with respect and to take the relevant steps to protect them from any harm that might arise from the research. If a tweet is on a trivial matter, such as the weather in Edinburgh on a November morning, assessing (and dismissing) the potential harm that might follow from including it in an empirical study will likely be simple. However, if the tweet is a response to someone writing about the problems they experience while trying to quit drinking (too much)
alcohol (“I totally know that feeling & know how hard it can be! keep at it, im rooting for you!”), the matter may be less straightforward. Was the person aware of the public nature of the comment at the moment of writing, or were they rushing to offer their support? More generally, is it reasonable for a researcher to construe the public availability of the tweet as implying the author’s consent to have the tweet included in an academic study and perhaps have it reproduced verbatim in a journal article or other publication? Such questions complicate established and codified notions of research ethics within media and communication studies, and the answers are non-trivial. Previously, informed consent – the gold standard of research venturing into people’s private lives – was required only when researchers actively solicited information from people, for example, via surveys, qualitative interviews, or participating observation. The instantaneous and pervasive storing of digital communications, for one thing, entails access to (more or less) personal genres of communication that were not available in the past. For another thing, researchers cannot assume that writing things on public platforms implies acceptance that it be later included and recontextualized in research; the imaginary person previously writing the tweet might be both shocked and offended by being included in a publication about alcohol addiction. This type of problem arises from the contextual nature of human communication and concomitant expectations regarding privacy. To address the issues at stake, Helen Nissenbaum (2009, 2011) has proposed a concept of contextual integrity, which sensitizes researchers to the complex ways in which research subjects may perceive the different kinds and degrees of privacy associated with their online communications. To take the necessary ethical precautions, researchers need to consider
metadata – Chapter 10, p. 203
research ethics – Chapter 20, p. 428
informed consent
contextual integrity
Digital methods
anonymization
not only the potential harms that might befall a person if their communications were to be included in a research project, but also whether the context of communication suggests that the person would likely accept its recontextualization and interpretation in a (somewhat or entirely) different context. Importantly, any reasonable doubt obliges the researcher to actively seek the consent of the people involved in the original communication. While ethical concerns are obviously important in all forms of research on digital media and communication, the kind of dilemma outlined here arguably takes on critical relevance for unobtrusive data collection (Lomborg, 2018, p. 106ff.): When researchers conduct online ethnographies or otherwise engage with the people whose online communications become part of their data (for instance, through interviewing), the research process in itself serves to remind researchers of the human origins of the data. In contrast, when collecting tweets or comments on Instagram, the data may seem to researchers to be ‘mere text,’ left in the public domain for them to find and use. The concept of contextual integrity brings home the point that such assumptions may not be warranted and call for systematic reflection. A further and equally important set of concerns derive from the technologies of digital communication: Digital archives, and the computer systems used to manipulate them, afford phenomenal potentials for aggregating and reorganizing information. A timesaving blessing, this capacity also introduces a new kind of curse that severely blunts an instrument which has historically been key to keeping research subjects safe from harm: The searchable nature of online information makes it increasingly difficult to ensure the anonymization of research subjects when texts and images, either of or made by them, are reproduced in scholarly work. The problem relates to both big and small data. For big data, there are many instructive examples of how large data sets from
which names and other identifying information had been removed could be deanonymized (Zimmer, 2010). When digital data sets are combined with data from other sources, even small pieces of seemingly innocuous information can offer important leads to an individual’s identity (Sweeney, 2015). Also in research working from small samples, anonymity is frequently compromised. Whereas the inclusion of verbatim transcripts of text messages or the reproduction of images commonly substantiate the validity of qualitative research, making empirical materials available also makes them findable. This digital condition reemphasizes the importance of obtaining informed consent and specifically clarifying to research subjects that they may later be identified by others through their statements. De-anonymization and re-identification are, in many instances, unproblematic when the research topic and the empirical materials reproduced are uncontroversial. But because practically any form of human communication and social interaction that can be conducted digitally likely also is, sensitive types of communication and vulnerable individuals abound online, inviting research. In cases where the potential harm is severe, it may be advisable not just to obtain but to reconfirm consent as the research progresses and as subjects gradually become better equipped to evaluate the implications of their consent (Tiidenberg, 2018). And in some cases, researchers may come to the conclusion that, out of care for respondents, research into a given topic or group of people cannot proceed, in part or in whole, on the basis of traceable texts or images. Such considerations are new to the field of media and communication research, whereas in fields such as medicine, it is a common experience that collections of highly relevant information exist (for example, the archives of medical records in psychiatric hospitals) but cannot be made accessible to researchers for ethical reasons. Across fields, the only
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solution may be to turn to alternative methods of data collection and analysis, even when these are not optimal for addressing a given research question. Beyond professional ethics, the collection and storage of digital data are subject to national and international legal regulation, especially when it comes to personal information such as names (or other information identifying persons), as well as information about people’s religious beliefs, political persuasions, health status, sexual orientation, or economic standing. These kinds of information are often collected as collateral or inadvertently. Nevertheless, legislation in different jurisdictions assigns duties to anyone collecting, storing, or passing on such information. A key example is the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) of the European Union, which stipulates detailed requirements regarding the storage and use of data (Council of the European Union & European Parliament, 2018). It should be added that data which are shared with researchers by collaborating businesses and other organizations (for example, server log files of email communication or intranet records) frequently include information that falls under the remit of the GDPR or other legislation. Given the relative novelty and evolving nature of the domain, researchers cannot assume that collaborators have a sufficient understanding of pertinent regulations and should always complement ethical considerations with their own thorough review of the legal frameworks that apply to a particular project. To sum up, the ethical considerations regarding research into digital media and communication are many and complex; there are no one-size-fits-all answers or checklists (Özkula, 2020). A helpful summary of key discussions is available in the guidelines for online research put forward by the Association for Internet Researchers (Franzke, Bechmann, Zimmer, Ess, & The Association of Internet Researchers, 2020). The previous iteration of these guidelines (Markham & Buchanan, 2012)
further contains an accessible list of questions to guide the assessment of a range of fundamental issues when planning a concrete research project.
DIGITAL DATA QUALITY The preceding section stressed the archival nature of digital media and the resulting issues relating to research ethics and privacy: Traces of communication that were not previously preserved are now widely available and constitute a particular source of concern. At the same time, the nature of digital archives poses problems because the data of interest for research may not be available. Most of the colossal archives of digital communication are not created or maintained to facilitate scholarly research but to make money. In fact, many of the methodological designs and analytical techniques discussed in the following sections were developed to facilitate the efficient mining of user data for profit (Zuboff, 2019). Large collections of digital data are valuable precisely because they can be used to infer relevant information about users. Such collections are typically the property of the companies that host them in their databases: Users give, for instance, Facebook permission to manipulate and analyze the data they enter (including messages, posts, and pictures) when they agree to the Terms of Service (ToS) in signing up for the service. Until recently, researchers could access parts of Facebook’s system via a so-called application programming interface (API), but Facebook, Twitter, and several other services have rescinded this possibility. Researchers wishing to analyze, for example, all tweets on a specific topic or hashtag for a particular period must now pay to access data sets (Perriam, Birkbak, & Freeman, 2019). This raises obvious concerns regarding the reliability and transparency of research, since commercial providers typically require researchers to sign APIs, p. 317
Terms of Service (ToS)
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obsolescence
algorithmic curation
contracts that prohibit them from sharing data in public. That precludes peers from conducting an independent reanalysis of a data set, which is particularly problematic if the findings are controversial or break with an established consensus in the field. In addition to issues of ownership and gatekeeping, the digital nature of the internet presents questions concerning the stability and reproducibility of data collected from online sources. Digital technologies constantly evolve, so much so that a common lifecycle sees a technology emerge, diffuse, and become obsolete within the span of a single decade. Adobe Flash (a multimedia player introduced in 1996) became a de facto standard for web multimedia from the early the 2000s but started losing ground to HTML 5.0 already in the late 2000s when Apple decided not to allow Flash onto the iPhone. For historical and comparative studies, the obsolescence of Flash and other standards means that many pages stored in the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine (https://archive.org/web/) rarely render well in contemporary browsers (Eltgrowth, 2009). A third challenge to the quality of digital data is the algorithmic curation of digital systems: The landing page of Netflix presents users with a set of suggestions tailored specifically to what (Netflix’s recommendation engine believes) they want; the engine may also be used to support the development of content for the platform (Havens, 2014). Recommendation engines are ubiquitous on the web (Cohn, 2019) and shape many of the digital resources that people access online, such as social media (Bucher, 2018), news aggregators, and search. Algorithmic interfaces are reactive, which means that two people accessing a system for the same purpose are unlikely to receive the same service and see the same content. There is a certain irony especially to this last limitation on the quality of digital data for research. On the one hand, news aggregators – Chapter 5, p. 104
digital media have been lauded for providing unobtrusive ways of collecting data on an unprecedented array of communicative activities, and in many ways, they do. On the other hand, the technological nature of this novel data source undercuts precisely the enhanced validity that is normally expected from unobtrusive data: While people produce their digital traces undisturbed by the presence of researchers, the algorithmic layer of the infrastructure enabling the exchange injects a new kind of uncertainty into the resulting data. In participating observation, research subjects may see the researcher and act differently as a result. In digital media and communication studies, the algorithmic infrastructure may see the researcher and act accordingly. The implications of algorithmic infrastructures for data quality vary considerably across different domains of practice and research: different kinds of digital systems and subsystems and different empirical domains of communication. The general lesson from two decades of digital media and communication studies, however, is that digital materials cannot be considered stable or well-defined textual objects. Instead, researchers relying on collections of digital materials need to take methodological steps to mitigate the consequences of algorithmically reactive data sources and to assess their influence on data quality (Ørmen, 2016), as well as considering how ownership, gatekeeping, and continuous change in the underlying technologies condition what can and cannot be known through digital data.
BIG DATA FOR MEDIA AND COMMUNICATION RESEARCH Big business and research ‘Big data’ is not a particularly meaningful term if taken at face value; it is not evident what would constitute ‘small data’ (Boyd & Crawford, 2012). In the business world, the term typically refers to large databases of the traces of user
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artificial intelligence data mining machine learning
activity in digital systems, such as the logs of user activity in a web store or the collections of call records held by a mobile phone company. These data are used by in-house analysts to develop complex statistical models that allow for the estimation (‘prediction,’ in industry parlance) of likely future activity by users, for example, the likelihood that a given customer will purchase a given item or that a Netflix viewer will want to watch a particular movie (Lobato, 2019, p. 70ff.). The emergence and application of big data have given rise to a new class of tools for data analysis, commonly referred to as artificial intelligence (AI), data mining, or machine learning, which perform predictive analysis of big data archives (Russell & Norvig, 2016). The rapid growth of a big data industry over the past decade is testament to the business opportunities afforded by such digital resources (Mayer-Schönberger & Cukier, 2013). These opportunities have been harnessed particularly skillfully by digital giants such as Google and Facebook through the specific combination of the affordances of digital systems for the automated harvesting of user data with the predictive capabilities of machine-learning modeling. The economic and ideological ascendance of big data, in turn, has provoked vehement criticism of the exploitation of user data, for example, through their aggregation and reselling by data brokers (Office of oversight and investigation, 2013; Roderick, 2014) – infrastructural developments which have gone largely unchecked by legislators and regulators (Cohen, 2019; Zuboff, 2019). From the point of view of media and communication research, the advent of big data has given rise to several methodological and empirical opportunities while also presenting some notable limitations and involving necessary precautions. Today, almost all types of media consumption and everyday communicative practices take place on some form of digital platform. Most importantly, and as a
consequence, metadata about the interaction are likely stored along with the data or content of media discourses and personal conversations: Your mobile phone carrier knows who you call and text, Netflix knows which genres you prefer, and Facebook most likely knows where you were and who you were with at any time during the past several years.
Sampling digital data Before the advent of digital methods, data collection was normally much more expensive and labor-intensive than after the digital turn. Representative survey research today costs a fraction of what it did just a decade ago, largely due to the improved quality of the online respondent panels which commercial survey agencies maintain. Similarly, as mentioned in the introduction, the collection and analysis of large corpora of texts used to require substantial efforts in terms of time and money, but as more and more of the materials on which empirical media and communication research is based are produced in digital formats, this aspect of research projects has become less costly. However, digital archives and other collections of digital materials call for alternative or complementary research strategies, which may not have been anticipated within the traditional methodological designs of the field. A key issue is sampling. Digital methods allow for the collection of data sets which, for all practical purposes, can be as large as researchers want. The difference is striking when one compares with the sampling procedures that had been established as gold standards for analog methods, for example, randomized sampling from a defined sampling frame, which allowed for statistical generalization (Bryman, 2016). The reasoning behind sampling used to be that examining all entities in a population was not feasible. randomized sampling – Chapter 13, p. 256
Digital methods In big data projects, the online collection of empirical data typically scales far better than manual collection efforts, allowing for much larger data sets. Indeed, including the entire population of interest is no longer impossible, at least not by default. It is possible to access content on some online services (for example, reddit. com and wikipedia.com) to collect complete archives of substantial parts of the content, even stretching back years. For newspaper content, databases are available in many countries through commercial entities (such as LexisNexis); for the content of websites, systematic scraping over prolonged periods of time may achieve fine-grained representations of their content and development. It cannot be emphasized enough, however, that no matter how big such samples are, they cannot support generalization beyond the population of entities from which they were drawn. A complete sample of the messages in a given discussion on reddit (a so-called subreddit) does not offer evidence or insight that can be generalized in statistical terms beyond that specific subreddit. This is in spite of the fact that the data sets in question, as always, may be interpreted and discussed in terms of theoretical generalization or as expressions of the dynamics of wider debates or contexts. Big data have thrown the relationship between sampling and generalizability into renewed focus. Studies relying on massive collections of messages from Facebook or Twitter may come across as particularly persuasive, in some cases because they include the bulk of all communications by relevant groups on key platforms. Examining data from Facebook on overlaps between users and messages on the pages of political parties and the populist Pegida movement in Germany, Stier, Posch, Bleier, and Strohmaier (2017) demonstrated a split between the topics discussed, on the one hand, by Pegida and
the similarly xenophobic Alternative für Deutchland (AfD) political party and, on the other hand, by establishment political parties. In a comparable study, Bennett, Segerberg, and Walker (2014) used a large database of tweets relating to the Occupy movement in the United States to substantiate novel forms of political organization throughout the dispersed crowds of the movement. But no matter the size of the samples, projects of this kind derive their explanatory value from their status as case studies (Flyvbjerg, 2006). Even when data sets on digital communication are massive in volume, span years of activity on a given platform, and involve the actions of thousands of people, the interrelations between the communicative events, the underlying structural mechanisms, and their implications for a larger social unit such as a nation-state (here, Germany or the United States) frequently remain opaque. To account for such interrelations, and to address the national or regional levels of analysis at the center of research interest in, for example, media sociology or political communication research, additional steps of theoretical interpretation and inference are needed. Analysis Box 15.1 illustrates some of the dilemmas of sampling digital data, with the music tracking site last.fm as an example.
theoretical generalization – Chapter 16, p. 343
case studies – Chapter 14, p. 291
Two-step flows of data The field of media and communication research was founded on the realization that communication flows in two (or more) steps (Katz & Lazarsfeld, 1955). Also data flow in multiple steps, being reconfigured and repurposed for both business and research purposes. The digital media environment, so far, has witnessed two different strategies for researchers to access data in order to ask and answer wider questions concerning digital communication, for example, at
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ANALYSIS BOX 15.1 SAMPLING LAST.FM Last.fm is a music tracking site, allowing users to log their music listening; track their listening habits over time; find, connect, and interact with friends and other users with similar tastes; and identify new music similar to their favorite tracks and artists. The site was founded in 2002 during the heyday of illegal mp3 downloads, well before the emergence of music streaming sites such as Spotify and Apple Music. The easy availability of pirated music meant that it became more common for people to have massive music collections, and the digital storage of the music in mp3 files further made registration of each playback through the last.fm service easy. At the time, this happened through specialized software installed on a personal computer (called Audioscrobbler), whereas today users will register their listening activity by linking their commercial streaming service to their last.fm account. The last.fm service allows anyone (through an API) to harvest information about the listening history and friend lists of users, just as information about different genres and the popularity of various artists can be retrieved. Since the service has many users and long historical records of their music listening, it presents itself as an interesting source of data about music trends as well as the dynamics of changing listening preferences. From a sampling perspective, however, the site has several limitations typical of those encountered for the study of other online services. For one thing, the site is opt-in: It collects data on listening by thousands of people, but since users constitute a self-selected group, they are unlikely to be statistically representative of any wider and independently defined population, such as the population of a country or an age cohort. Indeed, even estimating the nationality of listeners is difficult, as it is not mandatory for users to disclose this information on their profile page. For another thing, the site offers no listing of user profiles, which also complicates the construction of samples. Some researchers have constructed lists of all possible user ID numbers and have derived random lists of users from these (Charoenpanich & Aaltonen, 2015); others have used snowball sampling, identifying friends on users’ profile pages as a way of uncovering at least parts of the social networks of users (Pálovics & Benczúr, 2015). While such studies do provide insight into the users of last.fm, they cannot deliver statistically reliable evidence, for example, about listening trends in a given country for a given period. Because the last.fm user base is self-selected, there is no way to estimate how skewed it is. The data do not include systematic information on age, gender, or nationality, which might otherwise have been compared to available national statistics to assess a possible skew. The lesson of last.fm for digital methods is that large and publicly accessible online collections of data do not offer shortcuts to estimating trends in wider populations.
the level of countries; despite the wealth of data on the internet, researchers have surprisingly limited options in this regard, and none of them are free. The first strategy has been to rely on data types and forms of analysis familiar from analog
settings, adapting ratings analysis for television (J. Webster, Phalen, & Lichty, 2013) to encompass digital media and communication (J. G. Webster, 2014). Employing data from large online user panels maintained by a commercial data provider (Comscore), Taneja and Webster
APIs, p. 317 snowball sampling – Chapter 14, p. 291
ratings analysis – Chapter 13, p. 270
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Digital methods (2016) showed that linguistic and geographical factors explain the patterns of how users from a range of countries visited the top-1,000 most popular webpages globally. A central quality of this and similar approaches (Helles, 2013) is that the composition of the user panels in question is statistically representative of the populations of the countries covered (or to be precise, of the portion of those populations who have internet access). Unfortunately, the commercial nature of these panels makes access costly, which in many cases places them out of the reach of academic research. The second strategy has responded to the issue of cost, and has sought free access to big data that are already being collected by, but which are, in principle, the property of, private companies. From the point of view of the companies controlling these data, making them available online invariably involves balancing commercial gains against potential risks.
For a start-up trying to gain a market foothold, it makes sense to allow other companies and organizations to query its data, for example, to integrate snippets of information into those other websites. Such integration provides visibility and can help speed growth. The risk of making data freely available is that others may figure out ways of downloading the entire database, not just snippets, and to monetize it without permission or compensation. For this and other, less justifiable reasons (to which the next section returns), many large platforms have now rescinded the data access they once offered. Still, some sources remain open and can be accessed for research purposes. The main route to gaining access to data in two steps is so-called public APIs. APIs function as online access points that allow external users to query an internal database, which then returns the result in a machine-readable format.
ANALYSIS BOX 15.2 USING AN APPLICATION PROGRAMMING INTERFACE Few APIs have been intended or designed primarily for scholarly research purposes; most APIs facilitate the integration of various services in mobile phone apps or webpages, such as the inclusion of YouTube videos in news sites. For data collection, API use occurs through scripts written in the programming languages Python (www.python. org) or R (r-project.org) or through analytics platforms such as KNIME (www.knime. org). In technical terms, these tools enable researchers to supply lists of search para meters, which typically serve to construct URLs with a structured specification of the information sought from the database, which are subsequently sent one by one to the API, and in a final step, the API responses are stored in a database for later analysis. Different APIs operate according to different regulations that users must observe when extracting data, for example, limiting users to a certain number of searches per minute or a maximum amount of data that can be downloaded per day. To illustrate, the Open Movie Database (omdbapi.com) makes metadata for movies and television series available via an API; at the time of writing, it allows registered users to perform 1,000 daily queries for free. If you substitute a valid API key for [your key] in the following URL and paste it into a browser, the service returns information about director Lawrence Kasdan’s 1990 movie, I Love You to Death: https://omdbapi. com/?apikey=[your key]&t=love&y=1990. The URL uses a syntax of simple codes to relay the search parameters to the API (here, ‘t=’ for title, ‘y=’ for release year), and the cont.
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API returns the information in a structured format (often JSON or XML) that is easily parsed by a machine. The response in this case, encoded in JSON format, is shown at the end of this Analysis Box. It contains the database entry for the first film matching the search criteria and provides a range of information on the film. A defining characteristic of the JSON format is that it encodes both the data for the actual film and the names of the fields in the database from which the information is drawn. In this way, it holds information about the database entry as well as information about the data structure. This format allows the researcher using the API to reconfigure and repurpose the data through additional, local tables or databases. This way of collecting already existing data from various platforms and systems can support a phenomenally wide variety of research purposes. In the following JSON example, the API output includes average scores from different movie rating sites, which can be compared across vast inventories of films, together with their countries of origin, their genres, and their years of production. This functionality may be used (to attempt) to predict the popularity of a new (perhaps unreleased) film based on the popularity of other films with similar attributes (cast, director, genre, etc.) (Mundra, Dhingra, Kapur, & Joshi, 2019). The same functionality has been used (Williams, Lacasa, & Latora, 2019) to examine which factors might shape the career patterns of movie actors (it turns out that accepting just about any part is a better strategy than waiting for exactly the right one). In a critical vein, data of this kind have been utilized to detect gender bias in movie casts (Kagan, Chesney, & Fire, 2020), combining API access with text mining of dialogue contents from movie scripts (the bias is against women but getting better with time, if slowly).
The emergence of APIs enabled researchers to collect vast data sets from a wide range of digital services. A hugely popular instance has been the Twitter API, which has allowed researchers to query the service, for instance, for tweets containing a given hashtag or for the followers of a given account. The API functionality facilitates systematic data collection and scales far, far better than any manual copy-pasting of information. Studies relying on the Twitter API include a comparison of the dynamics of political
debate on Twitter and in traditional media (Jungherr, 2014) and a combination of a quantitative analysis of the flow of tweets holding a specific a hashtag during a political election with a discourse analysis of a subsample of tweets to identify their affective tone (Papacharissi & de Fatima Oliveira, 2012). The use of public APIs, and more generally of data collected from digital archives, while introducing new possibilities, comes with a set of constraints and pitfalls of its own. Some of these constraints are specific
Digital methods
data science
to the services most commonly used; others point to broader methodological concerns. One general caveat follows from the technical nature of the empirical and analytical practices involved. A certain level of technical skill is required to interface with an API, to extract data from the data exchange format in which they are encoded (typically JSON), and to transfer them to a form that can be analyzed. Each step requires non-trivial knowledge of the workings of databases, of network technology, and normally also of some scripting language (Jürgens & Jungherr, 2016). The necessary skills for this kind of media and communication research are commonly summarized as a subset of data science and include a broad palette of practices pertaining to data collection, data manipulation and preparation, statistical analysis, and visualization. Although many excellent guides are available both online and in book form (Brooker, 2019; Healy, 2018; Wickham & Grolemund, 2016), the investment of time required is considerable and comes on top of the time needed to develop proficiency in addressing general questions of research methodology (Nguyen, 2020).
A post-API era of digital methods APIs have highlighted decisive questions of data access. In the case of social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, the companies that own both the sites and the data they generate act as gatekeepers controlling who has access to which data and on what terms. Previously, access was administered liberally and only required researchers to register as users, so that the company in question could monitor its API, for the most part to prevent excessive use of computing and network resources and to formalize the company’s ownership of the data. Recently, however, the powers of gatekeeping have been exercised much more actively by companies, to the extent that academic researchers have effectively lost
access to the APIs of most major social media platforms. Restricted access followed the growth of critical research into the role of social media, for example, in political processes, fueled by spectacular cases of abuse of user information such as the Cambridge Analytical scandal (Venturini & Rogers, 2019). The new regime of access restrictions, sometimes referred to as the APIcalypse (Bruns, 2019b), entails that much of the activity on social media platforms can no longer be analyzed through research designs that depend on the large-scale collection of user information and user-generated content from these sites. The result has been that a range of specialized software solutions that had been designed primarily to simplify data collection from Facebook and Twitter APIs have been forced out of operation. More importantly, the critical monitoring and analysis of social media platforms has been shunted into a grey area. In practice, researchers now have to rely on alternative methods of data-gathering, one of which is web scraping (Singrodia, Mitra, & Paul, 2019). Here, researchers employ a digital tool that mimics the behavior of a person using a browser to access the site, and which then stores the information that the server returns in response to this artificial user input. Not only is web scraping a technically more complex process than programming an API, but more seriously, it may violate the Terms of Service (ToS) of the account from which data collection is conducted. Since ToS are legally binding, breaking them presents an (as of yet) unknown risk for researchers, who may face prosecution, for example, because information on the site may be the intellectual property of the site owner (Freelon, 2018). Also for APIs, the interaction between researcher and site involves a negotiation of rights and obligations, typically through ToS for the API, as defined by the site owner. In response to web scraping, many social media and other sites further employ surveillance
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Rasmus Helles tools that are aimed at identifying and preventing information scraping efforts, and which make it difficult for researchers to predict the investment of time and effort necessary to complete a project. With the coming of a post-API age of digital media and communication research, the documentation and analysis of communicative and other social activities on social media have been severely hampered. As a consequence, independent and critical research into social media has been constrained, which has already translated into diminished possibilities for uncovering and understanding the impact of social media on wider social and political processes, such as questions regarding the spread of misinformation, the workings of algorithmic content recommendations, and more. Indeed, the availability of information on the social uses of social media becomes radically asymmetric when tech companies retain data access and may continue to refine their analytical capabilities regarding these kinds of data, while independent researchers are excluded both from the data as such and from developing relevant methodological competences. In one sense, the post-API condition returns media and communication research to familiar territory; the virtually free access to vast data sets from key sources appears to have been a parenthesis in the history of the field. Today, many aspects of media and communication studies and related fields remain hampered by corporate secrecy and other practical limitations. While far from endorsing corporate secrecy, in retrospect, one may appreciate the period of free API access as the driver of a process of methodological innovation, which is currently being incorporated into the standard repertoire of methods in the field (Helles & Ørmen, 2020). The types of data that were collected during this period prompted not only an integration of new ways of analyzing data but a (re-)discovery of the sort of methodological open-mindedness
that has been a defining characteristic of the field (Karpf, 2012). Specifically, a renewed interest in quantitative methods, and in new ways of applying these, has been manifest. The tools that researchers adopted and adapted during the API period were necessary for analyzing large-scale social media data but lend themselves to other types of data as well. The last portion of this chapter considers digital methods as redevelopments of, and complements to, other quantitative (and qualitative) methods with reference to two enduring concepts: networks and texts. Social networks are found in small groups as well as entire populations, and many forms of textual analysis do not require massive data sets to produce valid and relevant insights.
NETWORKS AND TEXTS AS ANALYTICAL EXEMPLARS Technological and social networks As its name implies, the internet is essentially a network of networks, a fact with important implications for its technological infrastructure but also for the kinds of social interactions it affords, as well as for the analysis of how technological and social conditions of communication interact. The basic architecture of the internet is interlinked, as expressed both in the technological hyperlinks that allow users to surf between and among sites on the world wide web, and in the social relations that users form with each other, for example, on social media sites. It is all of these links that render the internet a prime source for studying the formation of social networks and the communicative patterns that simultaneously emerge from and maintain such networks (Rainie & Wellman, 2012). Social network analysis is a method for representing and analyzing the networked structures that can be identified and harvested in various online settings and from several other kinds of data
social network analysis
Digital methods
nodes and edges
(Freeman, 2004). The approach has made possible key insights into the structural dynamics of digital communication, and it is a core constituent in the analytical repertoire of digital methods. At the most basic level, networks consist of two types of elements: nodes, such as people, and edges, which are links between pairs of nodes or persons. In an offline setting, the students of a highschool class can be seen as nodes, and the friendships between them are the edges or links. Asking all the members of a given high-school class about their relationship with all other members of the same class will allow a researcher to draw a network from the resulting lists of nodes and edges. Typically, such friendship relations are in evidence not just in students’ verbal responses but will be mirrored in the patterns of their communications through messaging apps and in the intensity of their communications on social media (Valkenburg, Koutamanis, & Vossen, 2017).
The network in Figure 15.1 displays the friendship patterns of a high-school class, as measured by the members’ communicative interactions on social media. A common observation for this kind of data is that friendships are not distributed equally: Some nodes in the network (students) will have more relations (friends) than others and could therefore be considered more socially central. The number of friends within the class that a person has, is referred to as their degree. When visualized as a graph, the degree of a node corresponds to the number of edges which connect to that node. For example, the person depicted in the top right corner of Figure 15.1 has only one friend in the class, but that friend then has three friends, two of whom are, in addition, friends with each other. A key feature of social networks is that they normally exhibit a high degree of clustering. In the example of the highschool class, these clusters can be recognized as cliques, which have a high degree
Figure 15.1 Network of friendships in a high-school class, based on members’ communication on social media
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Rasmus Helles of internal connectedness (all clique members are friends), whereas there are much fewer connections between the members of different cliques. The full network in Figure 15.1 includes several subgroups of nodes that are more connected to each other than to other nodes in the graph. In network terms, social networks that exhibit this trait are said to have a smallworld topography (Milgram, 1967). The identification of such network properties is methodologically as well as theoretically interesting, both because they point to salient structures of the wider social world that is inhabited by the people being studied (which might form the basis of subsequent in-depth interviews or other methods, qualitative or quantitative [Yousefi Nooraie, E. M. Sale, Marin, & Ross, 2020]), and because the network properties provide clues to the kinds of communication flows that the network enables or supports, with implications, for example, for how rapidly new media or communication habits may be diffused throughout the network. Many kinds of digital data can be approached in network terms, and can be collected and analyzed through digital methods. For example, a highly influential article by Watts and Strogatz (1998), which alerted recent forms of network analysis to the small-world phenomenon, relied on data from the Internet Movie Database (described in Analysis Box 15.2) to show that movie actors tend to constitute clusters based on the movies in which they have appeared. Thus, action stars will make films with other action stars more often than with character actors. However, most of these clusters are interlinked by actors who span several genres (clusters); for example, Arnold Schwarzenegger has appeared in action movies with Sylvester Stallone and in comedies with Danny DeVito. This type of cross-over means that the average number of steps between any two people in the entire network is relatively low. The point is brought home by the website, www.
oracleofbacon.org, which calculates the distance (in films) between Kevin Bacon and another actor. For example, Marlon Brando appeared in Apocalypse Now (1979) together with Robert Duvall, who acted alongside Bacon in the film Jayne Mansfield’s Car (2012), giving Brando a ‘Bacon number’ of two. Even internationally obscure actors often have low Bacon numbers: The Danish actress Astrid Villaume, who only acted in Danish-language films, and who made the majority of these in the 1950–60s, has a Bacon number of three. Systems for interpersonal communication are especially ripe with examples of social networks, and they are central sources of digital data. The users of social media platforms such as Reddit or Facebook can be thought of as nodes, and when two users interact (for example, by commenting on each other’s posts), network analysts say that they are linked. In an early landmark study, Jure Lescovek and Eric Horvitz (2008) studied one month’s traffic on the Microsoft Instant Messenger, which at the time (before the age of smartphones) was a much-used desktop application for online chatting. Among other findings, the authors reported that the famous six degrees of separation that is held to exist between any two people in the world (Travers & Milgram, 1969), was 6.6 between the 240 million users recorded in their data set. The implication was that this network had strong smallworld characteristics, and that of the many, many Messenger users, very few communicated with more than a few others. In a later study of more than ten million Facebook accounts, Bakshy et al. (2015) examined how the composition of friend networks affected the extent to which individuals were exposed to different political content, including messages they likely would not agree with. Network analysis can shed light on many aspects of communication beyond the interrelations of individuals. At a structural level, it has served as one component
Bacon numbers
six degrees of separation
Digital methods of large-scale analyses of global flows of communication and other social goods (Castells, 2009): Where are the central nodes, and who is on the periphery of, or decoupled from, such networks? The concept of networks is at the center of a wide array of analytical tools for the study of digital media and communication and their local as well as global implications.
Mining texts text mining
natural language process- ing (NLP)
Text mining refers to a set of methods covering automated processes for the quantitative analysis of corpora of texts. While pictures and videos are obviously central to many forms of digital expression and interaction, verbal language or writing is both an essential mode of digital communication in diverse genres of interaction and a key constituent of digital methods. Texts lend themselves to automated analysis better than pictures; texts also offer a useful, indirect way of classifying the content of images (for instance, with reference to comments made by users about pictures posted online). Even if digital computers remain very far from reading and understanding texts in the ways humans do, automated language analyses offer excellent tools for the study of many aspects and varieties of digital communication. Natural language processing (NLP) is a subfield of computer science with a wide range of applications, which builds on complex knowledge of language structures and semantics deriving from the discipline of linguistics. Whereas NLP has many and highly useful applications, the complexity of both the computational and the linguistic models of the field is such that many approaches cannot be transferred to media and communication studies without specialized assistance. The most commonly used models in the broader field of text mining aim to identify thematic patterns in collections of texts, for example, content scraped from the websites of news organizations or NGOs
(Fu & Zhang, 2019), collections of tweets and comments on social media (Ceron, Curini, Iacus, & Porro, 2013; Pohjonen, 2019), archives of digital texts produced by regulatory or legal agencies, and corporate websites (Bruni & Bianchi, 2020). A common feature of currently applied methods is that they disregard the syntactic structure of the collected texts (tweets or news stories) and rely solely on the statistical analysis of word frequencies. These methods are sometimes called bagof-words techniques, precisely because they disregard the sequential organization of words in a text and instead approach each text as an unstructured collection of words. Although text mining amounts to a massive reduction of the empirical object of interest, the methods have proven remarkably efficient for examining large collections of texts. Compared to more traditional analyses of media and communication as texts and language, the text mining approach can serve as an extension, a supplement, or an alternative. As an extension, text mining scales much better to large data sets than traditional methods, simply because no manual coding of individual texts is involved, so that a substantial amount of routine labor is avoided. Text mining techniques, further, supplement other methods such as qualitative discourse or semiotic analysis, for example, by providing a quantitative overview of a large dataset that, next, delivers a sampling frame for structuring the selection of items for more in-depth analysis (Jaworska & Nanda, 2016). Finally, text mining can serve as an alternative to quantitative content analysis in cases where there are no existing theories to guide the construction of variables in a codebook.
qualitative discourse analysis – Chapter 6 semiotics – Chapter 2, p. 34 quantitative content analysis – Chapter 13, p. 273
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Rasmus Helles The terminology of text mining distinguishes between the corpus (the entire collection of texts under analysis), individual documents (a blog post, a news story, or a tweet), and terms (individual words). Following the collection of data via web scraping or through APIs, the resulting data set is processed through a series of steps before being consolidated as the corpus for analysis. This process of cleaning and preparing data for analysis is often complicated and time consuming and may need to make allowances for the specific conditions under which the data were collected. In a data set collected by scraping websites, a great deal of cleaning will be required in order to remove HTML codes that were inadvertently included by the scraping instrument, text snippets in the form of third-party elements (invitations to users to ‘Like on Facebook’), and so on. The data must then be broken down into words (tokenization), and so-called stop words (common words such as ‘and,’ ‘it,’ etc.) removed, which is done either with reference to a dictionary or through statistical analysis. Next, the data should be either lemmatized or stemmed – different strategies for seeking out the basic form
of words behind a variety of inflections. Stemming involves removing common endings from a word to reach its stem (‘stemming’ ‘stem’), whereas lemmatization identifies the basic form of a word through a dictionary. The two strategies often arrive at similar results (as in the example of ‘stemming’) but differ in important ways for many words; for example, ‘caring’ might become ‘car’ by stemming but will become (correctly) ‘care’ by lemmatization. As the example suggests, lemmatization is normally the recommended solution, but the strategy depends on the availability of dictionary files for the language(s) involved. Also stemming requires language-specific lists of common endings, which typically are more easily available. As this brief review of the steps of cleaning and preparing data for text mining suggests, the effort required is substantial. And each step presents choices and, sometimes, dilemmas that may substantially affect the subsequent analysis and hence the findings and interpretations. But, applied systematically, text mining offers another central tool for the analysis of digital media and communication.
stemming and lemmatization
ANALYSIS BOX 15.3 CALCULATING TERM FREQUENCY–INVERSE DOCUMENT FREQUENCY A simple but powerful approach to analyzing a corpus of texts or documents is the so-called term frequency–inverse document frequency (TF IDF) method, which identifies words that are distinctive of a given document as compared to the rest of the corpus. TF IDF is calculated for all words in all documents of the corpus and works by comparing the number of times a word appears within each document to the number of documents that the word appears in. Consider a document of 300 words in which the word ‘virus’ appears six times. This produces a relative term frequency (the TF part of the metric) of 0.02 (6/300). Our corpus is a total of 100 documents, and ‘virus’ appears in 5 of them. The inverse document frequency is then calculated as IDF = log(100/5) = 1.30, giving a final score for ‘virus’ in the selected document as TF × IDF = 0.02 × 1.30 = 0.03. In comparison, the score for ‘and,’ which appears 11 times in our selected document, and which appears in all the other documents as well, is 0, because IDF = log(100/100) = 0. The point of the TF IDF metric is that it helps researchers identify words that are frequent in one document and, at the same time, infrequent in others. Such words are likely to characterize the document in question. cont.
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Taking the chapters of this book as an example, many chapters mention terms such as ‘media’ and ‘communication.’ But, despite their frequency (TF), they get low scores on the other element of the metric (IDF). This means that their final score is also low – they do not appear to be characteristic of any one chapter. Table 15.1 applies the TF IDF technique to the chapters in the present Handbook, indicating which terms could be considered distinctive of the theoretical traditions and methodological approaches that are addressed in each chapter (names of researchers and other individuals are not included in the top-three lists); in several cases, one or more of the distinctive terms even appear in the chapter title. Note how ‘sampling’ is a key term for both Chapters 13 and 14, reflecting the centrality of this issue to both qualitative and quantitative research. Table 15.1 TF IDF analysis of the chapters in the Handbook Chapter title
Top-three most distinctive words
1 Introduction: The state of convergence in media and communication research 2 The humanistic sources of media and communication research 3 The social-scientific sources of media and communication research 4 The production of entertainment media 5 News production 6 Analyzing news discourse
Interactivity, sphere, press
7 Mediated fiction 8 Media effects: Quantitative traditions 9 Media reception: Qualitative traditions 10 Communication in contexts 11 The cultural contexts of media and communication 12 History, communication, and media 13 Quantitative approaches to media and communication research 14 The qualitative research process 15 Digital methods for media and communication research 16 The complementarity of qualitative and quantitative methodologies in media and communication research 17 Personal media in everyday life: A baseline study 18 Media industries and audience research: An analytic dialogue on the value of engagement
Feminism, hermeneutics, cognitivism Department, discipline, social-scientific Industry, production, trade Journalism, newsroom, news Turkey, Brexit, CDA (critical discourse analysis) Crime, detective, fictional Cultivation, U&G (uses and gratifications), agenda-setting Fan, decoding, reception Meta-communication, metadata, codification Postcolonial, globalization, subculture Mentalités, triangle, history Sampling, variable, confidence Respondent, sampling, interview Mining, network, tweet Abduction, induction, deduction
Situational, phone, friend Engagement, season, audition
cont.
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Rasmus Helles
Table 15.1 TF IDF analysis of the chapters in the Handbook
topic modeling
Chapter title
Top-three most distinctive words
19 Employing media-rich participatory action research to foster youth voice 20 The social origins and uses of media and communication research
Officer, enforcement, youth
A ‘frequentist’ or quantitative way of conceiving texts has been extended beyond the analysis of individual words in so-called topic modeling. This technique proposes to identify groups of words (‘topics’) that are likely to appear together in the documents of a corpus (for an overview of the method, see Maier et al., 2018). In an analysis of a corpus of about 100,000 blog posts from the years 2006–2014 dealing with surveillance, Elgesem, Feinerer, and Steskal (2016) showed how the revelations in 2013 by the whistle-blower Edward Snowden of widespread state surveillance by the US National Security Agency (NSA) changed the themes that were being discussed by bloggers interested in surveillance. While the NSA and internet surveillance as such were frequently discussed also prior to Snowden’s intervention, both the intensity of discussions and the thematic priorities of bloggers changed following the revelations, catapulting the NSA to the forefront of international public debate on surveillance. Another study joined an analysis of links between news sites with a mining of content from both social media and news media, thus combining social network analysis and text mining to produce a uniquely comprehensive and large-scale view of political communication across different digital platforms: Benkler, Faris, and Roberts (2018) detailed how the US media landscape and environment for public debate has fractured along partisan lines in recent years. With the election of Donald Trump as US president in 2016 as the political pivot, their analyses documented how deeply different genres of communication (traditional news reporting
Standpoint, deconstructionism, silence
and social media postings) are intertwined but also how, at the same time, the two sides of the partisan divide constitute structurally different systems of communication, with right-wing media organizations and social media sites articulating more explicitly partisan positions than the corresponding liberal media (see also Faris et al., 2017). As such, the study by Benkler et al. (2018) serves to flag the closing of APIs as a pressing scholarly and societal issue; a comparable study of digital media and communication as they relate to future elections and fractures of national and international political landscapes may not be feasible under post-API conditions.
CONCLUSION This chapter has reviewed the dual contribution of digital methods to media and communication research: Digital methods have provided ways and means of collecting and analyzing the traces that communication via digital technologies produce; digital methods also represent methodological innovations adding to and extending the toolbox of media and communications research through adaptation and redevelopment of established techniques of data collection and analysis. The chapter has devoted special attention to a range of novel big-data or quantitative methods, such as social network analysis and text mining, which have responded to the possibilities for research offered by the advent of the internet. Compared to the qualitative methods that have been widely applied to the study of online media and communication as well, these quantitative
Digital methods methods are distinguished by their focus on the particular data forms that have emerged online. While highlighting the potentials of digital data, the chapter also recognizes their limitations and the necessary precautions when researchers plan and conduct studies relying on digital methods. Sampling from algorithmically governed systems and interfaces, as well as the instability of many online texts, presents distinctive
difficulties. Moreover, careful analysis is needed of the ethical implications of any study, not least because the data that can be found online are frequently personal and sensitive to the people who originally produced them. And, the entire enterprise of online research is circumscribed by changing and contested economic and political conditions, as illustrated by the opening and closing of APIs for academic research.
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16
The complementarity of qualitative and quantitative methodologies in media and communication research Klaus Bruhn Jensen
• • • • •
an overview of two research paradigms that have informed media and communication studies a presentation of six levels of analysis, which are shared across different research traditions a comparison, with examples, of three forms of inference from evidence to conclusions an account of the concepts of reliability, validity, generalization, and probability as they relate to qualitative as well as quantitative media studies a discussion of scientific realism as a framework for methodological complementarity
SIGNS OF SCIENCE It is a basic insight of communication studies since classical rhetoric that language and other signs and symbols lend shape to human knowledge. The form is (part of) the message of science, bearing witness to distinctive procedures and purposes of inquiry. The prototypical social-scientific journal article, for example, implies that research questions, their operationalization in empirical research designs, the resulting findings, and the subsequent interpretive discussion can and should be separated into stages of inquiry and sections of reporting. In comparison, the equivalent humanistic essay typically moves more freely across the various stages of collecting, analyzing, interpreting, and presenting evidence and arguments. The two publication formats can be seen to mimic two classic communication models: Social scientists transmission and ritual models of communication, Chapter 1, p. 13
‘transmit’ their findings to the audience; humanistic scholars invite their readers into a ‘ritual’ of communal deliberation. The activity of research is itself a communicative practice that is conducted and concluded through distinctive ‘signs’ – verbal language, mathematical notations, graphical representations, and other meaningful units and processes (see Figure 16.1). Also scientific communication articulates purposes or knowledge interests (Habermas, 1971/1968), whether administrative or critical (Lazarsfeld, 1941). The signs of science bear witness to their social origins, contexts, and objectives. At the intersection of arts and sciences, the field of media and communication research has inherited several different conceptions of evidence, inference, and interpretation. Its conflict of the faculties is especially noticeable when it knowledge interests, Chapter 20, p. 419 the conflict of the faculties, Chapter 1, p. 1
research as a communicative practice
Complementary methods
Media and communication researchers rely on diverse means of representation and expression – in order to arrive at an understanding of the empirical field of inquiry; to share findings with colleagues; and to present the implications of studies to funders, stakeholders, and the general public. As recognized since classical rhetoric, neither words nor numbers are neutral or innocent. A case in point are the models of communication that inform and frame undergraduate textbooks as well as international journal articles (McQuail & Windahl, 1993). Whereas tables and figures are associated especially with quantitative research traditions, Chapter 14 noted how coding, modeling, and visual display are integral to qualitative studies as well. Throughout this volume, a number of verbal, mathematical, and graphic forms are used to communicate different points. In review, some of main types can be described as follows: • literature reviews and theoretical arguments in all chapters in verbal discourse; • conceptual models of a portion of the field, as represented in either graphic displays (e.g., Figure 13.1) or matrices (e.g., Figure 14.1); • analytical examples (e.g., the Analysis Boxes), employing both verbal language, numbers, and images to represent the object of analysis and aspects of the analytical process (e.g., Chapter 6 on news discourse and Chapter 17 on personal media use); • tables summarizing findings in terms of a numerical distribution (e.g., Table 13.1); • scattergram, indicating correlations between data elements concerning, for instance, opinions and media preferences (Figure 8.4); • time line, locating shifting technologies and institutions of communication in historical perspective (Figure 2.1). (Other common formats of presentation include bar charts, histograms, line graphs, and pie charts. See, e.g., Deacon, Murdock, Pickering, & Golding, 2007: 96–100.)
rhetoric – Chapter 2, p. 29
Figure 16.1 The signs of science
comes to the choice of analytical categories and procedures. This chapter suggests that the methodologies that constitute the field are different but equal. They are complementary, not reducible to each other. They may be unified, not in the first instance – at the level of minimal measurements – but in the final instance – in concluding a process of inquiry, in a context, and for a purpose. Departing from the received conceptual dichotomies that continue to inform the field, the chapter first notes the different and distinctive strengths of qualitative and quantitative methodologies. To begin
a more detailed comparison, the chapter distinguishes several levels of analysis, emphasizing the distinction between methods – the concrete instruments for collecting and analyzing empirical data – and methodologies – the theoretically grounded research designs that motivate the selection of specific methods and through which inferences can be made about the implications of findings. In the middle section, I return to the classic forms of inference – induction and deduction – and argue that a third methods and/vs. methodologies, p. 333
329
330
Klaus Bruhn Jensen form – abduction – though widely neglected in methods textbooks, has a special place in the process of research. In the last part of the chapter, I outline a realist position in the theory of science. The signs of science are all partial and preliminary. As communicated within scientific and other communities, however, they enable individuals, institutions, and societies to deliberate before committing themselves to conclusions and acting in a future perspective.
CONFLICT AND COMPLEMENTARITY Two paradigms Figure 16.2 displays a list of familiar conceptual dichotomies. The two columns qualify as contrasting paradigms (Kuhn, 1970), defined as particular configurations of ontological, epistemological, and
methodological assumptions about reality and how to study it (Lincoln & Guba, 1985: 108). At the concrete level of methodology, quantitative research instruments are considered especially suited to establish the recurrence of events or objects (e.g., a specific feature of media content or a particular cognitive response). Qualitative approaches, in comparison, explore the singular occurrence of meaningful phenomena, with reference to their full context (e.g., a film narrative or everyday media uses in a household). Defined as an indivisible whole, human experience calls for an exegesis – an iterative interpretation of various elements whose meaning and context may be redefined as the interpretation proceeds. In contrast, the whole of human experience can also be understood as the sum of its parts, divisible at least in operational terms and hence
Methodology recurrence
occurrence
experiment
experience
measurement
exegesis
product
process Theory of science
Gesetzeswissenschaften (sciences about ‘laws’)
Ereigniswissenschaften (sciences about ‘events’)
Naturwissenschaften (sciences about nature)
Geisteswissenschaften (sciences about the human spirit)
nomothetic
idiographic
erklären (explain)
verstehen (understand)
external
internal
information
meaning Epistemology
nature
history
causes
intentions
objects
subjects
Figure 16.2 Two paradigms of research
paradigms methodology
Complementary methods
theory of science
Methodenstreit
manipulable in experiments, whose findings are expressed in measurements. In this last regard, the quantitative perspective can be seen to approach meaning as a delimited vehicle or product. Qualitative methodologies, in turn, emphasize meaning as a process unfolding in contexts. (For a discussion of ‘quantity’ and ‘quality’ in social research, see Bryman, 1988.) The historical background to these different methodological perspectives was attempts within theory of science to arrive at procedures for studying society and culture, following the development of modern social sciences from the late 1800s. One famous statement of purpose was Max Weber’s (1964: 88) definition of sociology as “a science which attempts the interpretive understanding of social action in order thereby to arrive at causal explanation of its course and effects,” referring to both interpretations and causes. Interpretations may identify causes. Many current debates were anticipated in the Methoden streit (struggle over methods) of that early period, centered in German thought, which confronted historicist and naturalist notions of what the ‘facts’ of social life are (for overview, see Hammersley, 1995). On the one hand, one may search for one or more laws (Gesetz), as previously established in sciences of nature (Naturwissenschaften). One thus takes a generalizing, law-seeking, or nomothetic attitude and tries to explain (erklären) society. On the other hand, one may study one or more singular events (Ereignis), as associated with philosophy, aesthetics, and other disciplines of the ‘human spirit’ (Geist). Here, one takes an individualizing or idiographic attitude with the aim of understanding (verstehen) society. In information and communication theory, several related distinctions emerged. Media and communication studies have tended to take either an external perspective on information as a technical, neutral carrier of insight or an internal perspective on meaning as an always already interpreted construct.
These positions in the theory of science occupy a middle ground between concrete methodological choices and larger epistemological issues that seem ‘eternal,’ in the sense that they have refused to go away for millennia of documented inquiry. As such, they have returned, sometimes with a vengeance, in new fields of research. The media field has faced general questions of whether technologies and other aspects of matter or nature may be said to have determined particular forms of communication in specific societies throughout history. A recurring issue has been whether explanatory models from the natural sciences might be transferred, more or less directly, to the study of society and culture. Media practitioners, legislators, and ordinary users all bring intentions into their communications. Hence, it becomes necessary to ask specifically how – through which social structures and cultural processes – their motivated actions are coordinated, and become causes. In the end, media and communication research is faced with the fundamental dichotomy of subject and object. This relationship is both a constitutive feature of communication and a condition of all research. In communicative interaction, perhaps the key ‘object’ of interest is other subjects, as suggested by George Herbert Mead’s (1934) concept of the significant other. In empirical studies, the purpose is to describe, interpret, and explain such interaction, as seen inevitably from the researcher’s perspective, even while recognizing the categories of understanding that the participating subjects rely on.
Code-based and case-based analysis Most contemporary researchers will recognize – at least in principle – that their choice of methods depends on which aspects of communication are to be examined and on the purpose of study: The ‘how’ of research depends on its ‘what’ and its ‘why’ (Kvale, 1987). Clearly, different
331
epistemology
the significant other
332
Klaus Bruhn Jensen approaches are required to account for editorial decision-making practices as opposed to gender-specific employment patterns in news media; the structure of metaphors in newspaper headlinese in contrast to the coverage of a particular event in different media; and audiences’ decodings of, versus their basic exposure to, particular items of information. The two paradigms can be characterized, at the level of concrete analytical procedures, by their reliance on either codebased or case-based operations (Fielding & Lee, 1998: 27). On the one hand, codebased analysis assumes that, for instance, a survey response can be assigned un- equivocally to one category for analytical purposes. A classic example is the opinion polls leading up to a general election. The polls owe much of their predictive value to their clearly defined categories, not only because the options are mutually exclusive (one designated party, abstention, or undecided) but also because the act of voting (and of responding to a poll) is a familiar social practice and a cultural convention. On the other hand, case-based analysis seeks, at least initially, to minimize reduction of the data being generated, for instance, in a depth interview. Instead, the process of interacting with informants and respondents can be seen to carry over into the process of analysis. The categories of understanding and meaning are identified, redefined, and clarified throughout the research process as a whole. To exemplify, a case-based analysis might explore conceptions of what a ‘political’ issue is, in the media and other contexts, and how, according to respondents, this relates to institutionalized political activities such as polls and elections. In procedural terms, then, a code-based analysis relies on predefined categories which both disambiguate and decontextualize the units of meaning. A casebased analysis allows its categories to be informed and modified by their contexts – of data collection as well as of analysis – in an iterative fashion.
One particular issue that has continued to occupy, and divide, the paradigms is whether code-based analysis could, and should, gradually replace case-based analysis. This is the working strategy of a good number of projects and research programs; more controversially, it might apply as an ideal to entire disciplines as they mature. The qualitative, case-oriented emphasis of early social science has been explained, in part, by its preliminary search for “global, overall perspectives” (Jankowski & Wester, 1991: 46). In the post-1945 period, code-based analysis became established as the norm in the social sciences. By the same token, qualitative research was commonly assigned the role of performing ‘pilot studies’ that would pretest codes and, to a degree, develop theory. One question that has remained controversial, then, is whether case-based, qualitative research can be said to have an independent explanatory value. To clarify the nature of the disagreements, and to assess the prospects for convergence, it is helpful, first of all, to differentiate the several stages and levels of analysis which qualitative and quantitative studies share.
METHODS AND METHODOLOGIES Six levels of analysis Figure 16.3 distinguishes six levels of research, as associated with different stages of planning, conducting, documenting, and interpreting empirical studies of communication. The levels are described here in terms of their discourses or symbolic instruments – the varied social uses of language, mathematical symbols, graphical representations, and other media and modalities of research: • The empirical object of analysis will be everyday as well as institutional discourses that arise from social inter pilot studies, p. 348
Complementary methods empirical object of analysis data collection methods data analysis methods methodology theoretical framework epistemology
Figure 16.3 Six levels of empirical research
meta- analytical quality control
action in and around media. The relevant materials range widely, from organizational memoranda and policy documents, to newspapers and web sites, to readership figures and user responses. While some materials are ‘found’ (e.g., radio programs in a sound archive), and others ‘made’ (e.g., observations in a radio studio), each constitutes a possible source of evidence, depending on the purpose of inquiry. • Also in the case of evidence that is ‘found,’ the second level of data collection methods – from content sampling frames to interview guides – serves to demarcate and document a particular portion of reality for closer scrutiny. To a degree, the same methods of data collection may support both qualitative and quantitative research designs and analyses. (I return subsequently to the distinction between ‘found’ and ‘made’ data, which has taken on new salience for digital media.) • Data analysis methods cover diverse operations of categorizing, segmenting, and interpreting evidence or data sets. In addition, empirical studies typically include ‘quality control’: a
meta-analytical component in the form of statistical tests for significance or an ‘audit trail’ documenting the steps of a qualitative analysis. • Methodology can be defined as a theoretically informed plan of action in relation to a particular empirical domain. It is at this level that the distinction between qualitative and quantitative research belongs; it is here that the status of the data that methods produce is explicated and justified. If methods are techniques, methodologies are technologies of research. As elaborated upon subsequently, methodologies map theoretical ‘macrocosms’ onto necessarily selective empirical ‘microcosms.’ • Theoretical frameworks of conjoined concepts lend meaning and relevance to a particular configuration of empirical findings. Theories can be thought of as frames, broadly speaking (Goffman, 1974; Lakoff & Johnson, 1980), which enable – afford (Gibson, 1979) – certain interpretations, while discouraging others. Crucially, quantitative and qualitative evidence may be subsumed under the same theoretical framework: It is methodology, not theory, that distinguishes qualitative and quantitative research. • Theoretical frameworks are ‘substantive,’ in the sense that they account for a particular domain of reality, here media and communication. Theoretical choices, further, are supported by metatheoretical or epistemological arguments and assumptions. The epistemological level of analysis, in addition, provides preliminary definitions of the ‘object’ of study, as well as justifications concerning the nature of the overall ‘analysis.’ audit trails – Chapter 14, p. 299 empirical microcosm, theoretical macrocosm, p. 347 frames, Chapter 8, p. 169
data – found and made, p. 334
affordances, Chapter 1, p. 5
333
methodology – a theoretically informed plan of action
methodology, not theory, distinguishes qualitative and quantitative research
334
contexts of discovery and justification
Klaus Bruhn Jensen As suggested at the opening of this chapter, noting the characteristic formats of humanistic and social-scientific publications, qualitative and quantitative methodologies are distinguished, not least, by their ways of joining – and separating – these levels of analysis. Quantitative research tends to prefer a separation of the moments of conceptualization, design, data collection, data analysis, and interpretation. This premise goes back to the distinction between ‘the context of discovery’ and ‘the context of justification,’ as originally associated with logical positivism (Reichenbach, 1938). The argument has been that scientific research stands out by its procedures for justifying or testing beliefs, and that the process of discovering or hypothesizing beliefs is not part of science proper. Qualitative research, in its turn, holds that certain phenomena call for a research process that moves liberally among all the levels in order to develop adequate analytical and interpretive categories.
Remediated methods
data as found or made
The six levels of analysis apply to both qualitative and quantitative research and across different media and communicative practices. At the same time, it should be noted that digital media present new challenges – and opportunities – for empirical research, specifically regarding the methods of data collection and analysis. When the objects of analysis change, so does some of the relevant evidence; networked communications across the online-offline divide also invite more multi-method methodologies. Digital media highlight a common distinction between research evidence that is either ‘found’ or ‘made’ (Jensen, 2012b). In one sense, all the evidence that is needed for studies of the internet and mobile media is already there, documented in and of servers and clients, with a little help from network administrators, service providers, and user panels. In this sense, the system is the method.
In another sense, hardly anything is documented in advance, given the radically dispersed and locally embedded nature of networked communications. Joining the two extremes of auto-generated and contextualized evidence poses one of the key methodological challenges for current media studies. Returning to the six prototypical methods of Figure III.1, the two lower cells – content analysis and discourse studies – have been coming back in style. A wealth of information lends itself to study as texts and documents. For example, forwarding a news story from a website, subscribing to an RSS feed, or tagging a social-media entry, first, produces an additional communicative event and, next, perhaps proliferating communicative sequences. Additional meta-information or meta-data situate this information in relation to diverse contexts of communication: the origins of the information, its interrelations with other items, their interdependent trajectories, the users accessing the information and, perhaps, adding meta-information themselves, and so on. Not just the contents but the forms and some of the contexts of communication thus become available and accessible for analysis, depending on formal conditions of access, ethical considerations, and the sociological imagination (Mills, 1959) of researchers anticipating information of interest to be auto-generated. For other prototypical methods, as well, the line between what is made and what is found has been shifting. The most obvious case is digital or virtual ethnographies (Hine, 2000; Pink et al., 2016), in which the archives of social network sites and virtual worlds present themselves as ‘contents’ and ‘discourses’ for analysis. In comparison with the written and, later, electronic records of anthropological fieldwork, such archives provide a measure of real-time details, still to be complemented by other sources of evidence. Digital media, further, may give rise to meta-data – Chapter 10, p. 203
digital ethnography
Complementary methods natural or field experiments, akin to earlier studies of how, for instance, the introduction of television affected the lives of communities. For surveys as well as qualitative interviews (Mann & Stewart, 2000), digital media provide a research tool that complements, for instance, the (still-common) telephone interview – and a sprawling repository of data on the public’s lifestyle preferences and everyday activities (Hilbert et al., 2019). Amid legal and ethical concerns, data mining has become another standard approach to examining what people say, think, and do in and around digital media. The challenge of how to apply remediated methods to digital media is matched, or trumped, by the challenge of how to document the interplay of online and offline interactions in three-step flows – one-to-one, one-to-many, and manyto-many. To what extent do digital media either replace or complement other media for diverse purposes? How do digital media users communicate within and across public and private contexts? And in what ways do all these communicative practices serve to reproduce or reconfigure existing political, economic, and cultural institutions? Auto-generated evidence in computer systems is an instance of what Webb et al. (2000) referred to in 1966 as ‘unobtrusive measures,’ which avoid the direct elicitation of input from research subjects. Since then, the resurgence of qualitative approaches in social and cultural research (N. K. Denzin & Lincoln, 2018) has brought new attention to the merits of unobtrusive and naturalistic data. The practical question is how to balance what evidence can be found with what must still be made. The next and more difficult question is how to proceed to inferences about the place of media – new and old – in human communication.
THREE FORMS OF INFERENCE
natural and field experiments – Chapter 13, p. 265
Formally, only the deduction is a valid inference. Here, given the meaning of the
data mining – Chapter 15, p. 314 three-step flows of communication – Chapter 10, p. 194
Induction, deduction, and abduction Standard accounts of the theory of science still tend to assume that research infers either from a general principle or law to individual instances (deduction) or from the examination of several instances to a law (induction). The relevance of each for the humanities and the social sciences as well as for interdisciplinary fields has been debated repeatedly and fiercely since the Methodenstreit of the late nineteenth century (for overview, see Pitt, 1988). A third form of inference – abduction – has rarely been considered as an explicit model of scientific reasoning. While Aristotle had identified abduction as one type of inference (Florez, 2014; Hanson, 1958), it was reintroduced to modern philosophy by the logician and semiotician Charles Sanders Peirce in an 1878 article that related it to the other two types. His basic idea was that there are three components to an inference – a rule which, when applied to a case, produces a conclusion or result. These components yield three possible combinations: DEDUCTION Rule. All the beans from this bag are white. Case. These beans are from this bag. Result. These beans are white. INDUCTION Case. These beans are from this bag. Result. These beans are white. Rule. All the beans from this bag are white. [ABDUCTION Result. These beans are white. Rule. All the beans from this bag are white.] Case. These beans are from this bag. (Peirce, 1986: 325–326)
Methodenstreit – p. 331
335
336
Klaus Bruhn Jensen constituent terms, the rule can be applied without any uncertainty to the case so that the result follows as a matter of course. In the induction, the implication is that, if one examines a sufficient number of beans (cases), one may be willing to conclude that they are all white. Such reasoning appears commonsensical and enters into both everyday life and research practice. The point of the abduction, finally, is that it introduces a rule that may explain why one encounters specific (more or less surprising) facts, such as white beans in a particular context. The bean example is, of course, trivial. In other cases, the newly devised rule represents an exceptionally bright idea, as in Sherlock Holmes’s solution of crime mysteries, which are feats of abduction (Sebeok & Umiker-Sebeok, 1983). Also, theory development depends crucially on abduction. In practice, the three forms of inference are rarely found in any pure form in empirical studies. In fact, it can be argued that an aspect of each type is required to produce new knowledge. Take the prototypical social-scientific study of a particular attitude or behavior as it relates to media. Such studies depart from a relatively specific hypothesis that has been derived from more general premises of a sociological or psychological nature (deduction) and which can be tested against a large number of concrete instances – responses or observations of media use (induction). The outcome of the data analysis is a pattern of findings that may be only partly in accordance with the hypothesis, likely giving rise to the formulation of a new rule (abduction) to be investigated in further research. The original premise of the study, equally, might have been the outcome of a (more or less) bright idea – abduction. One advantage of such a combinatorial understanding of scientific inferences is that it leaves open the question of whether, or to what extent, research projects in fact conform to the received
models of either logic or methods textbooks. Studies of scientific practice suggest that they do not (e.g., Hacking, 1983; Latour, 1987). Another advantage is that this understanding of inference invites an open-ended consideration of which combinations may best account for specific domains and issues of research. All three forms of inference are part of the heritage of media and communication studies.
An inductive heritage Induction is a heritage both of the history of science and of human evolution. The human capacity for abstracting and generalizing from single events has been a key factor in natural selection and social formations and hence an instrument of adaptation and survival (Megarry, 1995). The lay theories (Furnham, 1988) that guide us all through the day hold important ingredients of induction. In scholarship, induction has represented a central problem for philosophers and empirical researchers alike since the Enlightenment. Whereas David Hume had noted, in the mid-1700s, that an induction from ‘some’ to ‘all’ can never, strictly speaking, be logically valid (Hume, 2006/1748), the inductive approach remained attractive throughout the nineteenth century, as elaborated, for example, in John Stuart Mill’s influential A System of Logic (Mill, 1973–4/1843). In the twentieth century, an inductive ideal of science rose to new prominence, and then fell definitively, in the shape of logical positivism. Taking its cue from Mill’s contemporary, Auguste Comte, and his call for a ‘positive philosophy’ that would be non-speculative and applicable to real human concerns, logical positivism developed into an influential school of thought between the two world wars of the twentieth century. A key inspiration was the linguistic, formal turn of
lay theories, Chapter 20, p. 413
induction in research and human evolution
logical positivism
Complementary methods
market research evaluation research
philosophy, assuming a correspondence between the structure of propositions and the structure of facts in reality. An additional premise of logical positivism was an absolute distinction not only between facts and values but between empirical observations and theoretical conceptions of reality. Any meaningful statement about the world would be either elementary in itself (reducible to sense impressions in a given space and time) or decomposable into such elementary propositions. Within such a reductionist understanding of human knowledge, most topics of social-scientific and humanistic research would fall outside the realm of science. As explicit epistemological programs, both positivism and inductivism are generally positions of the past. (Grounded theory still operates on inductive principles.) In the practice of research, however, induction still plays a central and frequently unacknowledged role. Most importantly, this applies to the mass of descriptive, applied, and administrative studies that inform and support the daily operation of the media and communication sector – which is probably the majority of all studies in the area, published and unpublished. Among the main examples are continuous market research on digital, broadcast, and print audiences (Webster, 2014) and evaluation research (Patton, 2015) informing the financing of media and supporting government policy decisions. Whereas the aim normally is not to develop or test particular theories, the findings are commonly taken to offer dependable accounts of the infrastructures and uses of media and are widely reported and debated as such in both specialized and mass media. Commercial companies and state agencies act on – base significant investments and legislation on – the resulting inferences and recommendations. the linguistic turn, Chapter 2, p. 38 grounded theory – Chapter 14, p. 300
337
A deductive mainstream The quantitative mainstream of international communication research, as applied for more than half a century to different media, is normally described as ‘hypothetico-deductive.’ Studies propose to test hypotheses that have been deduced from some general ‘law.’ In a first step, deduction ensures that a hypothesis is neither logically inconsistent nor tautological – which would make it irrelevant for empirical inquiry. If, next, a hypothesis can be seen to contradict or, more likely, specify an accepted law, it calls for further inquiry. It is deduction (from ‘all’ to ‘some’) that serves to predict what a study will find under specified circumstances. If, finally, the findings correspond to the predictions, the hypothesis is confirmed and may be admitted into a body of accepted and cumulated theories in the field in question. Importantly, confirmation does not equal ‘verification’ in the stronger sense associated, not least, with logical positivism. The hypothetico-deductive position, as associated above all with the work of Karl R. Popper (1972a/1934), instead assumes that scientists must seek to falsify their hypotheses. Only if falsification fails is one justified in still holding the hypothesis, and only preliminarily. Further studies, by oneself or by a wider research community, may end up falsifying it after all (which, in effect, admits inductivism through the back door in a multi-step process). What might appear as philosophical hair-splitting, nevertheless, has important consequences for what constitutes an accepted body of knowledge and for the research procedures supporting it. Most media and communication studies cannot unequivocally falsify or verify a given hypothesis. Instead, hypothetico-deductive research in this (and many other) fields is backed by measures of statistical probability: The ‘laws’ in question are ascertained in a stochastic rather than a determinist sense
hypothetico- deductive research
falsification vs. verification
probability
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Klaus Bruhn Jensen (Hempel & Oppenheim, 1988/1948: 13–18). But where do hypotheses come from? Popper (1963) himself suggested that they constitute bold conjectures, offering little systematic or historical specification of how they emerge. At least in the social sciences and humanities, hypotheses are, in part, a product of their times through a process of double hermeneutics. In a negative aspect, this may result in what Marshall McLuhan dubbed rearviewmirrorism: the tendency to define new media and communicative practices in terms of the old, thus cutting short their potentials and perspectives (McLuhan, 1964; Theall, 1971). In a positive aspect, focused comparisons of present, delimited issues, as practiced by hypothetico-deductive research, is one necessary ingredient of theory development for the future, as exemplified by one of the classics of audience research. Media as agenda-setters One early insight of the field – that the media do not tell people what to think but may nevertheless suggest to them what to think about (Cohen, 1963; Trenaman & McQuail, 1961) – was given conceptual and empirical substance by McCombs and Shaw (1972: 176) in a study of political communication: “although the evidence that mass media deeply change attitudes in a campaign is far from conclusive, the evidence is much stronger that voters learn from the immense quantity of information available during each campaign.” The authors, first, deduced a conceptual distinction between ‘attitudes’ and ‘agendas,’ and, next, operationalized this distinction in a comparison of news contents and voter statements. Their hypothesis stated that, “the mass media set the agenda for each political stochastic and other models of meaning – Chapter 1, p. 12 double hermeneutics – Chapter 20, p. 411 agenda-setting research – Chapter 8, p. 165
campaign, influencing the salience of attitudes toward the political issues.” To test this hypothesis, the study, next, matched “what . . . voters said were key issues of the campaign with the actual content of the mass media used by them during the campaign” (p. 177). To specify the test conditions, only voters who were undecided on who to vote for in the 1968 US presidential campaign, and hence might be more open to campaign information, were recruited as interviewees. In addition, these respondents were sampled randomly from lists of registered voters in a particular local community in North Carolina so as to limit other sources of variation, for example, regional differences in media coverage. (Following a pretest, major national sources such as television network news, The New York Times, Time, and Newsweek were also included in the content sample.) The concrete empirical evidence consisted in respondents’ answers regarding “major problems as they saw them” (p. 178) and news, as well as editorial comments during a specified period overlapping with the interview period. Each of these data sets was coded into predefined categories concerning political issues and other aspects of an electoral campaign. In sum, the analytical categories amounted to a mapping of conceptually deduced distinctions onto instances of political information, as offered by the media and taken by some voters, to some extent. Two findings, in particular, illustrate the hypothetico-deductive logic. First, the design aimed to establish causality and found that the media had “exerted a considerable impact” (p. 180) on the respondents’ perceptions of the political issues presented by the media. The coding of content had distinguished between ‘major’ and ‘minor’ coverage of topics and, in both instances, the analysis found strong correlations between media emphases and voters’ judgments (+.967 and +.979). Second, in order to determine whether voters might be attending to, and repro-
Complementary methods ducing, the agenda that their preferred candidates advanced in the media, a further analysis was made of those respondents who had a preference for one candidate (without being finally committed). Both for major and minor issues, the findings suggested that “the voters attend reasonably well to all the news, regardless of which candidate or party issue is stressed” (p. 182). The fact that “the judgments of voters seem to reflect the composite of the mass media coverage” (p. 181) again lent support to the hypothesis that agendasetting may be a general consequence of media use, at least in the political domain. In their discussion of findings, McCombs and Shaw (1972) were careful, again, to qualify their conclusions regarding the original hypothesis, acknowledging that the correlations did not prove the hypothesis. However, “the evidence is in line with the conditions that must exist if agendasetting by the mass media does occur” (p. 184). Put differently, their carefully deduced design failed to falsify the hypothesis. The agenda-setting hypothesis, then, presents itself as a more justified alternative than, for example, theories concerning selective perception (Festinger, 1957; Klapper, 1960), which would have been supported if voters had been found to attend especially to their preferred candidates. A more general lesson is that the weighing of competing hypotheses takes place at the theoretical level (Figure 16.3), not at the level of measurements, correlations, or other analytical procedures. Whereas the correlations between media coverage and voter judgments were indicative of interdependence or causality, the specific nature of this causation must be accounted for within a conceptual framework. Compared to the relatively familiar terrain of national political issues, and to the delimited set of print and broadcast media that McCombs and Shaw (1972) selected from, other media and genres, for instance, reality television, compli-
cate the question of how public agendas are to be defined and understood, and how they may be set. It is the nature of such communicative practices and consequences that the third form of inference – abduction – may help to capture.
reality television – Chapter 16
deep structures – Chapter 1, p. 13
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An abductive substream Abduction is at once a general aspect of theory development and a specific ingredient of qualitative methodologies. Since Peirce’s original statement, the relevance of abduction has occasionally been considered in both philosophy and other disciplines, including mainstream sociology (Merton, 1968: 158), where it has been related to serendipitous findings (Merton & Barber, 2004). It was reintroduced to interdisciplinary theory of science by, among others, Hanson (1958) as part of the post-1945 questioning of inductive as well as hypothetico-deductive prototypes of research. In direct opposition to Hempel and Oppenheim’s (1988/1948) “covering-law model,” Dray (1957) specified how historical events cannot be examined as a variant of natural events (which may all be ‘covered’ by one law) but require various other types of “rational explanation.” In another influential contribution, Danto (1965) suggested that narratives provide a model for understanding, and for empirically studying, historical events and human actions. Ginzburg (1989) identified an “evidential paradigm” in which, for example, Sigmund Freud and Sherlock Holmes were able to identify underlying or deep structures, respectively, in dreams and crimes. More recently, abduction has been characterized in research methodology as a strategy of interpretive social science (Alvesson & Sköldberg, 2018; Tavory & Timmermans, 2014), as one characteristic of qualitative media research (Jensen, 1995), and as a tool in software and other IT development (Ross, 2010).
abduction – in theory development and in qualitative methodology
covering-law model
narrative as research model
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Klaus Bruhn Jensen (Some work [e.g., Blaikie, 2007] further differentiates between abduction and ‘retroduction.’ Following Peirce’s position, this chapter treats abduction as a general type of inference that may include aspects of retroduction, which ‘works back’ from empirical phenomena to theoretical explanations of causes.) Reading as communicative practice Why do people use various media and genres in the first place? What, for instance, does it mean to read popular fiction, as far as the readers are concerned? And how can the act of reading be conceptualized and studied? The distinction between the native’s internal perspective and the analyst’s external perspective, and the effort of research at bridging the two – what anthropology and communication studies have referred as a balance between ‘emic’ and ‘etic’ approaches to culture and communication – was illustrated in Janice Radway’s (1984) classic study of women’s romance reading. Appearing at a time when popular culture was being revaluated in empirical reception studies for its significance and use value, the study probed the motivations of romance readers or users. Through audience ethnography as well as in-depth textual analysis, it served, for instance, to differentiate a blanket term such as ‘escape’ into additional categories of relaxation and time for self-indulgence. Radway (1984) summed up one attraction of romance reading in her conclusion that “it creates a time or space within which a woman can be entirely on her own, preoccupied with her personal needs, desires, and pleasure” (p. 61). A central implication was a shift of emphasis from romances as texts that offer a more or less escapist universe for the reader’s retroduction as research strategy – Chapter 17, p. 354 emic and etic approaches to communication – Chapter 14, p. 288 revaluation of popular culture, Chapter 11, p. 217
identification and gratification toward an understanding of the very activity of reading as a social practice that enables readers to position themselves within, but also outside, everyday life. Media discourses are not only representations of alternative possible worlds but resources in a world of everyday practice. Radway’s research strategy might be taken as induction: The categories emerged from – were ‘found’ – in the field. It is more appropriate, however, to describe them as the outcome of communication: an interactive sequence aligning the informants’ and the researcher’s perspectives. By introducing concepts or rules that would make the informants’ statements meaningful, the researcher was able to account for their experience not just of the romantic narratives but of the social practice of reading. Here, first, is Radway’s recapitulation of this main finding: In summary, when the act of romance reading is viewed as it is by the readers themselves, from within a belief system that accepts as given the institutions of heterosexuality and monogamous marriage, it can be conceived as an activity of mild protest and longing for reform necessitated by those institutions’ failure to satisfy the emotional needs of women. Reading therefore functions for them as an act of recognition and contestation whereby that failure is first admitted and then partially reversed. Hence, the Smithton readers’ claim that romance reading is a “declaration of independence” and a way to say to others, “This is my time, my space. Now leave me alone.” (Radway, 1984: 213) Next, the central and somewhat surprising notion, that romance reading is a “declaration of independence,” can be explicated in the form of an abduction: Romance reading is a declaration of independence.
reading as social practice
Complementary methods All uses of texts by readers to claim their own time are declarations of independence. Conclusion: Romance reading is a use of texts by readers for claiming their own time.
abduction in everyday reasoning
Whereas the first premise registers a puzzling fact from within the universe of romance readers (puzzling to the extent that the romance genre tends to represent women in dependent roles), the second premise introduces the conception or rule that texts are resources in the readers’ everyday lives. At the same time, the second premise can be seen to sum up a research process that had gradually articulated – abducted – a conception of the romance genre and of the act of reading in an iterative process. Radway’s (1984) informants produced new insight not only for research but presumably also for themselves as they verbalized their conceptions, perhaps for the first time. Abduction (like induction, unlike deduction) is a common aspect of both everyday and scientific reasoning. Umberto Eco (1984), accordingly, has suggested a wider typology of abduction: • Overcoded abduction is a basic form of comprehension that works semi-automatically. “When someone utters /man/, I must first assume that this utterance is the token of a type of English word” (Eco, 1984: 41). No complex inference is needed to establish the fact that people speak differ ent languages and that English is the appropriate choice in context. • In performing an undercoded abduction, however, one must choose between several possible interpretations of a word or statement. In Eco’s words, “when one utters /this is a man/, we have to decide whether one says that this is a rational animal, a mortal creature, or a good example of virility, and so on” (p. 42).
• Creative abduction, finally, occurs when the very rule of interpretation has to be invented for the specific purpose, for example, in the case of poetic language, as found in poetry, jokes, and advertising. In science, Darwin’s interpretation of humans as one animal within the evolutionary chain was an (unusually) creative abduction. (On typologies of abduction, see further Hoffmann, 2010; McAuliffe, 2015.) By recognizing abduction as an innovative component of diverse traditions of inquiry, and by relating it to deduction and induction, research is in a better position to consider the potential combination of various forms of inference for different purposes of communication study. The hypotheses of quantitative projects can be understood as the outcome of undercoded abductions that articulate new configurations of explanatory concepts from earlier studies. Qualitative projects, in comparison, perform sequences or, perhaps, networks of undercoded abductions which, ideally, accumulate as a consolidated interpretive framework. In qualitative as well as quantitative methodologies, overcoded abduction enters into the administration of already familiar analytical categories and procedures. Creative abduction, last, is the kind of unusual event and scarce resource that all traditions might hope to produce at least once in a while: the operationalization of an innovative hypothesis (agenda-setting) and the explorative establishment of an unrecognized meaning of media use (reading the romance). Media and communication research needs all the inferences it can devise in order to understand a complex media environment. The inductive monitoring of technologies, institutions, and users by commercial as well as public agencies provides indispensable baseline information. Hypothetico-deductive studies contribute focused comparisons of established and emerging media. Abductive research
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Klaus Bruhn Jensen probes definitions and delimitations of what constitutes new and old media, genres, communicative practices, and contexts of use simultaneously from the perspective of native users and researchers. In each case, studies seek to arrive at conclusions that will be accepted – in some sense, by some audience, and for some purpose – as valid, reliable, and general.
UNIFICATION IN THE FINAL INSTANCE Validity and reliability reconsidered
reliability
A final stage of most research projects – supporting their primary analytical operations and inferences – is to perform and present various types of ‘quality control.’ The purpose is to assess analyses and conclusions according to the standards invoked by the study itself and, in a next step, to make both the standards and the findings accessible for collegial, public scrutiny. Through categories of validity and reliability, quantitative research has provided an elaborate set of measures and procedures for evaluating empirical findings and inferences (Blaikie, 2003). At the same time, the specific techniques have been perceived as less relevant to the concerns of qualitative research (Kirk & Miller, 1986). In some cases, qualitative researchers have proposed new terminologies which would recognize the processual and contextual nature of qualitative research, for instance, trustworthiness, credibility, dependability, transferability, and confirmability (Lincoln & Guba, 1985). Such alternative terminologies have not taken hold, however, certainly in media studies. Instead, the conceptual and operational definitions of ‘validity’ and ‘reliability’ may be reconsidered and extended. In brief, reliability addresses the consistency of descriptions and interpretations over time, typically in the form of
repeated measurements. In the example from agenda-setting research previously (McCombs & Shaw, 1972), the intersubjective agreement of coders was expressed in a measure of intercoder reliability (in this case above .90, indicating a high reliability of the coding procedures). Validity, in turn, addresses the extent to which a research ‘instrument’ measures what it was intended or is claimed to measure – all research aims for truth in some such sense. A further distinction is made between internal validity (evaluating the consistency of the concepts and procedures being applied) and external validity (assessing whether the findings from one context generalize to other contexts or populations). In the agenda-setting example, both the conception of ‘agenda’ and the relationship between the community studied and the larger electorate were considered. Validity and reliability have traditionally been expressed as summary measures in mathematical notations. In comparison, qualitative researchers have called for a more continuous and contextual assessment both of the research process and of its outcome – validation rather than, or in addition to, measures of validity (e.g., Brinkmann & Kvale, 2015). Figure 16.4 outlines a model in which to address this balance. Reliability, first of all, can be said to concern the intersubjective component
validity – internal and external
validation and/ vs. validity measures
reliability subject
signs
signs
subject
signs
object
Figure 16.4 Dimensions of validity and reliability
validity
Complementary methods
member checks
of research generally. Intersubjectivity is established not only by comparing minimal measurements in the early stages of a study but also by examining emerging findings, forms of documentation, and issues of interpretation. To exemplify, whereas two independent coders categorizing the same data set is standard procedure in quantitative research, intercoder reliability can also be ensured, for example, by consensual coding in a research group (e.g., Neuman et al., 1992). Moreover, informants contribute to reliability through several waves of interviewing and by ‘member checks,’ as employed in Radway’s (1984) study of romance reading. Also after the conclusion of the research process proper, reliability remains an issue. The collegial discussion of findings, the reanalysis of data, and the social uses of both single studies and research programs all converge on very practical questions such as, ‘How certain can we be – in order to do what?’ Validity, equally, opens onto wider scientific as well as social issues. Compared to quantitative measures of validity, qualitative studies typically emphasize the internal validity of their categories in context, whereas an assessment of external validity must refer to additional cases, larger samples, or multimethod designs. This raises the larger issue of generalization. Is there one or several kinds of generalization – how does one generalize about generalization?
Generalizing about generalization
empirical and/ vs. theoretical generalization
Whereas it is common to suggest that only the findings of quantitative research can be generalized, the literature on methodology and theory of science recognizes two different conceptions of ‘generalization’ (e.g., Yin, 2013). Empirical or statistical generalization refers to the capacity of quantitative methodologies to apply predefined (hypothetically deduced) categories to a representative set of empirical instances, thus supporting external
validity. Theoretical or analytical generalization refers to the articulation (abduction) of new concepts or categories, typically in qualitative inquiry, that conceive empirical instances in a more consistent or insightful manner, thus giving priority to internal validity. While the two forms of generalization might be taken as instances of a division of labor between qualitative and quantitative methodologies, both perspectives are relevant for an assessment of the findings and insights of both qualitative and quantitative studies. The complexity of distinguishing between the two aspects of generalization has been reflected in debates over the concept of probability. More or less probable claims can be considered more or less general. In a historical analysis, the philosopher Ian Hacking (1975) concluded that ‘probability’ gradually acquired an ambiguous meaning in modern philosophy and empirical sciences. Two distinct meanings were conflated: • Stochastic probability has to do with stable relative frequencies, as established by statistical procedures. Here, the purpose is to rule out, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the particular configuration of empirical findings could have occurred by chance fluctuations or random error (the so-called null hypothesis). • Epistemological probability, in comparison, concerns “the degree of belief warranted by evidence” (Hacking, 1975: 1). Here, the concept of probability refers to the human knowledge of events and to the underlying mechanisms to which measures and frequencies bear witness. The implication of the distinction is sometimes summed up in the dictum that, ‘correlation does not equal causation.’ In other words, statistical measurements of correlation do not in themselves warrant conclusions about causality and other types of interdependence.
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signs make reality researchable and communicable
Klaus Bruhn Jensen Relating Hacking’s (1975) historical analysis to contemporary communication studies, Ritchie (1999) suggested that much empirical research has failed on this crucial point. The slippage occurs when “the statistical probabilities associated with the null hypothesis are . . . used to support inferences about the epistemological probabilities of a preferred interpretation” (p. 7). Put differently, the fact that the null hypothesis, which assumes random findings, is sufficiently improbable (statistically) is mistaken for evidence that a specific alternative hypothesis, namely the one deduced at the outset of a study, is (more) probable (epistemologically). The logic of hypothesis testing thus may invite a confounding of two separate levels of scientific analysis and argument. In sum, Figure 16.4 conceives research as a communicative practice that depends on ‘signs’ – research instruments, analytical procedures, means of documentation – which enable researchers as ‘subjects’ to engage their ‘objects’ of analysis according to specified procedures and explicated purposes. Such diverse signs make reality researchable and communicable. In media and communication studies, the objects of analysis include subjects who contribute interpretations of themselves, their media, and their communicative practices. General findings constitute information that, having been communicated about, individuals, institutions, and entire societies may be prepared to act on. In pragmatist terminology (Thomas & Thomas, 1928: 572), general findings are real in their consequences.
Realism reasserted Realism has experienced a resurgence as a position in recent theory of science. Pavitt (1999), for one, suggested not only that it is the dominant position but also that it informs the practice of much current media and communication research. As noted in Pavitt’s overview, two prototypical positions of ‘logical empiricism’
(from logical positivism through Karl R. Popper) and constructivist ‘perspectivism’ (from Thomas Kuhn’s (1970) account of conflicting paradigms to postmodernism) have sometimes been perceived as absolute opposites or as the two legs of an unresolvable dilemma. Kuhn himself was less categorical about the incommensurability of paradigms than sometimes appears from textbooks; in his later work, he addressed the potentials for translating between and learning several ‘languages’ of research (Conant & Haugeland, 2000). Realism presents itself as a third position and a framework accommodating multiple types of evidence and inference, interpretation and explanation, as also suggested by other recent reference works in the media and communication field (Deacon et al., 2007; Schrøder et al., 2003). Whereas different variants of realism have developed, the implications for media and communication research can be laid out with reference to the work of Roy Bhaskar (1979) (see further Archer, Bhaskar, Collier, Lawson, & Norrie, 1998; Danermark, Ekström, & Karlsson, 2019). His critical realism departs from three main premises: • Ontological realism. Rejecting skepticist and nominalist positions, which have held, respectively, that no human knowledge of reality is possible and that reality is nothing but the sum of our descriptions of it, realism reverses the burden of proof. Doubts about any and all aspects of reality must be justified. Realism approaches reality as a limit condition or regulatory ideal – what we must assume in order to account for the diverse natural and cultural phenomena that manifest themselves to the individual and which we share in communication, in science, and in everyday interaction. The proof of reality is in our interactions with and interventions into it (Hacking, 1983).
critical realism
Complementary methods • Epistemological relativism. From a moderately constructivist position, realism assumes that knowledge of nature, culture, and other minds depends on sequences of perceptions, cognitions, and inferences, all of which may be questioned, rejected, or revised – communicated about – for any number of reasons. Relativism does not entail that “anything goes” (Feyerabend, 1975) but rather that several things may go together in unexpected ways according to informed and reflected judgments. • Judgmental rationality. Like other social practices, science depends on the exercise of rationality which, at some point, must end in (fallible) judgments and conclusions about what to do next. In the meantime, the business of individual scholars and scientific communities is to compare and contrast alternative accounts of reality with reference to as wide a range of means of representing, interpreting, and intervening into it as theoretically and practically possible. Considering the classic issue of how human subjects relate to their objects of inquiry, Bhaskar questioned a persistent and presumptuous anthropocentrism in philosophy and theory of science: “Copernicus argued that the universe does not revolve around man. And yet in philosophy we still represent things as if it did” (cited in Archer et al., 1998: 45). Logical positivism, for one, proposed to reduce reality – the reality that can be legitimately studied by science – to what is immediately accessible to the human senses. Realism, instead, allows for a differentiated reality of entities, events, and emergents – which may, or may not, prove accessible to humans through information and inference, immediately or by media still to be imagined or invented. With one of Bhaskar’s terms, reality is, in logical positivism, p. 336
grammatical terms, ‘intransitive’: It does not take – does not need – a human subject. Material reality, such as optical fibers, does not communicate to or with us but is made transitive by humans in and for communication. Reality, further, is ‘transfactual’: Facts of several kinds exist – fiber optics, local email exchanges, and the internet as a global institution. And reality is ‘stratified’: Fibers, emails, and the internet are not reducible to each other, nor do they constitute separate realities. A diversified and distributed reality calls for an appropriately diversified set of methodologies. In methodological terms, critical realism relies on a distinction between three domains of reality (Bhaskar, 1979) (Figure 16.5): • The empirical domain is the source of concrete evidence – experience of the world. By describing and documenting, for example, the concrete verbal expressions and images by which social-media users present themselves to family, friends, acquaintances, and anonymous visitors, media studies procure a necessary, though far from sufficient, condition for interpreting and explaining many-to-many communications. • The actual status of this information is matter of inference. It is by characterizing and conceptualizing empirical materials as evidence of particular events (e.g., private life transitions or political arguments) that one may infer their status as instances of particular social practices and institutions. • The domain of the real is more inclusive than either the empirical or the actual. Research seeks to establish, for example, psychological and sociological mechanisms of a ‘general’ nature – in some sense of the word – that may account for the events in question (e.g., cultural conventions, legal frameworks, technical protocols).
generalization, p. 343
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Klaus Bruhn Jensen The real The actual The empirical
Experiences x Events x Mechanisms x
x x
x
Figure 16.5 Three domains of reality
Importantly, experiences, events, and mechanisms are all real. Experiences may seem to ‘push’ themselves upon researchers as evidence of events. One task of scholarship is to mount a countervailing ‘pull’ – to infer underlying events and mechanisms through a great deal of methodological and theoretical labor. This realist framework is of particular interest in the perspective of methodological convergence. It suggests that while different empirical procedures (e.g., experiments or depth interviews) focus on and, in a sense, privilege specific kinds of events (e.g., either the recall or the decoding of media content), they nevertheless may bear witness to the same, similar, or related mechanisms. Instead of engaging in paradigmatic conflicts over a singular definition of the empirical domain of inquiry, a realist strategy thus proposes to tap the full range of experiences of reality and to take advantage of several methodologies in order to examine different aspects of media and communication. All empirical research necessarily examines an empirical ‘microcosm’ with reference to a theoretical ‘macrocosm’ (for a history of these concepts in social research, see Alexander & Giesen, 1987). Qualitative and quantitative methodologies are defined, in part, by their conceptions of and approaches to empirical microcosms. Figure 16.6 indicates (top right corner) how the populations and samples of the prototypical quantitative project make up two levels of an empirical universe, whereas qualitative studies will emphasize the sampling and analysis of empirical cases in their contexts. To sum up, the various qualitative and quantitative modes of data collection and
analysis represent different ways of gaining experience of certain aspects of media and communicative practices – and not others. Quantitative and qualitative methodologies are suited for studying specific kinds of social and cultural events – and not others. What unites the two mainstreams of media and communication studies is that they address a middle range of social and cultural phenomena – media production, discourses, uses, and contexts – which call at once for detailed documentation (empirical experience) and grand theorizing (theoretical mechanisms). Articulated since Aristotle as a differentiated and distributed conception of what exists (Jensen, 2010: chap. 2), realism accommodates diverse levels at which media and communicative practices take shape. Chapter 1 of this Handbook introduced a premise of determination in the first instance. In an ontological sense, communication is enabled and constrained by several types of conditions – material, discursive, and institutional – that determine what cannot be the case but which, equally, cannot predict specifically what will be the case. In an epistemological sense, this chapter has outlined a principle of unification in the final instance: Different methodologies pose and answer different questions, sometimes for a common purpose. Realism is an epistemology without guarantees. At the same time, it avoids the sort of skeptical perspectives on reality that have been implied by both of the other two prototypical positions that Pavitt (1999) identified: logical empiricism and constructivist perspectivism. On the one hand, logical positivism depicted a reality which, tragically, is forever out of human reach. On the other hand, not least poststructuralist versions of constructivism have celebrated a comic view of the absence of any foundations of human knowledge (Baudrillard, 1988). What communication research in a realist determination in the first instance, Chapter 1, p. 2 poststructuralism – Chapter 2, p. 46
unification in the final instance
Complementary methods
Empirical microcosm sample cases in context
Experiences
population
Events
Middle range of
Methodological designs and
social and cultural
substantive selections
phenomena
Mechanisms
Theoretical frameworks of
Theoretical
conceptual configurations
macrocosm
Figure 16.6 Empirical microcosms, theoretical macrocosms
vein can offer are explanatory concepts, analytical procedures, and preliminary conclusions as one basis of public deliberation about media, old and new. Among the questions legitimately raised by research are what media do to people and what people do with media (Katz, 1959) but also how people may change media in order to do something different with them – which is the topic of the final chapter of the Handbook.
CONVERGENCE IN PRACTICE: THREE APPROACHES In a future perspective, much work remains to integrate and consolidate elements from theory of science, communication theory, and diverse social-scientific and humanistic disciplines into a robust multi-method and multidisciplinary field of media and communication research. Methodologies constitute a strategic area of dialogue and collaboration, because they join abstract theoretical concerns
with the practical requirements of empirical work. Flyvbjerg (2006), for example, has noted that case studies, while normally associated with qualitative inquiry, can test general propositions by uncovering evidence that may not be compatible with findings from quantitative studies. In recent decades, a growing number of interdisciplinary publications have outlined ways of ‘mixing’ or combining qualitative and quantitative methodologies (Bernard, 2017; Blaikie & Priest, 2019; Creswell & Creswell, 2018; Tashakkori & Teddlie, 2010). In research so far, it is possible to single out three principal forms of combining qualitative and quantitative methodologies (Hammersley, 1996: 167–168): • Facilitation. The most common practice traditionally has been to treat qualitative and quantitative approaches as case studies, Chapter 14 p. 291
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Klaus Bruhn Jensen relatively separate steps in a research sequence. In survey research, for example, on media consumption, it is standard procedure to conduct qualitative ‘pilot’ studies. The aim is to arrive at analytical categories and verbal formulations that are at once conceptually precise and meaningful to respondents. While equally relevant, quantitative pilots, for instance, a mapping of a social or lifestyle segment that may facilitate subsequent in-depth analyses of members’ interpretive categories, have been less widespread. • Triangulation. As elaborated originally by Norman Denzin (1970), triangulation is a general strategy for gaining several perspectives on the same phenomenon. Triangulation may be performed through several data sets, several investigators, and several methodologies, in the last case combining, for instance, experimental and observational approaches to the use and interpretation of media contents. (Denzin’s additional suggestion – that also theories might be triangulated – seems problematic, since theoretical interpretation involves commitment to and closure around a specific perspective or position, however preliminary. Also,
methodological triangulation leads up to a weighing of several sets of evidence from one interpretive position.) • Complementarity. The most challenging, and so far the least common, approach is complementarity – in a methodological as well as epistemological respect. Different analytical categories and procedures may be appropriate for capturing particular aspects of the same empirical domain or for addressing two different domains with a bearing on the same research question. In the final instance, two categorically different sets of findings can be joined with reference to a common theoretical framework. The existence of methodological ‘camps’ in this and other fields remains an obstacle. Nevertheless, the record – from classic studies such as Cantril’s (1940) volume on The Invasion from Mars, to more recent developments as reviewed in this chapter, to additional reflections on the status of that knowledge which different methodologies produce (e.g., Potter, 1996) – suggests the relevance and value of continuing to explore the potential of complementarity in the practice of media and communication research.
The Invasion from Mars – Chapter 9, p. 179
Multiple media, multiple methods
17 • • • • •
Personal media in everyday life A baseline study Rasmus Helles
a study of the place of personal media – from mobile phones to social network sites – in everyday life an exploration of the relationship between life phases and the uses of personal media an illustration of the application of multiple methodologies to new, digital media a discussion of how to utilize log data of media use in communication research reflections on the translation of epistemological premises into methodological practices
INTRODUCTION The study reported here began its life in a series of conversations during the fall of 2004, as I was finishing my master’s thesis and looking around for an interesting and fundable PhD project. I had given a presentation of my MA thesis work (a study of an online community) at a company that I was secretly hoping to convince to fund part of my PhD project. After the presentation, I was talking to a senior manager from the company, explaining my interest in new media and interpersonal communication, when she interrupted me. She had just thought of something that would interest me: the mobile phone had ruined the equality of her marriage. Both she and her husband held demanding, management-level career positions in large companies and had done so since the beginning of their relationship some 15 years earlier. When they moved in together, they had made a clear agreement that traditional gender roles should have no place in their shared life.
They had managed this through a strict division of domestic labor and an equally strong separation of work and leisure time: no calling each other at work unless it was a matter of life and death. About a year prior to our conversation, their daughter, who was now ten years old, had begun using her mobile phone to call her parents at work after school. The couple had explained their agreement about work and leisure to the daughter, who had been instructed to call only about really important things. But since children’s interpretation of ‘importance’ differs from that of adults, the result had been a call or two per day. The man had upheld family policy and would tell the daughter he had very little time to talk. The woman, however, had found that she actually liked those few minutes on the phone and had come to think of the small chats about the daughter’s day at school as small breaks in her busy schedule. The formal division of domestic labor in the home had continued, she told me, but because
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Rasmus Helles of her more or less daily chats with the daughter, a number of obligations had somehow shifted from being shared to being hers. Both she and the daughter had come to see her as the obvious parent to handle requests concerning school and other activities because she was already involved. The story made a deep impression on me as an illustration of the complex social effects of technologically mediated communication. Eventually, the conversation led to a research project that was designed as a baseline study of personal media in Denmark in a theoretical framework emphasizing the relationship between interpersonal communication and everyday life. After all, mobile phones follow their owner through all the different social contexts that make up everyday life. Also, mobile communication is largely trivial. Leaving aside those rare occasions when the content of the communication is of vital importance to those involved, such as the death of a loved one or a phone call to end an intimate relationship, mobile communication belongs in the realm of the quotidian, the repetitive – the everyday.
MASS MEDIA AND PERSONAL MEDIA Interpersonal communicative practices During most of the twentieth century, the number of media for interpersonal communication in the Western world remained relatively constant. Letters and the landline telephone were the primary media used to communicate over long distances and, for letters, with a time shift. From the late 1980s, a number of new media technologies began to emerge. Fax machines challenged the position of ordinary letters, and during the first half of the 1990s, the mobile telephone began to timeline of communication technologies – Chapter 1, p. 28
be commercially available at prices that made it a potential consumer good, even if it took close to ten years before half the Danish population owned a mobile phone. With the arrival of the internet, also during the first half of the 1990s, people gained access to several new media for interpersonal communication. Some were variations on one-on-one-communication, such as chat, instant messaging, and, in particular, e-mail, which many encountered through professional use at work but quickly appropriated for private purposes. Other new media afforded entirely new forms of technologically mediated communication, most notably chat rooms and online fora, allowing groups of people to interact, both in real time and with a time delay. Some years later, the ill-defined and much-hyped technologies of ‘Web 2.0’ essentially re-launched a number of these ‘old’ (in terms of internet history) communication media, fitted for use with a standard web browser and often with more user-friendly interfaces. Not all these media are used by everyone, as elaborated upon in the following, but with the internet reaching nine out of ten Danish households, and more than 90% of the population owning mobile phones (The National IT and Telecom Agency, 2011: 34), it was clear that the landscape of personal media had been profoundly changed by the arrival of the internet and the diffusion of the mobile phone. The parallel existence of several different media technologies, which offer a host of different variations on the fundamental theme of interpersonal communication, calls for an integrated view of those media. Accordingly, the project broadened its original focus on mobile phones and mobile communication to include all media that afford interpersonal communication and adopted the term personal media for them. In Table 17.1 (Jensen & Helles, 2011), some of the most common media are
Personal media in everyday life Table 17.1 A typology of communicative practices (personal media indicated with grey) Asynchronous
Synchronous
One-to-one
E-mail SMS, MMS Letters
Telephony (fixed-line and mobile) Instant messaging
One-to-many
Newspapers, books CDs ‘Web 1.0’
Television Radio
Many-to-many
Social network services Online fora ‘Web 2.0’
Online chatrooms Online multiplayer games
listed according to their central affordances for communication. The model uses two dimensions of communication as organizing principles: the number of participants involved in the communication process and the temporal dimension of communication, whether it is asynchronous or synchronous. One way of defining personal media is to include all technological media that allow some form of turn-taking among those involved. This definition effectively excludes mass media, which do not allow members of the audience to participate, at least not en masse, but at the same time broadens the field of interpersonal communication from one-to-one-communication to also include group communication (or many-to-many communication). (For an alternative definition of personal media, see Lüders, 2008.) The other major distinction in Table 17.1 is between synchronous and asynchronous communication, depending on the users’ ability to insert time delays in the flow of communication. Taken as a whole, the model also suggests the importance of considering the intermediality (Jensen, 2008a) of the various forms of personal communication: The possibility of substituting one medium for another
(using text messages (sms) instead of telephony), obviously introduces a whole range of social and interactional potentials, which only become apparent once the various media are understood as a system of alternatives.
Trans-situational agency In theoretical terms, the technological mediation of interpersonal communication allows human agents to exercise trans-situational agency. The term, which was coined for this study, indicates that, in contrast to face-to-face-communication, technologically mediated communication allows users to act across physical and, in some respects, temporal distances. We can reach people in other countries in a matter of seconds, and a text message may linger in an inbox for hours or months before it is read. The capacity of media to have communication transcend physical and temporal boundaries, and to influence activities in distant contexts, is a long-standing theme of medium theory. However, compared to the texts of mass communication, which have been the focus of attention in medium theory, the transactions taking place in interpersonal communication are typically much more directly and immediately oriented
affordances – Chapter 1, p. 5 intermediality – Chapter 10, p. 195
medium theory – Chapter 2, p. 26
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Rasmus Helles towards ongoing activities that involve those communicating (Hutchby, 2000). The diffusion of personal media enables the ongoing flows of communication to cut across situational boundaries, and they allow individuals new degrees of freedom in choosing how to handle both their involvement with other people and the demands and opportunities that otherwise arise from the various contexts of everyday life. Much previous work on media and everyday life concerns the mass media, especially television. Within the framework of domestication theory, some work has been done on media for interpersonal communication (for references on early work, see Haddon, 1998), but with a somewhat limited scope. Since its initial formulation (Silverstone & Hirsch, 1994 [1992]), domestication theory has primarily focused on the dynamics of information and communication technologies in the home, as families negotiate a place for those media in their daily lives – a focus inherited from earlier studies of families’ collective reception of television (Lull, 1980; Morley, 1986). While several studies have been done on personal media (for an overview of more recent developments, see Bakardjieva, 2006; Hartmann, 2006), the theoretical tenets of domestication theory do not incorporate trans-situational agency. The tradition still conceives of media as technologies ‘with texts inside,’ which families and other users collectively make sense of, not as vehicles of communication across contexts. In the case of personal media, the focus on processes of social interaction in contexts of copresence represents a shortcoming. Personal media are exactly – personal. This is true in a discursive sense, since these media typically address individuals: you have your own mobile phone, your own profile on Facebook, and you enter
discussions in online fora as an individually addressable entity. It is also true in a physical sense: personal media may be carried around or, as with most e-mail accounts, the person may access them from computers anywhere in the world. The ubiquitous access to personal media makes it possible to act in one social context while being physically present in another. Whereas all technologically mediated communication is obviously contextualized (in the sense that, when placing a call, communicators are already present in some situation with a social logic of its own [see, e.g., Humphreys, 2005; Ling, 2008]), mobile phones and other new media of interpersonal communication introduce a second contextual layer. Arising from technologically mediated interaction at a distance, this layer may well be governed by completely different norms, which will somehow have to be balanced with those of the first context. It can, in fact, be argued that trans-situational agency involves a third contextual layer, namely the context in which the person in question negotiates his or her exercise of agency across two situations at once. Not only do personal media allow us to act across contexts, they demand that we decide whether and how we actually want to do so. My choice of whether to distract myself from my chores at work by calling a friend for a chat depends on several considerations: the culture and etiquette of my workplace and the willingness of my friend to chat, but also on my perception that this is a relevant activity in the first place. Perhaps I have not had a minute to myself for days and so decide that I deserve the break, even if I suspect that my call may inconvenience both my friend and my coworkers, or I decide that although I would like the break, I cannot run the risk of my friend going into another one of his long monologues about his troublesome boss. In this perspective, the use of personal media should
domestication theory – Chapter 9, p. 191 contexts of media use – Chapter 9, p. 182
ubiquitous communication – Chapter 1, p. 10
Personal media in everyday life be understood not only with reference to newly developed cultures of communication in specific contexts such as work or home but also in terms of the trans-situational agency that individuals exercise as part of their entire portfolio of everyday activities.
THE CONDUCT OF EVERYDAY LIFE
logic of everyday life
Trans-situational agency involves new degrees of freedom in the management of everyday communication, which requires a nuanced understanding of how people balance the different social contexts against each other. Such an understanding is provided by the sociological theory of the conduct of everyday life, developed by Gerd-Günter Voss (1991) (an English résumé of central points may be found in Dreier, 1999). The conduct of everyday life is defined as follows: “The conduct of everyday life is . . . the system a person has built to combine his or her activities in the various social spheres that he/she is part of in their current life phase” (Voss, 2001: 203ff., my translation RH). The conduct of everyday life can be understood as a logic that we apply in order to make the various parts of our everyday life fit together. Although we all take part in many types of social activities which are prototypical (e.g., having a job which demands the same kinds of things of us as it does from thousands of others), the entire portfolio of elements in our lives is, in principle, unique: I am the only one to experience having this job, and that partner, live in this neighborhood, with relatives who have these needs, and so on. The only one to experience the totality of demands, constraints, and possibilities offered to me by this particular constellation of elements is – me. So, even though many of the elements are relatively prototypical, in the sense that there are many who face the same elements that I do (jobs, living arrangements, etc.), I am the only person to experience them in my context.
A simple example is that I may have a job that demands me to be somewhere at a particular time. Depending on where I choose to live (or can afford to live), that particular demand on my time will have different consequences. If I live close to work, I can fulfill that demand and still have time for a hobby that requires a lot of effort; but if I have a two-hour commute every day, this may be impossible, or it may require me to give up something else. Although such demands are prototypical, my everyday life is a unique totality woven out of a combination of these prototypes. An important aspect of the conduct of everyday life is that it is not entirely up to me how to organize things; it rather constitutes a compromise between my obligations and the degrees of freedom which are afforded by the various social institutions that enter into my life. If I am married and live in a nuclear family, this places certain kinds of demands on my life; if I live alone, I have different degrees of freedom but also different constraints. The conduct of everyday life is the manner in which I accomplish all this – it is the overall logic that I rely on to make things come together. I may chose to do as little as possible and take things as they come, or I may try to maximize control over all the elements of my life. Over time, we each develop a certain style of handling the different elements of our everyday lives. Like the previous account of trans-situational agency, the theory thus emphasizes the individual component of human agency. Although interactional contexts have specific, local sets of norms and routines, the people interacting in them bring their own agendas, preferences, and resources, which contribute to the outcome of their interactions, on a par with the norms and values that are specific to the situation. The theory of the conduct of everyday life, presented here only in skeletal form, speaks directly to the location of personal media in everyday life, particularly in its
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Rasmus Helles emphasis on trans-situational agency. Personal media in everyday life are intimately connected to both the general logic and the specific balancing acts of everyday life as we try to forge a vast number of heterogeneous elements into a coherent and meaningful whole. Describing and understanding how people integrate the affordances of personal media into their conduct of everyday life was the fundamental aim guiding
the design of the research project. Since the theory states that the conduct of everyday life is shaped in an interplay between individual and institutional factors, a mix of qualitative and quantitative methods appeared useful. This multi-method approach, together with the premises of the theoretical framework, also invited an assessment of the complementary forms of evidence within a realist framework, as presented in Analysis Box 17.1.
ANALYSIS BOX 17.1 REALISM AND RETRODUCTION The theory of the conduct of everyday life lends itself to a realistic interpretation of the relationship between social structure and human agency. From a realist perspective, social structures have properties of their own which cannot be explained with reference to social agents alone (Archer, 1995; Elder-Vass, 2010). Social structures are held to exist in their own right, even if their functioning only manifests itself in human activities. Compared to mainstream sociological structuration theory (Giddens, 1984), which takes structure and agency as two aspects of the same process, a realist interpretation allows for two ontological domains, which are only united through practice. In the present case, the conduct of everyday life has an existence of its own, independent of the individual social actor who relies on it to manage the various elements of his/her life. A realist ontology entails an epistemological and methodological stance. Social structures have qualities which can be expected, to some extent, to function independently of the perspectives placed on them by social scientists. Social regularities, moreover, are not only the product of interactions between individuals but crucially also a product of certain mechanisms, of which the interactions are a part. Whereas a social constructivist would expect surface interaction to be all there is to know about, a realist takes interaction as indicative of underlying social structures or mechanisms. Realism, accordingly, favors a retroductive research strategy – the aim is to ‘work back’ from observable phenomena to uncover the mechanisms of the underlying social structures (see Blaikie, 2010: 87ff.). The starting point of a retroductive strategy is the construction of a theoretical model of the social structure to be studied – in this case, a model of the interplay of the general conduct of everyday life, both with largescale social institutions such as families and labor markets and with the specific transsituational affordances of personal media. The premise of the project was that particular models or types of the conduct of everyday life would shape people’s use of personal media, which might in turn reshape that conduct to some extent. In order to address both structures and degrees of freedom, the project combined quantitative and qualitative approaches – both of which document real aspects of everyday life.
realism – Chapter 16, p. 344 structure and agency – Chapter 10, p. 210 retroduction and abduction – Chapter 16, p. 335
Personal media in everyday life THE BIG PICTURE: QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS Secondary analysis of available statistics
presentism
When the project was first begun, little data were available on the diffusion and use of various personal media in Denmark. Statistics Denmark, the national statistical authority, did not yet include them in their annual survey, and nobody had tried to collect and consolidate what data there was. In order to create an overview, all available representative surveys of the use of personal media were collected. It turned out that relatively comparable data existed, as most of the major personal media had been subject to individual studies within the same oneyear period. Also, most of these studies satisfied the other minimum criterion for inclusion in a diffusion analysis, namely they had been based on a random sample with at least N = 1,200 respondents, ensuring a reasonable level of statistical representativity and accuracy of measurements. And, studies had to focus on the use of the various media for private communication only. The most difficult part of this exercise was not finding the actual numbers but securing sufficient documentation of the research behind the numbers. About a third of the studies grew out of marketing efforts (when the buzz about ‘social media’ marketing was just beginning to gain momentum), and the results were often published at commercial websites or in newspapers, without links to documentation about sample sizes, sampling process, and so on. Through repeated requests to people at various newspapers and marketing bureaus, documentation was eventually secured for a sufficient number of studies (five in total). Ironically, and perhaps indicative of the ‘presentism’ of much work on new diffusion research – Chapter 8, p. 158
media (Wellman, 2004), the only two personal media that had to be left out of the comparison were landline phones and letters. It simply was not possible to determine how many people still use letters as part of their private communication. And although the numbers for landline phones were available, the unit of analysis was the household, not the individual, so it was not possible to compare these numbers to those for e-mail, chat, and mobile phones. The results of the secondary analysis are shown in Figure 17.1. Perhaps the most notable finding was that the only new, personal media to have achieved full diffusion (at or above 84%) (Rogers, 2003) at the time were mobile telephony and SMS (text messages). E-mail was the only other new medium used by more than half the population. Although Facebook’s user base has grown substantially since the survey data used in the figure were collected, the numbers for Danish Facebook users still suggested a diffusion level of ‘only’ 51% of the population between 16 and 74 years of age (The National IT and Telecom Agency, 2011: 44). The numbers are noteworthy because they indicate that the diffusion process is both slower and more complex than often assumed in hype about new media in advertising and parts of academic research. (Since the data available for landline phones were not directly comparable to other data [because of a different unit of analysis], they were not included in the figure. The numbers for landline phones, however, indicated that a minimum of 76% of the population had access to these at home, which suggests that landline phones at the time were actually the third largest medium for interpersonal communication, at least in terms of the percentage of the population who were potential users.) The findings on diffusion were interesting for the wider project because they shed light on general changes in the media landscape of interpersonal communication.
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Figure 17.1 Diffusion of personal media
They clearly demonstrated that at least some new, personal media were now routinely used by the majority of the population. What these first findings did not address was the level at which these diffe rent media were used and which social groups might be using them most. Specifically regarding the conduct of everyday life, the numbers had nothing to say about the way in which and the extent to which these new media were being integrated into everyday life.
Mobile telephones and life phases The second part of the empirical analysis took the form of a detailed study of mobile phones, conducted in cooperation with a major telecom provider in Denmark. The provider had a very large panel of customers, who had all agreed that their call logs could be used in analysis and development projects. The company agreed to make an anonymized sample (N = 10,000) of parts of the panelists’ call logs for 2007–8 available for detailed study. research ethics – Chapter 20, p. 429
The data comprised a week-by-week summary of phone call and SMS activity over a period of 12 months and a call-bycall log of one week of activity. In addition, the gender, age, and home municipality of the participants were included. No details that could identify the panelists were given and, importantly, no information at all was provided about the other people with whom the panelists had communicated. In other words, both samples contained only information of traffic generated by the panelists, not about calls or messages received. The one-year-sample contained week-by-week aggregated data on the number of phone calls, total number of minutes spoken, and total number of SMS messages sent. The week sample included information about the date and time of all SMS messages and phone calls, in addition to the duration of all phone calls. The week in question was the third week in March, which had been identified as the most normal (or least extreme) by comparing the total number of minutes spoken and SMS messages sent during all weeks of the year. (On sampling and representativity, see Analysis Box 17.2.)
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ANALYSIS BOX 17.2 SAMPLING AND REPRESENTATIVITY The sample was drawn from the panel of the telecom provider and was balanced in two ways. First, the age, gender, and regional variables were weighed so that the sample would resemble the composition of the total population according to official demographic statistics. Second, the size of the sample was calculated so that it could be broken down into age and gender segments of five years and still be used for statistical analyses and comparisons of sufficiently large groups. This led to a sample size of N = 8,531. It should be emphasized that the sample used, no matter how large, was not a random sample. The participants in the panel had volunteered, which may introduce a bias, since not everybody is likely to agree to have their call logs analyzed. In addition, the sample was drawn from the customer base of one particular mobile phone company; although it is one of the three largest in the country, and probably the one with the most diverse customer base, its customers are not likely to be representative of the entire population. Although the sample was large (and could have been two or three times larger if desired), the only way to ensure that measurements of a sample yield results which are statistically representative of the population is to draw the sample at random; that is, all individuals in the population must have an equal chance of being included in the sample (Blaikie, 2003). The non-representative sample had ramifications for the presentation of results: no confidence intervals for findings are given here [i.e., no mean values were presented as “average number of SMS messages per day was 15(±3)”], since the calculation of confidence intervals requires a representative sample (but see Analysis Box 17.3 about the use of means in the analysis).
The clearest finding, if not the most surprising one, was that age is extremely important in explaining both phone calls and SMS messages. Figure 17.2 shows the median value of weekly SMS and call volumes, distributed on age groups. It shows that almost 180 messages are sent every week by the group under 18. This is nearly double the volume of the 18–23 year-olds, who ‘only’ send 87 – two numbers that may seem impressive. However, since the analysis only documents outgoing traffic, the total number of SMS messages handled by members of each of the two age groups is probably twice as large: messages are, most likely, reciprocated. It is also clear that while the youngest respondents use SMS a lot, they do not make voice calls nearly as much: the number of weekly calls is at the same level as in the 30–39 group. It is further apparent
that although both media are in use in all age groups, the appetite for either one appears to be inversely related to age after the mid-twenties: the volume of both SMS and voice calls is lower in the older age groups. (These apparently clear findings, however, present classic issues of reliability and validity. See Analysis Box 17.3.) One observation from Figure 17.2 sparked a more specific hypothesis. The figure indicates a remarkable difference between the 18–23 and the 24–29 groups. The activity on both media is quite a bit lower in the older group, yet the age difference is only a few years. This prompted an investigation of whether the differences between the two groups should be considered a cohort or dynamic phenomenon. If a cohort phenomenon, the use pattern for both media would be established at some
reliability and validity – Chapter 16, p. 342 random sampling – Chapter 13, p. 256
cohort and dynamic phenomena
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Rasmus Helles Weekly outgoing SMS and mobile telephone calls by age groups (median values)
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Figure 17.2 Mobile media use and age Note: Age groups do not span equal numbers of years.
ANALYSIS BOX 17.3 RELIABILITY AND VALIDITY Quantitative analysis is, most fundamentally, about the quantification of some property of reality and the subsequent analysis of data. Whereas elaborate statistical procedures are available, the analysis can sometimes be done simply by producing and inspecting a graphical representation of the data collected. Irrespective of the type of analysis, however, questions of reliability and validity must be addressed. A statistical procedure comes with a number of assumptions that the data must meet; otherwise, the procedure is inappropriate and is likely to produce misleading results. The data behind Figure 17.2 provide an example of this consideration. The figure shows the median value of the weekly SMS and call frequencies of the different age groups, instead of the more commonly used mean or average value. Because there are extreme differences in people’s use of these media, reporting average values becomes problematic. This is because averages are often taken to say something central about a given phenomenon – and often do, as with people’s heights: we know that some people are taller than others, but we also know that most people have roughly the same height, with men tending to be somewhat taller than women. By saying that Danish women have an average height of about 168 cm, we assume a number of things, above all that most women’s height will be close to this average, say, within 10 cm to either side. Only about 4% of all Danish women deviate more than 30 cm from the average. Women’s heights, then, are symmetrically distributed around the average: 50% of women below, 50% above the average height. This is because human heights follow the normal distribution, illustrated by the dotted line in Figure 17.3. The average height cont.
reliability and validity – Chapter 16, p. 342 mean and median values – Chapter 13, p. 275
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Figure 17.3 Normal (dotted) and log-normal (solid) distributions
is located at the peak of the line, and the figure shows both that the average height is the most common and that there are many people close to the average height. SMS use patterns, in contrast, do not follow a normal distribution but rather follow the solid line in Figure 17.3, a so-called lognormal distribution. Most people send a relatively small number of SMS messages, while a small number send many. Some of the top SMS users in the sample sent more than 1,000 SMS messages every week, while some of the least active users sent only 1 or 2 messages per month. Put differently, high-activity users send between 2,000 and 4,000 times as many messages as low-activity users. Compared to women’s heights, someone tall (198 cm) is only about 1.4 times taller than someone short (138 cm). If, then, the average level of SMS activity (in the present sample, it was 69 messages per week) is reported without reservations, readers might assume that this is a good approximation of what ‘normal’ SMS use is. But, in fact, almost 75% of the sample had an SMS use below the average. In a normal distribution, it would be 50%. Reporting the median value (which in this sample was 26 messages per week) gives a very different impression of SMS use patterns. The median is the ‘middle value’ of a sample: lining up all users from high to low according to their SMS use volume, the median value is the SMS usage of the person in the middle of that line. The median value thus separates the top half from the bottom half of the sample values. On the one hand, using the median to represent the central tendency of a sample does not explain as much about the sample as the average value does about a normally distributed sample; the values are more extreme, and no single number can communicate this. On the other hand, this does place the given number closer to the SMS use patterns of most people in the sample, limiting the risk of misunderstandings. Moreover, the median is more robust in terms of fluctuations in the data and tended to be constant from week to week in the present one-year sample, whereas the average value shifted on the order of almost 10% from week to week. In sum, even for such seemingly simple calculations as central tendency, issues arise both of their reliability (because the average value is vulnerable to small fluctuations) and of their validity (in the sense that an ‘average’ value may not correspond to what the term commonly suggests). Such difficulties help to explain why log data as used here are seldom encountered in media studies (but see, e.g., Leskovec & Horvitz, 2007), which, in turn, may limit the use of a valuable type of data in this field. cont.
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Rasmus Helles point in life and would later stay more or less the same. If dynamic, media use would be tied to external changes, such as the introduction of new media or other events in the users’ lives. A review of the literature on digital media and age showed that the cohort hypothesis has been the dominant notion. A widely used concept is that of the ‘digital native’ (Prensky, 2001) – somebody who has grown up with digital media, and therefore has an intimate understanding of them, compared to others who have taken them up later in life. The notion that media habits are the outcome of socialization during childhood and in the teenage years seemed in conflict with the present finding of significant differences between the 18–23 and the 24–29 groups. In order to address the issue, data for the panel members’ SMS use in November 2007 and 2008 were compared. (Together with March, November is the month when SMS and call activities are closest to the annual average.) The results showed a clear and statistically significant drop in activity in all age groups from one year to the next (Figure 17.4). The only exception was the 60+ group, in which no significant drop was found. These results next were compared with data from the National IT and Telecom Agency, which showed that the total use of SMS in Denmark did not drop between 2007 and 2008 but had in fact grown by 6% per active subscription. The sample
exhibited a drop in activity, then, whereas SMS use in Denmark as a whole did not. Together, the numbers strongly suggested that as members of the sample grew older, they reduced their level of SMS usage – indeed, quite a rapid change of media habits. As a way of further controlling the results, the level of activity for users who were 18 in November 2007 was compared to that of users who were 18 in November 2008, and this analysis showed no significant difference. In other words, the activity level of 18-year-olds was constant between 2007 and 2008, but the panelists who were 18 years old in 2007 changed their use pattern during the following year. Research done by Rich Ling (2010), based on Norwegian survey data, found a similar pattern. In sum, SMS patterns appear to change dynamically with age, and quite fast, not according to cohorts. This central finding is consistent with the view that technologically mediated communication is embedded in, and contextualized by, the rest of people’s everyday lives. Whereas different theoretical frameworks might fit the data, the theory of the conduct of everyday life would suggest, as a preliminary explanation, that the changes in media use coincide with typical shifts in young people’s life situation: leaving the social life of high school, including a large peer group with intense SMS communication, and replacing it with a smaller circle of close friends and a daily life balancing the demands of workplace and home. To further explore the implications – the concrete interplay between personal media use and the conduct of everyday life – the project also relied on qualitative analysis and on mixing methods (Analysis Box 17.4).
THE DEEP PICTURE: QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS A typology of everyday life with personal media Figure 17.4 Age and text messaging
The qualitative dimension of the project sought to incorporate findings from the
Personal media in everyday life
ANALYSIS BOX 17.4 MIXING METHODS The project combined quantitative and qualitative methods in order to answer its research questions – despite the fact that qualitative and quantitative methods are still widely held to be incommensurable (Blaikie, 2010: 218ff.). Qualitative methods deal with the subjective experience of situated individuals; quantitative methods deal with patterns and regularities as discovered in data that are decontextualized and generalized via a process of quantification, such as the fixing of subjective experience to a limited choice of answers to a survey question. This balkanization of qualitative and quantitative methods can be seen to rest upon a conflation of method and ontology. While the data of qualitative methods normally do consist of accounts of subjective experience, such as interview discourses, the methodological constraints and affordances of these data depend on particular theoretical conceptions of ‘subjectivity.’ To a social constructionist, questions about the structural ‘realities’ that are reflected in subjective accounts make no sense, since there is no social realm beyond subjective experience (Collin, 1997). Under a realistic ontology, the notion of everyday life as an individual project of balancing the demands of various social structures and institutions against each other highlights the layered nature of both society and subjectivity. Social structures are open to some degree of interpretation and manipulation by the individual subject. But social structures are never merely optional objects of subjective experience. The retroductive research strategy, as applied in the present project, calls for a continual refinement and correction of the initial theoretical model. One way of refining the model was to have the quantitative overview of personal media uses inform the qualitative sampling and interview guide. Whereas the quantitative findings had little to say about the everyday logics of those tracked in the data, the results did indicate variations that were consistent with some of the main tenets of the initial model, specifically the interrelations between fluctuations of media use and life phases. These patterns were something that the respondents in the qualitative phase might very well have first-hand knowledge about. By providing detailed examples, arguments, and reflections, the qualitative interviews served to further strengthen the theoretical model and to suggest additional research questions and hypotheses for qualitative as well as quantitative inquiry.
quantitative analyses, specifically via its sampling strategy. The quantitative findings indicated that people between 18 and 35 years of age are commonly engaged in an ongoing reorientation of their personal media use. In the theoretical perspective of the conduct of everyday life, these shifts could be addressed in qualitative analyses through two different considerations. First, people who are in the process of changing their personal media habits as part of a (hypothesized) change of their
levels of scientific analysis – Chapter 16, p. 332
conduct of everyday life are likely to have reflected, to a degree, on the potential benefits and drawbacks of these media. Respondents were chosen not because they would use such media more than others – people with low or no use of personal media might be just as interesting interview subjects – but because they would be in a position to recall and reflect on these in everyday contexts. Second, sampling people in one age bracket – their twenties – would likely give access to, or insight into, other age groups, namely friends and family members, who would be affected by their
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Rasmus Helles changing habits. At the same time, qualitative interviewing could provide additional perspectives on other personal media. The quantitative findings indicated that something is positively going on with the personal media use of people in their twenties, at least changes in their SMS and telephony patterns. Other things might be going on – with other media and in other age groups. The qualitative design combined maximum variation sampling and snowball sampling. First of all, two women in their twenties were identified by way of the author asking friends for the names of people unknown to him but whom his friends knew and could characterize in terms of age (in their twenties) as well as social background. This resulted in contact with two young middle-class women who each, during the first part of an interview, were asked to fill in a ‘network map’ – a basic form with fields for entering the age and gender of a maximum of 20 friends and family members and for indicating the nature of their relationship. For each person, they also ticked a battery of boxes noting which personal media they used to communicate with that person and how often. After the interview, the author selected two people on the map who were of different genders and different ages from the respondent and asked her to help establish contact with them. In this way, a total of 13 respondents, from 24-year-olds to 85-year-olds, and spanning the lower to the higher middle class, were identified. People between the ages of 18 and 35 were deliberately over-represented (6 of the 13) in view of the quantitative findings. All respondents, then, originated from one of the two social networks around the two initial respondents.
maximum variation sampling – Chapter 14, p. 290
The qualitative analyses had a dual aim: to describe the everyday logic of the respondents and to establish the specific ways in which they had incorporated personal media into this general logic. A special point of attention in the interviews was any dynamic change in habits, whether drastic (young people cutting the number of SMSs sent per month by several hundred within a couple of years) or minor (a middle-aged person perhaps sending 5–10 messages less per month over the same time span). The theory of the conduct of everyday life proposes a typology of prototypical ways of handling the everyday. Although everyday logics are, in principle, individual, they draw on social templates. Individuals will pick up techniques for handling daily life from others, not least their parents, and they will refer to the wider culture. The theoretical tradition and many of the original studies into the conduct of everyday life came out of Germany, and, while culturally close, Danish everyday life differs, not least, when it comes to gender relations. The proportion of women in fulltime jobs is higher than in Germany and has been for many years, which is clearly reflected in the empirical findings. However, a general typology of three main categories – traditional, situational, and strategic everyday p ractices – also proved highly applicable to the Danish data.
The situational type Popular reports about the influence of mobile phones on everyday life are often caricatures of the situational type: people who cannot plan ahead, with an attention span barely bridging the gap from one SMS to the next. The situational respondents, while certainly not planning ahead as people might do ‘in the old days,’ in fact do a lot of planning. They live life in an ad-hoc fashion, making many plans, and nearly as many revisions, often at the very
snowball sampling – Chapter 14, p. 291 social network analysis – Chapter 10, p. 320
cross-cultural research – Chapter 11, p. 223
Personal media in everyday life
ANALYSIS BOX 17.5 REDUCTION IN QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS Quantitative data analysis involves reduction in several obvious ways, such as the expression of the central tendency of thousands of data points in a single measurement. Qualitative data analysis, equally, involves reduction in important, if sometimes unrecognized, ways. Interviews that are conducted face to face are usually analyzed in transcribed form; findings are aggregated and reported in (more or less dense) academic discourse, far from the social realities being reported. Whereas qualitative analysis is sometimes held to be holistic and ‘thick,’ it invariably involves a number of operations that recall the selective and sequential nature of quantitative data production (Blaikie, 2010: 208ff.). In the present qualitative analysis, a number of characteristics that were shared across the everyday logics of the respondents were aggregated into a typology – which reduced the data in several important ways. Thirteen concrete presentations of everyday life with personal media were the foundation of three types, illustrating how contextualized and individual narratives can be abstracted in more general use patterns. None of the 13 respondents matched just one of the derived types exactly but were assigned to the type with which they had the strongest affinity. The three types are just that – idealized and simplified analytical constructs, not likely to be found in identical form in reality.
last minute. Life often appears hectic (not least to themselves), and the respondents made frequent reference to the problems (and disappointments) that their behavior would cause other people. When asked if they would be able to write down a list of events for the coming week which, importantly, they would expect to follow, the answer was typically a resounding ‘no.’ The situational types are the gourmands of personal media. Available for contact on several platforms simultaneously, they make ample use of the potential of personal media for trans-situational agency, organizing their everyday life through a permanent flow of mediated conversations, messages, and emails. One example is Morten (27), who balances life as a medical student with two different part-time study jobs, a small company he runs with a couple of friends, and home life with his girlfriend. He uses media to engage in social interaction during short intervals when he can find the time: thick description – Chapter 14, p. 295 qualitative data analysis – Chapter 14, p. 298
I find that I often use those five-minute breaks [between activities]. I don’t know . . . others may see it as a bad thing, but . . . I think it is really useful. I mean, if I’m on my way to the supermarket, then I might as well use those five minutes to call a friend. [my translation, RH] As mentioned, people living by the situational logic often find themselves in conflict with other people’s values and expectations. In the quotation previously, Morten hints that ‘others’ may see his constant re-mixing of social situations as ‘bad.’ In context, it is clear that this refers both to those who happen to be around him in the street or the supermarket and to whomever he is talking to. Respondents note that people resent being transformed into an audience by a stranger having a personal conversation right next to them, as well as receiving a call from a friend who has only five minutes in the supermarket for them. Nevertheless, the media stereotype of heavy users of personal media with short
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Rasmus Helles attention spans did not apply to the four respondents in this study. On the contrary, they appeared extremely adept at multi-tasking: juggling many different situations at the same time and keeping in mind the procedural hierarchies of each, more or less all the time. If they come across as sloppy, it may have more to do with the degrees of freedom they experience across various situations. Morten, quoted previously, frequently shifts between physical locations (he works in three different offices) and often does not know exactly how long he will spend at his different jobs during a week. Stating very clearly that this makes planning difficult, he is looking forward to a phase of his life when things will be more stable. Indeed, the situational logic may not fit his personality. The same is true of Birgit (50), who also makes heavy use of personal media in a complex daily life. She has retired from the labor market due to a complicated illness that, in some periods, makes her so tired she is unable to do anything; these periods come without warning and often last for several days. She lives alone but has an active social life involving her two grown-up daughters and a number of friends. And, like the other four situational respondents, she is almost always available on several different media platforms. Messenger programs open automatically when she logs into her computer, and Facebook is the default home page in her browser: I don’t go on Messenger because I want to contact anyone in particular. But when I open my computer there’s always someone online, and often somebody writes ‘hey you’re online’ or I write that to somebody, so. . . . To me, Messenger is about having fun and writing things like that. It is clear from the interview that Birgit cultivates several different sets of friends on different media platforms. By mobile
phone, she will arrange to meet a couple of friends at the café of the local mall; on Messenger and other chat sites, she sometimes spends hours writing with various friends, many of whom she has only met a few times face to face. The qualitative interview uncovers how the logic behind these elaborate media habits is closely linked to her illness, in particular the fact that sudden tiredness makes her unable to make and keep appointments. By maintaining different contacts on different media platforms and with different levels of involvement, she can participate in social circles that match her abilities at any given time. It should be added that before she became ill, Birgit worked as a secretary at the senior management level in a large corporation and led her life according to a very different logic, with a tightly controlled calendar and a strict set of priorities that she would never change on short notice. Like Morten, she makes it very clear that she would prefer to do things differently if she could. The situational logic of everyday life, then – the heavy use of personal media and the juggling of many simultaneous social relations – is a way of managing very different contexts with very different types of demands, over which the individual has little or no control. Other people may find this social type disorganized and forgetful; they themselves experience a somewhat chaotic daily life. But the alternative would be for them to reduce their involvement in these various contexts, at the risk of having nothing to do or nobody to talk to.
The traditional type The traditional type is the direct opposite of the situational type. People living their everyday lives according to this logic follow a cyclical model in which social events are typically repeated on particular days and at set times. They maintain a clear division between work and leisure and tend to follow traditional gender roles
Personal media in everyday life
planned spontaneity
time zones
regarding the division of domestic labor. This repetitive character of everyday life makes the use of calendars almost superfluous. Several respondents in this category can recite long lists of whom they are going to see, when and where, and what they will be doing together, as they have done so often before with those same people in exactly the same way. One person tells of recurrent dinner dates with two other couples, always on the second Friday of the month. In this group, spontaneous actions amount to what one of the respondents referred to as ‘planned spontaneity’: non-repetitive events but planned well in advance. She and her husband would typically plan ‘to do something’ on a particular evening and then decide ‘what to do’ on that day. Respondents in the traditional group indicated that they would use personal media almost entirely for ‘ritual’ forms of communication: calling their spouse at work to make small talk or calling friends to confirm plans. Although they appear to use personal media less intensively than the situational type, the traditional respondents do make frequent use of them, also as a way of crossing the line between work and leisure, which otherwise is the central divide of their everyday logic. Compared to the other types, however, the traditional type has clear and firm rules guiding what kinds of contact can be initiated where and when. If they make private calls during the day, these only go to members of their household and very close friends, whereas they will contact other friends and acquaintances during the evening. This strict segregation of time zones follows largely from the orderly and repetitive organization of their everyday life, with little ad hoc coordination through communication. One respondent was not entirely comfortable with the way her everyday came across in the interview (she thought she made her life sound boring and petit bourgeois) when she described how her husband would pick her up on their way home
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from work. This is organized on a dayto-day basis, but the ‘spontaneity’ only relates to the exact timing of the event within the same 30-minute window of every afternoon. The ritual aspect of personal media use in this group also manifests itself as a preference for telephony over other personal media. The ritualized form and content of the telephone call fit the predictable timing of the call itself. Several in the traditional group emphasize that they like calling others and cherish the opportunity to go through the motions of a well-executed phone call with a friend. While they use other personal media, the synchronous and reciprocal nature of the phone call is presented as something special. Not surprisingly, people operating by a traditional logic have a particularly hard time when they enter into social relations with situational types, who invariably break up an orderly everyday. When discussing the resulting conflicts, the traditional group of respondents in many ways mirrors but inverts the arguments that were offered in the situational group. Both groups seem to acknowledge that the values underlying the traditional logic are the default social norm, so that other logics could be considered violations of a dominant norm. The traditionalists do what everybody says one ought to do; situationalists say what they might like to do in a different kind of everyday. Age, again, matters: the traditional logic may seem more attractive to older people than to the young. Still, two of the five people in the traditional group were under 30 and described preferences very similar to the three older respondents – a clear and cyclical everyday logic – despite a more intensive social schedule.
The strategic type The final type of everyday logic, while equally concerned with the stability of life, pursues a dynamic equilibrium rather than a cyclical model. Like the traditional
dynamic equilibrium
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Rasmus Helles and unlike the situational group, on any given Monday morning, these respondents know what their week will be like – but, in contrast to the traditional type, their weeks may differ. They allow the line between work and leisure to shift but make sure that, if work predominates for a while, there will be additional leisure time at a later point. They also have clear principles regulating the division of domestic labor in the household but, in contrast to the traditional group, gender does not necessarily represent a principle guiding who will perform which tasks: the point is the total workload and its division among family members. The strategic group accomplishes a dynamic balance of different obligations by being calendar enthusiasts (Nippert-Eng, 1996). They have strict principles about separating different spheres of their lives, even if they sometimes allow work to flow into their spare time. When they work at home, they do not want to be disturbed, just as they do not like family and friends calling them on the mobile phone at different times of the workday. In terms of different personal communication practices (Table 17.1), they are strong believers in asynchronous communication. They switch off mobile phones and instant messenger programs when they know they do not have the time to communicate. In contrast, they like SMS and email precisely because they allow them to control the separation of different kinds of social activities. Anne (26) expressed this succinctly: I think it’s because . . . you give more of yourself in a phone call . . . talking on the phone is kind of a social situation, and you don’t control how things develop in quite the same way [as you do with e-mail] . . . e-mail and SMS is more of a one-way situation, isn’t it? The ritual nature of phone calls makes them difficult to escape and may tie you up in conversations that do not fit into
the situation where you find yourself. The interviews in the strategic group returned several times to the issue of selectivity, specifically how to use personal media to control one’s availability for communication. Unlike the traditional type, the strategic type has no problem sending people on to their voicemail if they do not have the time to talk. But they emphasize that they always make sure to call the person back. The strategic separation of different everyday activities is explained, in part, by a desire to do many things and to do them all well. All respondents in the strategic group made explicit reference to career goals as a priority in their everyday lives. Another important point seemed to be securing uninterrupted time for other things. Like the situational type, they involve themselves in many different kinds of things, but they keep a clear focus on separating them from each other, so as to perform all activities to the best of their ability. Facilitated by the affordances of personal media for trans-situational agency, these separate spheres of action become a series of ‘aquaria’ in which to immerse oneself. The strategic type, thus, appears adept at creating the conditions for attaining a state of flow (Csikszentmihalyi, 1997), undisturbed by other people or by switches between different frames of mind.
CONCLUSION The sampling strategy for the qualitative part of this project on personal media in everyday life was based on insights from its quantitative component. The profound changes in this regard among people in their twenties that were suggested by the quantitative analyses were articulated in distinctive ways in the interviews. Both the respondents in that age bracket and their networks of family and friends recognized that the communication patterns of the twenty-somethings were changing – importantly, however, they did not conceive of these as ‘communication’ changes but as changes in their entire way of life
Personal media in everyday life that ‘necessitated’ such changes. While all three logics – situational, traditional, and strategic – were in evidence among respondents between 20 and 30 years, the younger respondents evidently led a social life that involved a more intensive use of personal media. The transition to adult life, with new types of responsibility, was described as inevitably affecting one’s conduct of everyday life in general and one’s personal media use in specific ways: [Why do you feel you’re wasting your time on SMS?] It’s because the exchanges grow so long. When many friends have to meet up, 1700 SMS messages that are sent back and forth, or people call each other, instead of making an appointment for the next time you’ll meet when you are actually together. . . . I think that when people grow up and have full-time jobs and children, then [communication] becomes something that you can do only when you have time. (Mette, 25) This quote by Mette, who follows a traditional logic, reflects an awareness of the way things will have to be once she has other obligations in life, including what may already be her preferences: fixed appointments and using media only when the time is right. The quote also suggests
the dramatic changes of everyday life that people in their twenties experience. Two women in their twenties, who had given birth in the last couple of years, recognized, for one thing, that they spent more time talking on the phone to their mothers and close friends. For another thing, they noted that being a parent influenced the topics of these conversations. Across the life span, longer conversations with people who are intimately aware of one’s life situation may be required. For this purpose, a new kind of personal media is now available. The project documented a number of ways in which the social uptake of personal media is circumscribed by everyday life. The quantitative analyses demonstrated how changes in the patterns of media use among young adults coincide with changes in their life phases. The qualitative analyses detailed how the affordances of personal media are integrated into the conduct of everyday life by different age groups and social types in distinctive ways. Another theme emerging from this research was personal media as a system of communicative alternatives rather than as separate media. Both of these perspectives – communication across the life span and intermediality – lend themselves to quantitative, qualitative, and, as suggested by the present study, multiple methodologies.
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Media industries and audience research An analytic dialogue on the value of engagement Annette Hill
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a presentation of a collaborative industry-academic project on the production and reception of television formats • a characterisation of this collaboration as an analytic dialogue involving practitioners, researchers, and audiences in meaningful relationships • an account of audiences’ engagement with media not merely as attention and consumption but as cultural resonance and a form of agency • a case study illustrating the value of a broad understanding of engagement for media industries and academic researchers alike
INTRODUCTION This chapter offers a reflection on the value of dialogue across media industries and academia for enhancing the understanding of audience engagement and disengagement with media. The basis for this reflection is an industry-academic collaborative project between Lund University and the Endemol Shine company. The Media Experiences project conducted production and audience research on a range of drama and reality entertainment television formats during a three-year period in several countries, primarily Sweden, Denmark, and the United Kingdom, with smaller off-shoot research in Japan, Colombia, the United States, and Mexico and one case study which included transnational audiences from around the world. The project was designed to look at the connections across media industries and creative production, genres, and
audiences. It builds on an innovative approach in which production research intertwines with the crafting of genre and aesthetics within particular texts and live events, and which crosses over into audience research that explores people’s experiences of these genres, texts, and events. This way of conducting multi-site and multi-method research is a means of taking seriously production values for creative content, such as the various ways practitioners craft sonic and visual mediascapes, and it is a means of taking seriously everyday lives, such as the various ways ordinary users engage with these texts and embed their engagement with entertainment into the fabric of their lives. This approach of a dialogue highlights the value of listening and respect (Sennett, 2002). The researchers on the project listened to the voices of producers and the values they created alongside the voices of audiences and their experiences.
Media industries and audience research
engagement as cultural resonance
Moving beyond the traditional dichotomy of administrative and critical research, we became a bridge across the industry-audience divide, humanising audiences so that alongside ratings performance and social media analytics, producers could get a sense of audiences’ engagement as cultural resonance. From a more theoretical perspective, the intense relationship work of the research suggests a new semantics of engagement as relational, a means to understand the cultural resonance of media for future audiences (Hill, 2019).
On the wall of my office is a map of a fictional city complete with streets and parks named after television programmes. You can walk along the avenue of Dallas, stroll around the Eastenders square, and take a detour down the back streets of Big Brother. For a long time, I have walked these TV streets, knocking on doors, popping into people’s homes to ask them about their media engagement. People have shared their experiences of watching television, listening to the radio, reading newspapers and magazines, and using social media. In one example of this kind of everyday life research, an elderly lady reflected in her diary about how she was slowly losing her eyesight. As long as she could listen to the horse races, placing a bet, she would manage, she wrote. Her son would drop in on a Saturday afternoon, and they would watch and listen to the TV, side by side at the kitchen table sharing a pot of tea and a flutter at the races (Gauntlett & Hill, 1999). In another example, a family living in the suburbs of London loved to watch reality TV together. On a Saturday night, they would
enjoy the latest talent show, commenting on the performers, voting for their favourites, and on a Sunday morning, their girls would play reality TV in the garden, alternating between performing a song-anddance routine and playing the role of the nasty and nice judges (Hill, 2005). These snapshots of ‘walking the TV streets,’ so to speak, suggest an understanding of culture as a whole way of life, inspired by early cultural theories (Williams, 1981a). Highmore (2016) describes how this meaning of culture has become dominant: this is not high culture, like classical music, but culture in an ethnographic sense as practised in everyday life. He notes how a meaning of culture as intellectual endeavour has been superseded by a meaning of culture as a whole way of life; Highmore explains this shift as “partly due to the way reality television has popularised a very loose sense of ethnographic culture” (2016: 4). We may want to add social media and internet celebrities to this popularisation of ethnographic culture, in particular those YouTube celebrities and Instagram influencers who specialise in intimate portraits of their everyday lives cooking, cleaning, or watching Game of Thrones. More recently, I have expanded my own research methods into culture as a whole way of life by looking into the producers of these TV streets. Who makes the shows we watch together on a Saturday night? Who performs themselves as a singer, dancer, or judge that inspires the way we play games on a Sunday morning? I want to know how producers made a reality talent show and why participants would want to participate in this show. This curiosity about both the producers of media and the people who live with media culture has led me to develop an approach to the study of media engagement that involves a combination of production studies and audience research and
administrative and critical research – Chapter 20, p. 421
culture as a whole way of life – Chapter 11, p. 215
PRODUCTION RESEARCH AND AUDIENCE RESEARCH Why study producers and audiences?
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Annette Hill a combination of academic and industry collaboration. What follows in this chapter are some reflections on how this work is situated in a qualitative approach to the study of people and popular culture, an approach that is embedded in my own experience as a researcher. The combination of production and audience research as integrated, rather than separated, is one of the key points of this chapter. There are studies that offer rich analysis of production, or genre and aesthetics, or audiences, but few studies that offer an all-round picture of production, genre and text, and cultures of viewing – one example includes Bolin and Forsman’s (2002) holistic study of Bingolotto, an entertainment programme linked to the national lottery in Sweden. As Childress (2017: 243) argues in his research on the creation, production, and reception of a novel, connecting these different practices highlights the “boundary traversing relationships” hiding under the covers of cultural objects. Some of the lessons learned from collaborating with industry professionals and other researchers have enabled me to conceptualise media engagement. By focusing on the notion of media engagement, we can address industry definitions and refine the dominant ways of thinking about and measuring audiences. In this way, academic theories of attention, interaction, and engagement can enhance ways of understanding media engagement in a more holistic fashion. Perhaps more importantly, we can address how audiences actually engage with a wide range of media, learning more about their multi-faceted ways of engaging with popular culture.
A note on engagement What do we mean by the term engagement? Often the concept of engagement signals a common-sense notion of people’s interest in, attention to, and involvement in media. A typical way of using the term
engagement might relate to social media engagement, the number of tweets and re-tweets around a reality TV show, for example. My simple definition is that engagement refers to the various ways we encounter and experience media within society and culture. We can find other definitions of engagement within the media industries, where engagement is a word that is shorthand for attention. In this sector, audience information systems, from ratings data to social media analytics, attempt to measure and secure engagement from audiences as consumers of media content. This aspect of engagement relates to commercial logics, most often in the form of advertising. There is also recent policy engagement by advocacy (children’s media groups, citizens groups) and industry players (broadcasters, industry associations, producers), who have become intensely involved in debates about securing a better financial basis for media content. This engagement with policy runs parallel to a broader cultural engagement: engagement by audiences, fans, users, and so forth, whose choices about what they engage or disengage with influence the ways in which media policies and strategies around content are being formulated by both policy-makers and industry (see Hill, Steemers., Roscoe, Donovan, & Wood, 2017). For academic research, and the way we study engagement in this chapter, work by Corner (2011) can be helpful. He notes how there is an increasing interest in subjectivity and in notions of interaction and participation in both industry and academic research. Different kinds of engagement and involvement occur within a changing ‘economy of attention’ within which commercial activities, content production, and a wider politics of media industries all operate. In this economy, visibility is clearly a pressing requirement, although one that does not by itself guarantee engagement (Corner, 2017). Elsewhere I have written about how the academic meaning of engagement is not
Media industries and audience research
engagement as agency
communicative and immersive engagement
simply paying attention to a podcast or sharing a link for a drama we just watched (see Hill, 2017, 2019). When engagement happens, it is a powerful thing. Engagement is a form of agency, a crucial dynamic in how we form meaningful relationships with popular culture. Corner (2017) has suggested that we understand engagement as an interplay between communicative engagement, that is to say, looking, listening, and reacting to a text, and a more immersive engagement, when we are participating, making, and doing something beyond the text itself. This way of understanding engagement takes us beyond a common-sense meaning of the term towards a more nuanced interpretation of engagement as a site of agency, both for creative producers in their crafting of engagement and for audiences and their engagement with media in the context of everyday life.
The Media Experiences project The Media Experiences project conducted production and audience research on a range of television content as part of a digital media environment. The project team included Julie Donovan, a creative content consultant with 20 years’ experience working in the media industry, and interests in the international formats business; Dr Tina Askanius, a Danish-Swedish media researcher with interests in social media; Dr Koko Kondo, a Japanese-British audience researcher with expertise in qualitative research; and José Luis Urueta, a Colombian-Swedish researcher with a passion for audience research. We worked closely with Douglas Wood, head of Audience Research and Insight at Endemol Shine Group. Endemol Shine Group is a producer and distributor of factual and entertainment content, including reality entertainment formats such as Big Brother and MasterChef; drama formats such as Broadchurch, The Bridge, and Utopia; and entertainment brands such as
Mr. Bean. According to the official website: “Endemol Shine Group works on a unique local and global axis, comprised of 120 companies across all the world’s major markets, dedicated to creating content that enthralls and inspires” (Endemol Shine, 2019). The case studies in the Media Experiences project included Got to Dance, a reality talent show about passion for dance with a particular emphasis on young dancers; MasterChef, a reality talent show about passion for food, which includes participants as amateurs, as professionals, and as celebrities in variations on the format; The Bridge, a Nordic noir drama series about solving crimes across border territories; and Utopia, a conspiracy thriller about the moral dilemmas of population control and environmental catastrophe. The cases were selected from the Shine portfolio of content, alongside works by local production companies who were interested in working with an academic project. Early on in the design of the project, a short document was produced for the industry partner on the aims of the research, access to information, local production companies, industry ratings and social media analytics data, and so forth, as well as the potential outcomes, including industry workshops, internal reports, and academic conferences and publications. Certain formats were identified as of particular relevance to the project, and the case studies were chosen on the basis of how audiences were cast and included in the programs. The MasterChef format offered the possibility of researching entertainment audiences at home, a typical show for family viewing; the global format also enabled transregional audience research for Northern Europe. The Got to Dance format offered the possibility of examining both participants in a reality talent competition; live audiences and crowds at media events; and audiences at home reacting, interacting, and voting; in this case, several performances by audiences and participants would be observed
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multi-method and multi-site research
Annette Hill in relation to one show, in particular the live experience of an entertainment event. The Bridge format offered drama audiences in different regions, a transregional audience for original drama, and adaptations of drama by public service and commercial broadcasters. Utopia offered cult drama audiences, in particular transnational audiences accessing the drama both through formal media economies by the national broadcaster and informal media economies by streaming the drama and watching online. In all, the range of audiences included reality entertainment audiences at home, reality talent show participants, live audiences and fans at entertainment events, crime drama audiences and fans in transregional viewing cultures, and conspiracy drama audiences and fans in transnational online cultures of viewing. In the Media Experiences project, we asked a simple question: “How do creative producers craft content for audiences and how do audiences actually engage with this content?” We primarily used qualitative, flexible research to explore this question across production practices and cultures of viewing. The research analyzed drama and entertainment formats from particular production companies, including The Bridge (made by Filmlance International and Nimbus Film), Utopia (Kudos), MasterChef (Shine), and Got to Dance (Princess). The insights were conferred with quantitative evidence from Endemol Shine global audience research trends. Taken together, the findings allowed us to unpack the idea of audience engagement and how different meanings of this idea can be of value across academic and industry research. The project used multi-method and multi-site research, where each television series was treated as a fit-for-purpose study. We used a range of qualitative interviews, focus groups, and participant observations but also social media analytics and analyses of scheduling and ratings. In total, there were 108 production
interviews with creative and executive producers, actors, performers, and belowthe-line workers; 25 days of production observations; 33 interviews with reality television performers; 336 interviews with audiences and fans; and participant observations of live events with crowds of up to 6,000 at venues. Later in this chapter, we will look in more detail at one of the case studies (Got to Dance) and the concrete methods used for combined production and audience research of this reality talent show. For a project such as this, it was important to adopt a pragmatic approach to each of the reality entertainment and drama formats we studied. Perhaps one of the most important values of qualitative research is flexibility, allowing you to iteratively design the research and collect data and to observe and reflect on what you find along the way. It takes trust in such a research process to see the value of flexibility for research design, implementation and analysis, but once you experience this process, it becomes clear that flexibility is a positive, not negative, value to projects of this kind. Our approach included participant-orientated and context-dependent methodological routines for research design and analysis. In particular, the pragmatic sensibilities of looking at cultural practices within situated contexts meant that special attention was given to how parts and linkages connect with the whole (Seale, Gobo, Gubrium, & Silverman, 2007: 6). Moreover, different types of both original research and existing data were used in the case studies, including data collected by marketing teams on performance metrics, alongside interviews with executive producers and creatives working on each series. The pragmatic approach of the fieldwork was connected with the analytic strategy of subtle realism adopted throughout the research (for example, Hammersley, 1992). This term refers to a research strategy of offering multiple
subtle realism
Media industries and audience research perspectives on qualitative research data and their validity. The position builds on work in critical realism, which joins ontological realism and epistemological relativism, recognising that objective reality is always assessed from the perspective of the researcher and through reference to the sampling, methods, and contexts of the research study in question. Researchers adopting subtle realism specifically advocate using multiple methods in a study; they situate and contextualise research design and data collection and analysis, paying attention to how context shapes and defines a study, and researchers look for emergent findings and different perspectives in order to enhance qualitative analysis. In the present case studies, subtle realism enabled the building of reflexive knowledge about how media content embeds certain values and assumptions around audiences. When further working on the interviews, participant observations, and fieldnotes, a depth of analysis was accomplished by reflexively building, encircling, and re-analysing the empirical materials so as to form an overall picture. Most generally, this multilayered analysis enabled an interpretation of the data across the sites of production, circulation, content, event, and audiences, thus offering a perspective simultaneously of producer practices and audience engagement.
AN ANALYTIC DIALOGUE The idea of an analytic dialogue – involving practitioners, researchers, and audiences and grounded in analyses of both production and reception – came about in discussing the value of qualitative audience research. Initial conversations took place during project meetings and were expanded to include industry speakers at academic symposia; from these discussions, ideas emerged for ways of conducting collaborative academic and industry research. One of the key issues to emerge critical realism – Chapter 16, p. 344
was the different and distinctive definitions of engagement. In industry research, engagement represents a measurement of audience interest and a performance metric for creative values; academic research approaches engagement as shifting subjective positions by fickle audiences for television, social media, and pirated content. It is critical to the future of audience research across industry and academic settings that we find useful ways of researching engagement that capture both performance metrics and the relationships between people and media content. As Uno Forsberg (2015), head of Analysis and Research, EndemolShine Nordics, noted: “In statistical research you can provide quite sophisticated and fancy answers to who?, how much?, when? and nowadays even how?, but the most important question of them all still might be why?” By using the term dialogue in relation to production, we can infer a dialogue as an exchange of ideas amongst creatives in the making of an entertainment show, for example, regarding the casting of participants or the use of music as a form of emotional engagement. The dialogue between creatives and executive producers about these ideas further serves to represent key values for the show, the genre, the production company, and the channel it will be broadcast on; key values may be about a passion for the arts or participation by the public in television. Dialogues also involve executive producers and the commissioning editor who is responsible for a show and its performance for a broadcaster; the schedulers who choose when and how to transmit the show to the public; and the distribution platforms, such as live transmission, on-demand services, and availability in archives and as social media content. The flow of dialogue can be understood and shared, or it may become stuck, misunderstood, and even ignored by various actors and structures in this production-distribution-reception environment (see Corner & Roscoe, 2016).
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Annette Hill By using the term dialogue in relation to audiences, we can infer a dialogue between the creative producers and their imagined audience (see Litt, 2012), whom they hope to be in conversation with when they cast, script, or edit a show. Producers usually have a particular demographic in mind regarding age, gender, region, class, and so forth, and they usually shape their content to invite a certain kind of conversation, say, about dancing as self-expression or the dance profession. If there is a targeted marketing campaign, in particular with social media, then there will be a more direct kind of conversation where a participant or judge in a reality competition, for example, will have live chats with their real, no longer imagined, audience. This brings us to a vital part of the dialogue, which is that listeners also have a voice. Audiences will find various ways to articulate their experiences in the home, whilst travelling to work, in the lunchroom, and through social media. Again, the flow of dialogue can be understood and shared by audiences, fans, and users, or it may become stuck, misunderstood, and even ignored by various actors and structures in both public and private, mediated and real-world spaces. The notion of television and other broadcasting as a dialogue has been addressed, not least, by public service media with reference to an idea of public engagement. Public service media have a special remit to inform, educate, and entertain citizens, with attention given to the diversity of citizens in a national context, through news services in different languages or the representation of differ ent ethnic groups in media content. The remit for public service media holds up the notion of dialogue as a value in its own right (see, for example, Jackson, 2013; Nani, 2018). Here, specifically analytic dialogues are required if producers as well as audiences are to have opportunities to articulate what is important to them, to have a voice and be recognised in broader political and cultural conversations.
As we shall see in the case study, the understanding of public engagement as a form of dialogue is not confined to public service media. Commercial broadcasters and production companies can adopt an explicit aim to invite their audiences into a cultural conversation; soap operas, for example, are a popular genre that engages audiences in socio-cultural issues, such as domestic abuse. Some commercial content, especially documentary and current affairs, is commissioned specifically with a value of public engagement in mind. Other content may have a more explicit entertainment remit but still implicitly spark a dialogue between producers and audiences about socio-cultural issues.
From idea to practice The focus on dialogue came about because of a difficulty early on in the research collaboration, where I was having trouble explaining the project to various local producers within the parent company. The biggest obstacle to overcome was the absence of qualitative research as a regular part of the organisation. Priority was given to audience engagement as a quantitative measurement of interest, with performance metrics for ratings and social media and internal surveys for specific series. My first problem was that creative producers were unfamiliar with academic qualitative audience research, and I lacked the language necessary to make this work seem accessible to professionals within the media industries. I recall the moment when the approach started to take shape, whilst talking to Julie Donovan, the industry consultant on the project. I was on a call whilst walking in the Swedish winter forest where I lived; I had climbed to a hotspot to get a 3G signal and had listened to Julie tell me that I needed to change my language if I wanted to be heard – in essence, she encouraged me to listen more. Re-tracing my route through this white and silent landscape, I realised that at its core, the
public service and commercial media
Media industries and audience research research project was about listening, really listening closely, to producers and the values they create in their work, and then listening closely to audiences and their actual engagement with this content. To start a cultural conversation, then, is to begin with the basic approach of listening and respect for creative production as well as cultures of viewing. Our role on the project was to be the bridge between the two, analysing where dialogue flows, or breaks down, when producers are listening to audiences and when audiences feel ignored or sense a disconnection. In essence, our role was to humanise the audience for creative producers. The approach of an analytic dialogue, thus, is a means to explore and critically analyse the meaning of audience engagement in different settings, across media industries and everyday life, that can widen our horizon of understanding of engagement. As academic-industry scholar Jane Roscoe notes: “there are often different languages and value systems at play, such as pragmatism in the industry and creative explorations in academia” (Hill et al., 2017: 3). Academic research can identify some of the gaps and some of those shared moments where we can expand and explore engagement further. The value of the research for Endemol Shine was explained by Douglas Wood, the head of Audience Research and Insight: In the commercial world you rarely have the opportunity to do this type of research, typically in our research you go in with a problem that needs to be answered – “why isn’t this storyline working?” We would never analyse the creative process itself: it’s alien to us. So, it was fortunate to have a third party come in and explore this process of talking to creatives and audiences. It was a unique opportunity to understand what we do internally and how horizon of understanding – Chapter 2, p. 33
that relates to our audiences, and to think about the future of those audiences and where they may be in five or ten years’ time. (Hill et al., 2017: 2) Someone we worked closely with in maintaining relations across industry and academia was Julie Donovan, the creative content consultant in the project group. She noted: The conversation from the academic perspective was to listen more and ask less questions, “We are looking into this, and how do we find it?” There is a different language. If you are going to maintain relationships across academic and industry sectors, then you have to make sure the conversation is dynamic and fluid. (Hill et al., 2017: 3) The additional feedback we received from the producers supports the value of industryacademic dialogue for stakeholders in both the commercial and public-service media sectors. Here are a couple of illustrative comments on the collaborative work: You are the person in the whole machine who has the most contact between the producer and the audience. We need you. . . . It is really hard to know what signals you communicate to the audience . . . what is it in storytelling that moves us? (Patrick Austen [2014], editor of The Bridge) It is so nice to have everything that you think and hope that you are doing right actually confirmed. It is exactly what you want to hear. All the ideas we have, that we fight over, we are right! And the viewers actually get it. It is so nice to get this, rather than statistics where you are told your viewer is a 47-year-old woman from Jutland
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relationship management
From my perspective, relationship management is central to both the dialogues and the analyses supporting them. At each step in the process our relationships with the creatives, within the production teams, and with audiences were a constant presence. As such, I began to understand that engagement within the industry is about relationships, the collaborative experiences of creatives working together to produce content, and our relationships as researchers with these writers, directors, or actors and extras. Then, I also slowly understood the tensions surrounding the relationships between the creatives and the executive producers and broadcasters, one based on trust but where trust can be broken by decisions from on high about marketing or scheduling. And finally, engagement within the industry connects with audiences, fans, and consumers, as the relationships across the production and reception contexts make or break the overall success of a show. The project highlighted how there is an ongoing re-evaluation of the meaning of engagement. According to Douglas Wood: We are moving away from a single currency of engagement . . . we are in a situation where engagement may mean a very different set of criteria depending on how you judge success. Faced with this audience fragmentation, as producers we are increasingly being asked for platform defining content, something that is unique, something that will find a voice and have cultural impact. (Hill et al., 2017: 3)
engagement as relationships
Drawing on this insight, I explored within the empirical research the meaning of engagement as relationships, looking to capture the subjective positions of
varieties of people, such as producers creating content that engages us, professionals promoting and marketing content for mass and niche audiences, and fans as producers and users. The playoff between engagement as performance metric and as cultural resonance is a sign of the tensions around the very meaning of the term engagement within media industries. If we see engagement as a performance indicator for economic targets, then this is a one-dimensional understanding of the term. The media industries have dominated the definition of engagement as economic targets, and it is time we changed the conversation to include the socio-cultural value of engagement as well. Creative producers themselves experience the tensions between these kinds of targets all the time. There is the cultural value of their work, which they know and understand – it is a language of facts and knowledge, or emotion, storytelling, and aesthetics – and then there is the economic value placed by the industry on their work, which is communicated by ratings in a way that is often hard to understand. To consider the cultural value that feeds engagement, take, for example, the cookery format MasterChef. We found local audiences loved homegrown versions of the series. So in Denmark, MasterChef follows the brand and the building blocks of this competitive cooking show, but what audiences valued most about the local variation of the brand was its focus on Danish food and national traits in using all the leftover scraps. People talked a lot about how the show was relevant to them because it symbolised a down-to-earth approach to food in family life. Accordingly, we spoke with the production team about this kind of engagement as embedded in families’ everyday lives. For these viewers, food comes first and the competition second. On the value of food, a crucial issue is that the programme promotes “decent and honest food” (30-year-old Danish self-employed male). A woman added: “the food is the most important
Media industries and audience research part to me. . . . It is not what kinds of funny things are said along the way, it’s the result on the plate, you could say” (45-year-old Danish female secretary). This attention to honest food makes the amateur brand have strong cultural resonance with Danish viewers. A father summed up the position: Food means a lot to me. It really does. It has to be proper food and by that I mean good ingredients. It doesn’t have to be gourmet or fine dining but it has to be honest food. And that means something to me because I know that everything we put in our mouths matters. If you put diesel in a car running on gas that doesn’t work either. It needs to be suitable for us humans. I just had a boy and I think a lot about what he eats. Food is what sows the seeds for everything we do and become. That’s what it means to me. (48-year-old Danish male IT consultant) One food blogger reflected on how a series like MasterChef can be part of a collective dialogue about an economic crisis: I think when the crisis started this do it yourself trend emerged. We realize we could go back to home cooking and save money. . . . There has been a shift in focus from quantity to quality . . . and in the process I think people realized just how delicious it is, how cool real, home-cooked, authentic food can be. (30-year-old Danish male musician) All of this was in stark contrast to the celebrity aspect of the format, which viewers felt was overly commercial and not honest at all. They informed producers: do not underestimate us, a rallying cry for a more inclusive and participatory approach to creative production and reception. The type of research exemplified by an analytic dialogue across creative production and cultures of viewing aims to make
an intervention into media industries so that we open up the language of engagement to include socio-cultural as well as economic values. Engagement is more than capturing the attention of audiences; it is making a connection, and in some cases making a real difference to people’s lives.
REALITY TELEVISION: PRODUCTION AND AUDIENCE RESEARCH Designing the case study Got to Dance (2010–2014) was a reality talent competition showcasing adult and child dancers, with a series of live events, public voting, and integrated online content. The format’s flagship series ran for five seasons in the United Kingdom, with other versions in America, Germany, France, Finland, Poland, Romania, and Vietnam. The format uses a familiar narrative of talent competitions where participants first perform in regional auditions filmed in mobile domes and, if selected by the judges, go on to perform at semi-finals and finals, with interactive voting by the public during the live events. The empirical data in this section draw on production and audience research on the fifth and final season of Got to Dance (2014). A team of four persons, including myself, creative content consultant Julie Donovan, Tina Askanius, and Koko Kondo, conducted the research, sharing the work across the different sites of data collection. Ten production interviews took place with executive and creative producers; 30 interviews were conducted with performers at the auditions and 10 interviews at the semi-finals and finals, including family and friends there to support dancers. The production study also included an analysis of the structural factors underlying the reality format Got to
case study – Chapter 14, p. 291
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Annette Hill Dance in terms of financing, the statistical performance indicators for the series in the UK television market, and the creative practices of reality television production. The social media analysis included industry reports on the digital performance of the season in question, and the ratings data included performance metrics for all five seasons (see further Hill, 2017). Observations took place front and back stage at The Roundhouse, London, and Earl’s Court, London, during a twoweek period, resulting in audio recordings, visual data, and fieldnotes. The fieldwork team discussed the observations at several moments of reflection during and after each production day was over. This continual reflection and analysis of the ongoing fieldwork allowed for flexibility in the data design, as each day the participant observations would be attuned to the production environment and the different kinds of participants at the venues. For example, in relation to the live shows, where the venue was filled with crowds of 4,000–6,000 each day of filming, participant observations involved shifting attention between the backstage rehearsal space for the dance groups alongside the spaces for friends and family which were semi-backstage, and the main venue for audiences. Particular production practices for the participants, family supporters, and crowd management applied to each of these zones. Such observations reinforced theory building through the analysis of engagement within the production of a live reality event. For the audience research, 50 individual and group interviews (1 to 5 persons) were conducted with live crowds at the semi-finals and finals, in the queues, coffee shops, and on the street outside and inside the venue. Each interview lasted between 5 and 20 minutes. Recruitment was focused on a range of participants and audiences, including professional dancers, individuals and dance troupes,
dance teachers, family groups, people at the live show who received tickets as subscribers to Sky (the channel broadcasting the program), and people who were there to experience the filming of a reality talent show. Interviews were conducted both individually and in groups in order to tap the diversity of one-to-one and group interactions. The interviews were designed with a topic guide, including reference to the social contexts and routines of attending the live show or watching the series at home; the topic guide also introduced theoretically informed themes such as emotional and critical engagement with the series. Further follow-up interviews were conducted with dance schools and home audiences in order to explore issues raised by the fieldwork, specifically regarding the final outcome of the series and, importantly, its cancellation by the broadcaster – which is elaborated upon subsequently. Figure 18.1 details the topic guide for the auditions, where we conducted interviews with participants auditioning for the competition at the London Roundhouse. The short interview guide contained basic information for the fieldwork team about the types of people we wanted to interview, not only the contestants but their families and supporters as well; it also contained practical information about timing and about obtaining consent from participants to take part in the interview. The interviews were designed to spark a short conversation with people as they stood around waiting in queues, at the venue, and on the street. There were four main themes: motivations for their participation in this show, their experience as a participant, how this experience compared with other dance auditions and reality TV competitions, and what they thought of the series as a whole. The questions were simply worded; further prompts below each question reminded the interviewer how to follow up on things people said.
participating observation – Chapter 14, p. 295 qualitative interviewing – Chapter 14, p. 292
research ethics – Chapter 20, p. 428
Media industries and audience research
Interviews Short interviews on the go, from 5–15 mins. If you think someone is worth following up, then take an email and contact again for another interview when the TV series is on air – in person, via Skype. Mixed interviews with individuals, and groups of friends and dance troupes, families and so forth. Get them to state their name, age, occupation, where they come from, this can be done for each recorded interview. Consent Forms – use these for children, young adults and adults. If you are interviewing anyone under the age of 18 years, then ask for permission from a parent or accompanying adult, who can be present and also participate in the interview if they wish. Key questions 1 What are your reasons for being at the Got to Dance Auditions? Probe – personal motivations, friends/family urged them, the dance group leader etc. 2 What is your experience so far? Probe – what they expected, what they hope for, how to keep up energy, prepare for the audition, support others in their auditions etc. Are they doing this because of their passion for dance, or just to have a go? 3 Have they auditioned before? For GTD, for other reality shows? How do they know what to expect? Is there a GTD style of audition? Impression of other contestants? What is it like supporting your family/friends in their auditions? Stay positive, commiserate. . . What’s it like watching the auditions? The crowd, the judges, performances etc. 4 What do you think to the TV series? Probe – what do they like/dislike? Comments on judges, presenter, other contestants, previous winners, styles of dance etc. Do they vote, go online, share videos etc? How does GTD compare with other talent shows? What they like and don’t like. . . . Quality of dance, mix of styles of dance. Figure 18.1 Fieldwork design for the auditions for Got to Dance
The diversity of data for the research – industry data, production data, and observations and interviews with participants – together suggests a mixed media environment and the fluidity of being both an audience and a user for
traditional as well as digital television content. Got to Dance exemplifies the current mediascape, where live event television, the very basis of what is television in its classical sense (Williams, 1974), still dominates the format. At the same
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Annette Hill time, a myriad other features are woven into the fabric of the series overall, from interactive voting and social media comments integrated into the live show, to a live Facebook studio; a YouTube celebrity; and Twitter, Snapchat, and Instagram marketing. This kind of multifaceted content attracts a range of ‘audiences,’ including home audiences, live crowds at the theatrical venues, audiences as participants and performers in the competition, fans both watching at home and participating in events, and social media users and consumers. From these contexts, we can see how audience engagement with Got to Dance is not going to be easy to understand by only measuring ratings and social media analytics or voting profiles. Statistics offer a valuable picture of the communicative engagement with the ephemerality of the show, but the more sustained kinds of engagement from loyal fans, families who have seen every season of the series, and regular viewers who have travelled to the live shows for a cultural experience will inevitably be hidden within a quantitative measurement of engagement. For example, the qualitative interviews with regular audiences captured the meaning of engagement with the series when watching it at home, with family and friends, voting for favourites, and judging contestants from a distance. In these interviews, the everyday routines built around the series were vital not only in building engagement season by season but in appealing to a family audience that made time for the series in their everyday lives. Interviews with fans of the series captured the passionate labour of fandom, where engagement with the series involved watching, reacting, and voting, as well as attending live events, thus mixing an ‘at home fandom’ with an up-close and personal connection with performers, judges, and the production itself. Child fans were both audiences and participants, transforming their passion for dance into a chance to audition in the series.
Family fandom also featured in the empirical data, where budding young dancers would join forces with parents and siblings in combining learning to dance with watching Got to Dance and auditioning in the series. Such organised family fandom further connected with dance schools and local communities, who offered a valuable support structure to the competition. These regular audiences, then, as fans and participants, highlighted a long-term engagement with the brand as a fixture in both the annual television schedule and the dance competition arena. It was these kinds of audiences and fans in particular who talked of engaging with the pro-social side of the brand, whilst disengaging with the final season because of controversial changes made by the production company and commissioning channel. The participant observations of the auditions and live events during the semi-finals and finale offered an in-depth analysis of some of the contradictions and tensions within audience engagement with live reality television. The auditions included dancers and families and friends of dancers, showcasing a flow of identity positions from being audiences of the series to becoming contestants in a dance competition. A love of dance as a means of expressing individual and collective endeavours dominated the experience of the audition space overall. According to people at the auditions, Got to Dance attracted passionate performers in comparison to other talent shows, where talent was often secondary to entertainment as spectacle. In this instance, the auditions highlight how engagement, coming from an audience at home, can transform into participating in the series itself and having some agency in the outcome of the competition. If we want to know what happens after engagement, then auditions for a talent show offer one opportunity for researchers to understand the symbolic power of engagement with a reality series as it transforms into participation in the next iteration of the series.
Media industries and audience research The live crowds at the televised event captured the diffuse audiences for Got to Dance. By far the most vocal were audiences and fans who could be seen and heard shouting, dancing, and voting during each live event. These audiences and fans were also highly vocal about their anger with changes to the series. The participant observations at the live venues thus highlighted the risks in designing an engagement strategy for a particular kind of audience, in this case young internet users and live crowds, which overshadowed the regular audiences and loyal fans at the venue and watching at home. The demise of the series can partly be connected to an industry perspective of engagement as fleeting communication at the expense of the durable relationships of audiences and fans with the series.
Researching media engagement Many of the established quantitative methods for researching engagement come from within the media industries, such as ratings data; for example, measuring the numbers of children and adults watching television at a certain time on a given day. Such ratings data tell us about the demographic profile of an audience and can also indicate how long viewers stay tuned, or if they switch channels, if they return again, or only watch once. In this way, we can start to build a picture of engagement as not only attention but also loyalty to a channel or brand. For sponsors and advertisers of commercial content, this is of course key to the economic drivers of television. Also, public service media are keen to build loyalty with their audiences, especially if they can keep them engaged with public-service content over or alongside commercial fare. Social media analytics also measure user engagement as a metric of attention. Such data tell us the quantity of television ratings – Chapter 13, p. 270 social media metrics – Chapter 15, p. 316
users visiting a site; commenting or sharing content; and liking and participating in conversations through messages, memes, and other user-generated content. A social media leaderboard will list the top shows with the highest number of tweets, or Facebook likes, for a TV programme. The leaderboard is a visualisation of the metrics, easily listing this show with the most tweets, at this peak time, in comparison with other rival shows and platforms. This performance metric needs to be put into play with the ratings data: the two can tell quite different stories depending on the genre. For example, an episode of a reality talent show can have peak tweets before the start, then more peak tweets after each performance by participants in the competition, and again at the end of the show when there is usually a recap and reminder to vote for your favourite contestant. If social media peak at the start, then drop off during and at the end of the show, this could be a sign that users are disengaging, perhaps bored by the performers. But if the ratings data show us a steady commitment to the show from beginning to end, the social media engagement could be a sign that a certain demographic group are bored (perhaps younger users) or that there are not enough hooks to pull users into these digital platforms. For drama, we may see a very different profile, a peak in tweets before the start of an episode, followed by a flurry of conversations afterwards, as viewers reflect and share their comments on the narrative. In this basic outline of the quantitative measurement of media engagement, we can see that reality television is made for ‘did-you-see-that moments,’ encouraging interaction along the way: tweet now, vote now, gossip as you watch. Reality television content is made in bite-sized chunks that are easy to share on social media and look good in the YouTube format, so that they are easily measured through performance metrics. Elsewhere, I called this sharable content “the moment’s moment” (Hill, 2015). Each tearful performance,
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Annette Hill wardrobe malfunction, or joyful reaction of a winner can be shared and commented on in social media as well as in newspapers and magazines. It is important to note that media engagement works across different contexts, such as the context of time, including both fleeting engagement with a live event and long-form engagement with a brand. The attention to live ratings and viewer loyalty is grounded in institutional notions of time: it matters to audiences if a show is a one-off or a returning vehicle, scheduled at fixed marker points in the day or seasonal calendar. A reality talent show is based on live events but can also be a recurring feature of a television season. As such, a brand can be based on the immediacy of live, short-form engagement but may at the same time encounter audience expectations that the live experience is embedded in routines, year on year. Sporting events, such as football seasons and tennis tournaments, all rely on mixing different kinds of short- and longform engagement with institutional and seasonal constructions of time. Similarly, the context of space is also significant to engagement, including live venues, television distribution and digital spaces, and the spaces of everyday life. Certain venues have particular lighting and atmosphere that help to build a brand, that all-important look and feel of a show that is instantly recognisable to audiences; change the venue, and problems can occur with the experience of a brand, so that the show that seemed so light can now be gloomy and hard to decipher at all because of the production space for the live event. Distribution is a major aspect of audience engagement, especially given the myriad spaces people can pick and choose from to consume content; how people make space for television content is perhaps one of the most pressing issues for engagement, whether shoring up time to make space for television drama as binge viewing or integrating live television into everyday life and family routines.
In relation to this case study, different ways of measuring and valuing engagement became a source of major tension. The intense and positive engagement that previous seasons had generated was broken in season five by, among other things, new scheduling (summer), new venues (London), a shorter season, less time spent on auditions, and an overemphasis on social-media strategies. Up until season five, Got to Dance was scheduled in the winter months of January, February, and March. There were domes, temporary sites that travelled across the United Kingdom for the auditions, lit up so the show symbolised light during the winter months. To audition for Got to Dance meant a lot of preparation – dance school teachers spoke of planning routines once children were back at school in the autumn; schools gave permission for children to go to the audition; teachers and friends supported their participation, voted, and organised parties back home during the live events; parents and friends booked time off work, helping with logistics, coming to the auditions and live shows. As the series gathered momentum season on season, it established trust with its performers and regular audiences. Legions of young children watched the show so they could learn about dance. A dance school teacher said that after every live event, they expected to be contacted by children: “tonight I’ll receive messages ‘I want to dance.’ ” At the live event for season five, buses arrived with schoolchildren, teachers taking their classes to learn the Got to Dance values of positive role models and a ‘can do’ attitude to life. One teacher explained how they replicated the style of this talent show in school performances, using gold stars and constructive criticism to highlight how dedication and hard work can lead to opportunities in life. It was this kind of deep, immersive, or embedded engagement that was broken by new strategies of production and distribution for the fifth season of Got to Dance.
Media industries and audience research Embedded engagement Many parents spoke of organising their everyday lives around the twin interests of their children in dance and this television show. There were the practice sessions to organise and get to; the voluntary work for local dance groups running on limited budgets; sharing skills in sewing, makeup, and hair for the competition; weekend events in far-flung places across the country. There was a hidden family support structure to this dance competition that took a lot of planning and prioritising over the whole year. And then there was the routine of watching a reality talent series in the winter months. One mother explained how she made a ritual of the show, having dinner and a bath before watching the auditions and live events: “it is one we can all sit around and watch as a family. My husband doesn’t care about The X Factor whereas he will sit and watch this. It’s family time.” We can call this way of interweaving the reality show into everyday life embedded engagement (Hill, 2019). Embedded engagement is the kind of long-lasting relationship we form with media content during the course of our lives. This way of seeing audience engagement suggests that there are deeper connections with particular drama or entertainment programs that involve embedding particular media experiences into the spaces and places of regular routines, family rituals, and cultural memories. A key element of this relationship is time. When we embed media in our lives, time becomes enfolded in our everyday media practices over weeks, months, and years. What the quote about “family time” signals is a form of embedded engagement, where people make relationships with reality entertainment over time in the context of their everyday lives. This embedded engagement was broken by a change to the scheduling of season five, from the winter to summer months and with a shorter season, and from regional venues to the capital city
of London. The change to season five in location was felt strongly by participants and regular audiences. Because the auditions and live shows were all in London, the brand had lost its community-wide appeal. And the venues were different from the white domes; now the show felt dark in the summer months. The schedule change, from winter to summertime transmission, was another great source of frustration. Gone was the school and weekend routine; now families had to make special time for the compressed live shows during the school summer holiday. Indeed, the switch in seasons was devastating for the series, disrupting family routines and breaking engagement with loyal fan communities. One female fan explained: “I was looking forward to ten weeks of the show and feeling like you get to know the acts, whereas with the time and space I feel like I don’t know them as well.” An embedded engagement, so hard to create and something to nurture and value in a seasonal event such as this, slipped away with the broadcaster’s decision to change the timeslot and cut the running time for the season overall. As this fan noted, their sense of time – the season, with time to watch and share with others – was changed for the worse: “I like the fact that it used to be week in, week out. It has been compressed. I feel like my enjoyment is going to be a lot shorter.” Embedded engagement suggests how trust and viewer loyalty is established through the power of television to connect with people and their everyday lives. But this value is hard to capture in the institution of television. The reliance on overnight ratings for a live event gives priority to fleeting engagement, and the social media trends for a talent show give priority to an attention economy. The notion of engagement as a dialogue, with relationships built on trust, can become lost in the audience measurement systems. The breakdown of embedded engagement was indeed reflected in the numbers. Tables 18.1 and 18.2 enable us to
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Annette Hill Table 18.1 Got to Dance season 5 social media engagement Got to Dance Digital content
Got to Dance season 5
Got to Dance live shows
Twitter Twitter Facebook YouTube Instagram Sky1 website
Total tweets 72,000 Followers auditions 129,000 Live total views 17,000 2.6 million views; 7,400 subscribers 6,863 followers auditions 254,000 page views live shows
Total tweets 22,000 Followers finale 133,000 Joe Sugg live 33,000 likes Joe Sugg live 50,000 views 12,427 followers finale 422,000 online votes
Source: Internal report on social media engagement by the Princess production company and Sky One
Table 18.2 Got to Dance ratings performance Got to Dance
Season 5 Viewers First Audition
Season 5 Viewers Live Finale
Season 1 Average Viewers
Season 2 Average Viewers
Season 3 Average Viewers
Season 4 Average Viewers
Total Children Men Women Housewives Adults 16–34 Adults 35–55 Adults 55+
646, 000 160,000 169,000 316,000 265,000 183,000 244,000 58,000
486,000 80,000 152,000 253,000 207,000 151,000 170,000 83,000
1,113,000 230,000 357,000 543,000 511,000 394,000 409,000 95,000
1,172,000 231,000 393,000 547,000 518,000 428,000 412,000 101,000
979,000 168,000 356,000 454,000 437,000 366,000 354,000 90,000
820,000 166,000 266,000 387,000 370,000 251,000 304,000 97,000
Source: BARB and Endemol Shine
compare the ratings and social media analytics for Got to Dance. Now we can confer the insights from our situated research on production and reception with existing industry data on two kinds of audiences: the viewing audience for the series as shown on the subscription channel Sky One and the users of the official social media promoting the series. A stark picture emerges of a strong social media performance overshadowing the core loyal audience base. On the strength of the social media analytics, Got to Dance delivered a successful digital marketing strategy. Karolyn Holborn, digital executive producer on the series, worked across the Sky and
Princess digital teams. For her, the cultural values of the production, that this was a positive talent show, were paramount. It was important to manage positive content, never laughing at people but encouraging the sharing of performances as a positive experience. Holborn knew that the digital content for the live events needed to connect with the performances as big social moments. The show hired young YouTube celebrity Joe Sugg, a.k.a. Thatcher Joe; at the time, he had over 11 million subscribers to his three YouTube channels, ThatcherJoe, ThatcherJoeGames, and ThatcherJoeVlogs, showing pranks and impressions. The ThatcherJoe videos,
Media industries and audience research a total of over 600 on the channel gottodancesky1, were popular with younger viewers used to the amateur style of the content and markedly different from the high definition of the live shows; similarly, the branded Facebook live shows after each semi-final were also aimed at this same target group, combining interviews and dance demonstrations with the judges and former winners. These strategic decisions were in line with the framing of performances within positive modes of engagement and with reference to the program brand across several kinds of digital content for younger viewers and users. Table 18.1 shows the successful digital media engagement for the live shows, with strong performance metrics for Joe Sugg live on Facebook (33,000 likes) and YouTube (50,000 views). In this way, a YouTube star at a live event boosted the circulation of the digital brand. Similarly, the number of page views for the live shows on the branded website (254,000), alongside Facebook (17,000 page views) and Twitter feeds (133,000 followers), indicated that the performances were catalysts for engagement with branded social media content. The decision by the digital and programme team to open up online voting further resulted in 422,000 votes for the finale. The top Facebook post (1,300 posts, 7000 likes), top Snapchat post (2,200 likes), and top post for Twitter (130,000 followers) were all congratulations to the winners of the series, an adult and child double act called Duplic8. This act was well aware of the strategic use of digital media, young viewers, and online voting to generate a positive impression and contribute to brand management. Table 18.2 offers an overview of the ratings for all seasons, including the season average, and the average number of viewers for the auditions compared with the live shows for season five. The demographic profile of viewers across age, gender, and socio-economic category shows the core audience for the series as families, in particular children, women,
and housewives in the lower-middle and working-class social groups; for example, the social viewer groups watching the first audition of Season 5 included a total of 646,000 viewers, with 425,000 made up of housewives and children. According to the Broadcasters’ Audience Research Board (BARB) figures, viewers disengaged with the series, dropping from 646,000 at the start of the auditions to 486,000 for the live finale, and losing a percentage point in the share of audiences watching television at that time (from 3.4 to 2.2). The share drop was especially felt amongst children (from 9.5 to 4.6), and in the demographics for core audiences and fans, the share tended to halve for women, adults aged 16–55, and housewives (for example, housewives 2.5 to 1.6). Finally, if we compare the upsurge in younger users for the digital content and online voting with the ratings for children, there is a stark picture of traditional fans disengaging with the show. In season one, 230,000 children watched Got to Dance; by season five at the auditions, 160,000 were watching, and only 80,000 stayed for the live finale. In terms of mothers, recorded by BARB as housewives, the ratings dropped from around half a million viewers for season one to 200,000 for the live finale of season five. In sum, the ratings show that the strategy of increasing the number of younger digital users for the brand backfired with core audiences (children and parents) for the series. In the queues for the live events, fans expressed their frustration with the broadcaster and changes made to the show in the schedule and the shortened season. Fans felt shortchanged: “I’m missing my TV time. I want to watch them for longer, not sit down and ‘oh, it’s over already’ ” (20–30-year-old female viewer). A brand based on passion for dance seemed oddly lacking in dance content due to the compression in the programme time: one mother said of the new format, “I just don’t like it. We don’t see much dance.” In another encounter, two sisters and their
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Annette Hill children were waiting to enter the venue for the semi-finals. They had no idea about the acts, as they had been on holiday during the transmission of auditions: “I must admit that I haven’t watched this one, I never missed any series but we have been away on holiday. We love dance . . . the previous series were shown in January and they changed it” (30–40-year-old female viewer). If viewers missed the auditions, “then when it comes to the semi-finals they won’t know what the acts are. ‘Who are these people?’ ” (40–50-year-old male viewer). The positive engagement with the brand that had been built up over time by the Princess company and the local production team quickly switched to negative engagement and disaffection with the channel. One interpretation of the failure of Got to Dance could be format fatigue with talent shows; other brands were also struggling at the time. And yet the cultural resonance of the brand offered a rare example of a pro-social talent show. This format was attempting to offer something different from commercial rivals, and it most resembled BBC’s ballroom talent show Strictly Come Dancing (also known as Dancing with the Stars and Let’s Dance in other countries such as the United States and Sweden) in the positive engagement with the brand as a recurring live experience involving local communities, dance schools, and nationwide public debates. Got to Dance offered similar public-service elements in a commercial setting. The ratings and social media metrics still captured the value of engagement in economic terms, but the cultural values of the program had been especially strong in terms of viewer loyalty, a passionate fan base, quality standards in the dance profession, family and school support structures for participant and audience interaction, and the presentation of positive role models for children and aspiring dancers. In the end, this example of audience engagement with a pro-social brand on a commercial channel ended up being
hidden within the institution of television by its audience information systems.
CONCLUSION Engagement is integral to ongoing transformations in the media industries. A term that usually has meant audience attention is changing currency, combining ratings and social media trends with ideas of cultural resonance. More research on engagement as economic and cultural value, respectively, can open up our understanding of the term simultaneously from academic and industry perspectives. Through an analytic dialogue drawing on relationships across both cultures and involving producers as well as audiences, research can contribute to new knowledge on how to build engagement with and through media. This chapter has shown how combined production and audience research can illuminate the flow of dialogue, along with problems or absences of dialogue, across moments of creative production, distribution and marketing, and audience engagement. Takeaway points from the chapter include: • A holistic production-reception perspective can bridge the traditional academic-industry divide for these fields of study; • Collaboration between media industries and academic research can offer fruitful insights into the ways engagement is conceptualised and researched today; • Within the media industries, a new currency of media engagement as having both economic and socio-cultural value is emerging; • Media engagement can be researched by combining quantitative and qualitative methods in order to capture engagement both as a measurement of attention and as cultural resonance; • Academic research into media engagement from combined production and
Media industries and audience research audience perspectives offers valuable data on public engagement with media. In particular, the chapter has highlighted how production-cum-audience research that combines interviews, participant observations, ratings, and social media metrics can reveal tensions within the media industries about the meaning of engagement as an economic and cultural value, respectively. In the case study, the talent show for a commercial channel represented pro-social values; it championed passion for dance and a ‘can do’ attitude to life. And audiences and fans, performers and contestants, and local schools and dance communities positively engaged with the pro-social values of the brand as a nationwide, live, and recurring experience. One woman literally described Got to Dance as like a piece of rock candy you buy at the seaside with words written on the inside: “It’s positive all the way through.” With such brand loyalty, how did the show fail? It was an example of how quickly positive engagement can switch to negative engagement as loyal audiences and fans become angry with changes to a series, here in terms of compressed time, a new scheduling slot, and a London location rather than nationwide venues. To the media industry, the core economic value of the show was fleeting engagement: the ‘now’ of the live event as measured by ratings and social media metrics. However, for regular home audiences, loyal fans, and participants, the show had created an embedded engagement with a long-standing reality television event, where the annual live experience was only one part of the series’ presence in people’s everyday lives. This kind of engagement as long-term cultural resonance was in conflict with the institution of (commercial) television,
specifically the hype surrounding young audiences and digital media. In the short view, if a pro-social brand like Got to Dance is cancelled, loyal fans lose their relationship with a favourite show, but in the long view, broadcasters risk breaking trust with their audiences. Such a move signals a misunderstanding of the very meaning of engagement as multifaceted, built on relationships between producers and different varieties of audiences, and it further signals the risk of disrupting an all-important dialogue at a time when power is slipping from the traditional institution of television to disparate sites of media content within multi-platform environments. Overall, the type of research that is exemplified here by an analytic dialogue between producers and audiences aims to make an intervention into media industries so as to open up the language of engagement to socio-cultural values. The interfaces between media structures, contents and genres, and interpretive processes are difficult to identify and research but significant to our sense of the produceraudience relationship. In particular, the role of academic research can be to creatively explore engagement in its various forms. Indeed, by considering the value of media for both creative producers and audiences, research can itself be a form of public engagement, where academics add cultural and social value to existing forms of ratings and social media analytics. By opening up the meaning of engagement, we can glimpse how the media add value to our lives. Corner (2017: 5) describes this kind of engagement as a resource for living, a means to improve the conditions for social and cultural equality. Here, then, moving beyond conventional forms of engagement, research can highlight the long view of engagement with media as a cultural resource for lived experiences.
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Employing media-rich participatory action research to foster youth voice Lynn Schofield Clark and Margie Thompson
• • • • •
A review of the concept of action in communication research An introduction to the principles and epistemologies associated with participatory action research (PAR) and with youth participatory action research (YPAR) A discussion of the complementarities and distinctions between participatory action research and other forms of research into youth and media A review of a media-rich research project designed according to YPAR approaches A discussion of how research projects like this ideally contribute to policy change and youth critical consciousness development
INTRODUCTION
youth participatory action research
In this chapter, we are interested in thinking about communication and communication research in relation to the concept of action. We begin the chapter with a discussion of theories of action and their relationships to communication and information and then focus our attention on what we refer to as media-rich participatory action research. After an introduction to the principles and epistemologies associated with action research and with the particular subfield of youth participatory action research (YPAR), we introduce one of many media-rich youth participatory action research projects that we have had the opportunity to co-lead. The project highlighted here focuses on a group of 22 students who were involved in the research, planning, and execution of a student-selected YPAR project that took the concept of action – Chapter 1, p. 14
place during the 2014–2015 academic year. We describe the design of the research project and the ways that young people experiencing situations of dis- and relocation, racism, and financial precarity came to be co-researchers who were involved in the collection, analysis, and presentation of data about relations between young people of color and police officers in their communities. We found that as young people utilized cameras and their mobile phones to gather their data, this shifted them into a position that disrupted traditional power dynamics between youth and the police officers they met through this project. We therefore utilize the term media rich to signal the importance of accounting for media technologies and their roles both in allowing for the reproduction, storage, and presentation of data and for the extended potential of that data’s dissemination across space and time. We argue that rather than produc-
Participatory action research ing media and then later confronting the problem of assembling an audience, a media-rich participatory action research project can reposition young people as creators of media-rich research in their roles as collectors and analyzers of data. We review this project as a means of exploring relationships between action research, policy change, and critical consciousness development in youth so as to tease out the unique aspects of this approach to research as it is conducted in the media and communication fields. First, however, we discuss the complementarities and distinctions between this kind of research and other strands of communication theory and research, showing how this approach draws upon, shares commonalities with, is distinct from, and may inform other methodologies. We conclude that participatory action research may hold particular appeal for those with interests in utilizing communication research to address ongoing and heightened situations of oppression. Drawing on a long tradition in the related fields of communication activism and reflexive critical research, we argue that a participatory action approach to research may have special appeal for those who are interested in questions of why, how, and for whom communication research can, and should, matter.
ACTION AS A KEY CONCEPT IN COMMUNICATION RESEARCH To begin: how does communication relate to action? We understand communication as a form of action that brings meaning to other human actions. Consistent with many scholars in the fields of communication and media studies, in this chapter, we build upon the philosophy of George Herbert Mead, who argued that actions can only be understood in relation to social processes that involve the interactions of many people. The reality that we experience, and the meaning that is rendered in relation to individual and social acts,
is socially constructed through a process that is mediated by the use of symbols (Cronk, 2001). Actions do not arise out of individual intention; they can only be understood in relation to social processes. As Jensen notes in this book’s introductory chapter, communication is performative, and thus when we communicate with others, we are engaging in actions that are articulated and mediated through language, sounds, images, and texts, as well as through technologies. All human actions communicate, and as we engage in actions through behaviors and other social and linguistic cues, we create symbolic meanings, whether we do so with intention or not. These meanings then construct relationships of connection with – or disconnection from – others. Questions of communication and action therefore have a normative dimension, in that how we choose to act, as well as how we act without intention, has an effect on us and on our relationships with others. We find Roger Silverstone’s (2006b) work especially insightful in this area when thinking about the responsibilities that relate to these actions, particularly for scholars of communication and media and professionals who work in these fields. Silverstone argues that when it comes to our actions, we each have both “formal responsibility” and “substantive responsibility,” with formal responsibility referring to the individual acts for which we are held accountable and substantive responsibility drawing attention to the responsibility that those who have access to forms of societal power have in relation to the condition of others. Acts of substantive responsibility, Silverstone notes, are like those of the parent for the child or the politician for his constituents. Substantive responsibility grows out of power and is enacted as an expression of that power. In other words, communication as performative – Chapter 1, p. 14 normative communication theory – Chapter 20, p. 413
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Lynn Schofield Clark and Margie Thompson any persons with access to power have responsibility vis-à-vis the less powerful, as we are all jointly responsible for the social system in which we live and act. Media professionals, Silverstone suggests, need to act out of a particular form of substantive responsibility that he refers to as an ethic of media hospitality, as they are charged with ensuring that those who “might otherwise be marginalized will be seen and heard on their own terms” (p. 143). Building on both Mead and Silverstone, we argue that those engaging in communication and media research have a substantive responsibility because the process of rendering knowledge is an act of exercising power. Communication researchers are engaged in such actions as we make communicative choices about how to enact the practices and processes of research. In this chapter, we are particularly concerned with the study of action in relation to the critical tradition of communication research. Jürgen Habermas’s (1984) concept of communicative action has been especially influential in critical media and communication studies and in our own thinking. Habermas, one of the foremost critical social scholars of the twentieth century, sought to ground the social sciences in a theory of language and in relation to a tradition that recognized oppressive relations. Consistent with the social context for action articulated by Mead, Habermas began his discussion of communicative action with a critique of what he viewed as Max Weber’s (1922/1978) limited view of human action. Weber overemphasized the intentionality of human action, Habermas argued, which in turn led to a focus on a solitary acting subject with insufficient attention to the coordinating actions that are also a part of society’s functioning. As an alternative, Habermas proposed that cultural knowledge is transmitted from generation to generation through the processes of communicative action, as mutual understandings are created and reinforced. critical research – Chapter 20, p. 421
These processes of communicative action also coordinate actions toward social solidarity and, as collective processes, are the basis for the formation of individual identities. But money and power, according to Habermas, interfere with consensus-oriented communication, allowing societal differences to emerge that then construct and hold in place societal inequities. Lifeworlds, or the ways that people experience the world, are then colonized, and what is needed in this situation is what he terms communicative rationality: communication that is “oriented to achieving, sustaining, and reviewing consensus” (Habermas, 1984: 17). This involves deliberation among people who may have differing commitments to knowledge and differing claims to validity. Habermas’s idea of communicative action opens communication research to pragmatic questions of how best to address problems of inequity. Ideally, critical scholarship points out contradictions in society in order to generate ways in which existing unjust ideologies or practices can be exposed and challenged so that new and more just approaches can be considered and put into practice. With its focus on research that exposes, enhances consciousness, and suggests alternative routes of action, critical scholarship is especially well aligned with the goals and approaches of action research. In fact, some scholars argue that much of post-1970s action research draws explicitly from the critical tradition, as discussed subsequently. Both critical and some forms of action research call attention to the ways that knowledge has been constructed in relation to existing power dynamics, and both also acknowledge the dynamism of terminology, language, and knowing. Action research may also draw upon knowledge gathered from within empirical/analytical and interpretive traditions, as we discuss in a later section that explores complementarities and distinctions between participatory action research and other research approaches.
Participatory action research
participants as practitioners of research
communication is action, and anticipates action
Action research offers a means of directly reorganizing the research process by incorporating insights from people who hail from groups historically granted less access to power. In action research, then, rather than being positioned as ‘subjects’ or ‘informants’ within an existing research design, people from these groups are research practitioners alongside university scholars. Research is something that research participants do rather than something that is done on or about them; participants engage in the acts of research. Moreover, practitioners of action research approach knowledge, and communication about that knowledge, with the understanding that communication both can be a form of action and can anticipate action. Communication signals the relations between what is and what could be; communicating about what can be is the precursor to action that can bring about that imagined future. As we discuss further in the next section, by participating in media-rich participatory action research, people are communicating their understandings of what is and what ought to be in a forum where their vision of a just future can be articulated and shared and where their understandings can give shape to actions that will follow. We therefore turn now to a discussion of how participatory action research and its subset of youth participatory action research has developed across various disciplines.
AN INTRODUCTION TO PARTICIPATORY ACTION RESEARCH
applied research
Action research was first described in the 1930s by social psychologist Kurt Lewin (1936), who was committed to a pragmatic approach to research and viewed applied research as an important means by which to widen the information base for theory building. Lewin created an experiment that demonstrated the value of action research – Chapter 20, p. 427
democratic decision-making in workplace settings by engaging workers themselves in decision-making processes. He found that workplace productivity was consistently higher when people were not merely ‘subjects’ in studies but were actively engaged as participants in identifying, researching, and solving the problems they confronted in the workplace. He thus provided justification for research that draws upon the ability of ordinary people to take action and to solve collective problems through the communicative processes of reflection and discussion. John Dewey (1930), who was Lewin’s contemporary and shared his commitment to pragmatist epistemology, similarly criticized the ways that scientific approaches of the time abstracted knowledge from context and from human action. As they and their contemporaries were writing in the shadow of the rising totalitarian regimes in 1930s Europe, both viewed such approaches to situated and applied research as an important means of fostering democratic rather than autocratic sensibilities, securing an approach to knowledge construction as a collective act. Action research has been embraced within the field of education, often in a functional way that emphasizes improvements that can be measured in relation to particular desirable outcomes: For example, reducing classroom behavior problems results in higher classroom test score averages. Action research thus came to be associated with applied approaches rather than oriented toward higher aims. Then, the approach had a resurgence with a distinctively emancipatory thrust in the early 1970s, which led to the development of participatory action research (PAR) in Latin America (Fals Borda, 1987). Fals Borda (2000), who criticized the presumption of neutrality in administrative research, has argued that some scholars were then recovering the critical potential administrative vs. critical research – Chapter 20, p. 421
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Lynn Schofield Clark and Margie Thompson of action research as they conducted their work in settings of economic exploitation and in settings of human and cultural destruction. He noted that action research aligned well with the work of critical academics who questioned the academic insistence on value-neutrality in relation to what he termed the “Majority World origins” of most research (Fals Borda, 2006: 27). Fals Borda (2006) contended that action research scholars working with marginalized communities sought to bring rigor to the exploration of knowledge among ordinary people, seeking “both a more complete and a more applicable knowledge” (p. 29). Such work required grappling with the ways that researchers unconsciously embraced reactionary traits and ideas held in place by standard top-down knowledge production practices. Inspiration for such work came from Camilo Torres in Colombia (Lopera, 2006) and Paulo Freire (1970/2000) in Brazil, among others, who argued for gauging knowledge from an ethical standpoint and via the judgment of local reference groups. In general, participatory action research builds on the idea that when people are given the opportunity to explore a deeper understanding of both their present situation and the obstacles they face, they are then better prepared to identify more clearly what actions are needed for social change. Participatory action research is therefore rooted in the insistence on knowledge grounded in the lived experiences of those who are oppressed and incorporates partnerships between researchers and grassroots communities (Fals Borda, 1987; Freire, 1970/2000). The research process is viewed not as an end in itself but as a process, a means to reflect, consider courses of action, and engage in actions toward change. Key to such work is Freire’s concept of critical consciousness, or conscientizacão, which is the practice of “learning to perceive social, political, and economic contradictions, and to take action against the oppressive elements
of reality” (1970/2000, p. iii). Inherent in the development of critical consciousness is the ability to recognize one’s position and place within a system that is not fixed but is instead the result of an “unjust order” that “they can transform” (Freire, 1970/2000: 22–23). These ideas have been further developed by Watts and Hipolito-Delgado (2015), who noted that the stages of critical consciousness development include (1) critical social analysis, (2) collective identification, (3) political self-efficacy, and (4) sociopolitical action (see also Diemer & Li, 2011; Ginwright & James, 2002). Following these insights on critical consciousness development, in youth participatory action research, young people partner with adults to discuss issues of social inequity. Together, they then collect information about the topic and consider which actions might best disrupt and bring about change in the systems that hold those inequities in place. Such actions might include engaging in efforts to change policies, contributing to the development of new institutions or services, or improving service delivery (Cammarota & Fine, 2010; Anyon, Bender, Kennedy, & Dechants, 2018; Schensul, Schensul, Singer, Weeks, & Brault, 2014). YPAR therefore presents an opportunity for youth to engage in active resistance to oppressive power relations, which can be a new experience for young people who have been largely excluded from social and political life (Delgado & Staples, 2007). PAR and YPAR have become part of an important framework in economic development work (Bessette, 2004; Bessette & Rajasunderam,1996), critical pedagogy and literacy (Fals Borda & Rahman, 1991), education (Fox, 2013; Galletta & Jones, 2010), and youth media empowerment programs (Akom, Ginwright, & Cammarota, 2008). Such approaches share common ground with critical race theory in that they foreground questions of power in society that shape racial/
Participatory action research ethnic relations and are oriented toward highlighting ways in which those dynamics can be transformed (Akom et al., 2008; Cammarota & Fine, 2010). Youth participatory action research, which focuses specifically on partnering with young people and surfacing their concerns, is thus a methodology particularly well suited to engaging with young people growing up in communities that experience oppression in relation to race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status within the United States and other capitalist systems. In the field of communication, PAR has been most readily adopted among those who study communication and development (Liao, 2007; Hearn, Tacchi, Foth, & Lennie, 2009) and media education (Akom et al., 2008; Clark, 2013). There are also a few interesting efforts situated within critical media studies. These include Donovan’s (2014) work in New York City that jointly examines the effects of ‘smart urbanism’ with dispossessed communities and the work of Bailey, Steeves, Burkell, Shade, Ruparelia, and Regan (2019), who are conducting a multi-method study in Canada with an action component that aims to explore and develop policy suggestions informed by how young people think about their ‘digital shadows.’ PAR scholars are also grappling with how to engage in social-scientific studies that advance understandings of intersecting experiences of oppression, as such analyses foreground the interplay between discrete factors and thus resist analysis that attempts to disambiguate race, gender, class, geography, and other factors into discrete categories (Collins, 1986; Crenshaw, 1990; Hancock, 2013). We also must grapple with questions of researcher positionality and issues of racial/ethnic and socioeconomic difference and the power dynamics between those working within universities and those communication and development – Chapter 11, p. 223 media education – Chapter 20, p. 425
working in communities (Bonilla-Silva, 2017; Fine, 1994; Hintz & Milan, 2010; Mayer, 2005; Zuberi & Bonilla-Silva, 2008). There are therefore complementarities and distinctions between participatory action and other forms of research that are worth noting here.
COMPLEMENTARITIES AND DISTINCTIONS How is action research complementary to and distinct from other research traditions? In this section, we explore how the PAR approach draws upon, shares commonalities with, is distinct from, and may inform other methodologies. Table 19.1 provides a summary of these comparisons with several important research traditions in the fields of media and communication studies. Quantitative surveys. PAR research draws upon quantitative studies that explore the interactive effects of factors such as race, gender, class, and geography across large populations. Such scholarship has generated better understandings of how varied advantages and disadvantages interact to produce differing outcomes and has also considered the ways that inequalities may change or be reinforced across multiple dimensions (McCall, 2005). Reviews of quantitative data within PAR research can generate important questions related to the specific context of participants, but qualitative researchers are cautious to note that variables such as race, class, gender, or sexual orientation are not to be viewed as explanatory constructs in and of themselves (Bowleg, 2008). Such work is complicated, as Bailey and her colleagues have argued (Bailey et al., 2019). In some instances, PAR shares common concerns about foregrounding issues of race, gender, and class for further analysis, although quantitative research does not generally share PAR’s commitment quantitative surveys – Chapter 13, p. 261
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Lynn Schofield Clark and Margie Thompson Table 19.1 Complementarities and distinctions across research traditions How PAR . . .
. . . draws upon
. . . shares with/ differs from
. . . informs
Quantitative surveys
Surveys inform PAR design and analysis. Survey analyses can offer intriguing questions to test with select populations in PAR
Predictive analytics
Similar to survey data, predictive analytics provides information on general patterns or processes that can inform PAR design and research questions
PAR can identify questions that can be brought into survey research for validation and extrapolation. PAR can bring into focus the limits of quantitative frameworks (e.g., how they are shaped by unrecognized middleclass assumptions). Likewise, PAR can expand upon survey results by examining processes and implications in specific contexts, as well as power dynamics PAR can be a means of organizing the presentation and analysis of big data according to the concerns of marginalized groups
Experimental research
Experimental research provides models for PAR interventions
Both recognize limits to their samples, as those completing surveys tend to be older and more privileged, while PAR participants are less privileged and younger. Survey data are aggregated and generalized to a larger population, whereas PAR works with much smaller sample sizes Both PAR and predictive analytics are oriented toward the future; they differ in data collection methods and through the focus of predictive analytics on data, with less attention to social theory Both involve an intervention or ‘treatment’
Qualitative interviews and grounded theory
Analysis of interviews provides helpful frameworks for PAR research design and analysis
PAR and qualitative methods share philosophical roots and epistemological commitments
PAR can offer innovative designs for experiments that could be mutually beneficial and expand upon the results of experimental studies by examining power dynamics within specific contexts PAR provides a path to accessing different populations on their own terms and in authentic relations of mutuality
Participatory action research How PAR . . .
. . . draws upon
. . . shares with/ differs from
. . . informs
Narrative, rhetoric, discourse, visual analysis
Analytical methods focus on language and images in themselves; PAR adds insight into how social categories are structured and held in place PAR can incorporate design considerations into work with communities
Distinctive philosophical and epistemological traditions
PAR directs attention to the contexts of stories and how they become meaningful
Both are oriented toward productive outcomes. The primary stakeholder or evaluator of design science is not the research community, but design science may not share PAR’s commitments to social justice as an outcome of research
PAR can foreground community needs in design science
Design science
to social justice outcomes. Some believe that the two are incommensurable, as PAR insists on race, gender, and class as constructs best understood in relation to intersectionally structured experiences of power, privilege, and oppression. But, likewise, PAR work may inform survey research because it is located in and emerges in relation to the specific needs of communities. PAR can therefore offer a productive challenge to survey research that might assume rather than interrogate certain aspects of lived experience among marginalized and dispossessed communities, as it may introduce into survey design certain community questions that might not be otherwise addressed. It is important to recognize that both PAR and quantitative survey research have biases that, in some ways, may offer a correction for the other. As one example,
survey respondents tend to be older and more likely to respond to survey questions in socially desirable ways than do those in interview settings (Holbrook, Green, & Krosnick, 2003; Van Loon, Tijhuis, Picavet, Surtees, & Ormel, 2003). In contrast, PAR studies that involve participants in action research, while much less common than survey research, have often focused on the experiences of those in educational settings who are younger and less privileged. While both approaches generally pursue different research goals and for differing audiences, the two types of research do stand to benefit from being in dialogue with one another. Experimental research. PAR draws on experimental research in its design, in that both methods share a common experiments – Chapter 13, p. 265
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Lynn Schofield Clark and Margie Thompson orientation toward a treatment. PAR researchers imagine the change they wish to produce and then design their study in order to explore whether their intervention (or ‘treatment’ in the case of experiments) produces the desired change. Unlike experimental research, however, in which a team designs and then implements the ‘treatment’ on a specific experimental group (comparing it with a control group), PAR requires managing input from many stakeholders in its design and implementation, including those to whom the intervention is directed. PAR research can provide a window into the concerns of dispossessed communities and may also provide insights into why a particular intervention may have worked as anticipated in a certain community or not (Cahill, Quijada Cerecer, & Bradley, 2010). Predictive analytics. Similar to survey data that rely on statistical techniques, predictive analytics provides information on general patterns or processes, based on data gathered through data mining and processed and analyzed through machine learning. Information gleaned from predictive analytics can give shape to particular PAR topics and research designs. Also, both PAR and predictive analytics are oriented toward the future. However, they differ in their means of collecting data, and, unlike PAR, predictive analytics sometimes leads to the exclusion of attention to relevant social theories (for a critique of predictive analytics in the particular instance of distressed communities, see Pinchevski, 2019). Qualitative interviews and grounded theory. Qualitative interview research and grounded theory traditions have long been methods employed to better understand the experiences of those who are marginalized by society’s institutions. These methods tend to center on narratives and observations and can data mining – Chapter 15, p. 314 qualitative interviewing – Chapter 14, p. 292
offer insights into how power dynamics shape and constrain opportunities. Unlike quantitative and experimental research, both qualitative and participatory action research methods can center the perspectives of people who are multiply marginalized and who are distanced from the centers of societal power. In other words, rather than beginning with a hypothesis to be tested, qualitative approaches begin with the principles of verstehen: a term that refers to the intention to understand lived experience deeply and from the perspectives of the people living it (Weber, 1922/1978). Both qualitative and participatory action research share a commitment to studies in particular contexts, and thus both also generate results that are not generalizable, which is problematic for policymakers. And both share another weakness, as noted by Choo and Ferree (2010): Research that focuses on amplifying voices traditionally unheard does not necessarily examine the processes by which the traditional categories of identification are produced, experienced, reproduced, and resisted in everyday life (see also Bailey, Burkell, Steeves, & Shade, 2019). PAR, qualitative, and grounded theory research share similar epistemological commitments seeking to understand the complexities and limitations of all research approaches and research situations. But while there is a great deal of overlap, PAR is distinct from qualitative research and grounded theory in that its goal is to answer to the expectations of the community engaged in the study rather than to the expectations of the research community. This means that when PAR research incorporates qualitative research methods into its design, analysis of data and reporting the implications of those data for community stakeholders must engage in a form of translation, as we discuss subsequently. Narrative, rhetorical, discursive, and visual analysis. PAR may draw upon research in these traditions, particularly to
Participatory action research explore the processes by which traditional categories of identification and affinity are produced, experienced, reproduced, and resisted in everyday life. However, these traditions are quite distinct to the extent that they have developed out of differing philosophical traditions, with narrative, rhetorical, discursive, and visual analysis linked with the humanities and PAR situated in relation to social-scientific research. Likewise, these traditions may or may not share PAR’s commitments to social justice outcomes of research. Never theless, they share commonalities in their deep attention to action and storytelling. PAR may therefore inform these approaches through enrichment of analyses, just as narrative and other textual approaches may consider representational strategies in relation to the actions proposed within PAR work. Design science. As an outcome-based research methodology, and one that is rooted in information technology research, design science shares some common ground with media-rich PAR work. Unlike some other methodologies, neither approach is oriented toward the production of domain-specific knowledge, for instance, and neither views the research community as its principal stakeholder or evaluator. Both also have some connections with the commercial realm and with administrative research in their origins and in their orientation toward problem-solving, as found in Lewin’s early PAR work and in the work of the Design Research Society (Bayazit, 2004). Some design researchers in anthropology have been interested in exploring the application of design science to social problems (Pink, 2014). But not all design research shares PAR’s philosophical commitment to examining and disrupting power relations through analyses of privilege and oppression, as this approach largely focuses instead on the acquisition of knowledge related to design and design humanistic traditions – Chapter 2
activity. Thus, whereas PAR emphasizes that knowledge is embedded in the community, design research tends to elevate experts who guide research design processes. Design research also emphasizes efficiency and fast-moving processes, whereas those who engage in PAR are skeptical of this approach, viewing such orientations as likely to reinforce rather than examine biases and thus potentially creating outcomes that damage rather than repair relations with and among dispossessed communities. PAR could inform design research, and some elements of design research might be attractive to practitioners of PAR. Such a dialogue has the potential to transform design research, resulting in a blended form of methodology (see, e.g., Pink, 2019). A final distinction between PAR and these other approaches to research rests in the fact that PAR is committed to creating spaces for leadership to emerge from communities and is considered valid to the extent that it addresses the concerns that are identified by marginalized communities rather than by outside groups seeking to partner with those communities. In general, the value and validity of PAR are determined by participants in the research, who are the people with the greatest stake in the outcomes of the research. Of course, measuring the effect of the intervention is not the main goal of PAR; productively changing the context is PAR’s goal. While some PAR scholars have begun to introduce measures of effectiveness into their research designs, with particular focus on stakeholder engagement and the improved quality of decision-making, it is worth noting that at present there are far fewer publications that trace the failure rather than the success of PAR projects (but see Clark, 2014; Burke, Greene, & McKenna, 2017). The next section of this chapter begins with a discussion of the research design and objectives of what we refer to as a media-rich youth participatory action research project. We describe the context
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Lynn Schofield Clark and Margie Thompson of the research, which emerged out of the Digital Media Club (hereinafter the DMC), a youth after-school group. We consider how the research efforts of this group built upon and borrowed from other research traditions as youth co-researchers incorporated findings from large-scale surveys and utilized strategies of critical discourse analysis to analyze original qualitative data that students gathered with video cameras. We also draw upon data generated through a secondary research project that was conducted under the second author’s direction by 15 students in an undergraduate media research methods class from our university. These university students worked with the high school Digital Media Club students to conduct a qualitative study that collected data through participant observation and in-depth interviews with member students. Interviews focused on perceptions of police relations, including students’ opinions of police officers both in the school and in general, and the role of media coverage in shaping relations with the police.
DESIGNING A MEDIA-RICH YOUTH PARTICIPATORY ACTION RESEARCH PROJECT With an interest in bringing YPAR practices into conversation with media and communication studies, the first author of this chapter had established the afterschool Digital Media Club in 2010 at a public high school that includes a number of students who are recent immigrants to the United States, as described subsequently. The after-school context was important, as research has established that, for a variety of reasons, teachers are less likely to address racism and other oppressions from a critical perspective. Also, peer social support (as in the DMC) is an important antecedent for social action (Diemer & Li, 2011). The school that hosts the club is located in Denver, a large city in the southwestern United States
that is considered a ‘second-generation’ immigrant host city, as it incorporated large immigrant populations into its urban communities well after growth in initial urban centers such as New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Detroit. The high school serves 1,400 students, with more than 70 countries and more than 40 language groups represented in the student body. Students attending this school fall on the lower end of the socioeconomic spectrum, as evidenced in the fact that 70% of students at the school qualify for free or reduced lunch, the US government’s standard measure of poverty. The after-school club’s aim was to invite students, many of whom were new to the United States, to “use digital media to make a difference in your community” (Flyer invitation, n.d.). DMC members selected a topic of interest at the beginning of each academic year. The students then worked with a team of educator/ researchers, graduate and undergraduate students from the nearby university, and other students in their high school to develop a project, meeting on subsequent Thursday afternoons during the academic year (September through May). Each year, students spent the months of September through December researching their issues of concern, selecting a particular area of focus, mapping out their intentions, and devising a communication plan to support those efforts. Then, from January through May, they managed the process of putting their goals into action, with a final May event or showcase serving as the deadline for the completion and dissemination of the project. More than 120 high school students participated in the DMC’s activities over a six-year period. Each year, the school principal wrote a letter agreeing to host the program, and it was then approved by the University of Denver Institutional Review Board. After an initial year of pilot funding, the club’s efforts were sustained solely through volunteer efforts and in-kind donations. Participants and their
Participatory action research parents/guardians submitted signed consent/assent forms indicating their understanding of the terms of participation.
Project objectives
#Black Lives Matter
Following the protocol of YPAR, DMC members discussed their observations and concerns about social inequity in the first month of the school year, which at this time focused primarily on the recent shooting death by police of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. The ensuing controversies surrounding this and other police shootings of young Black men created an uproar in the United States, particularly among youth in communities of color. Young people throughout the country began mobilizing to demand justice and a voice in public discourse and policymaking through movements such as #BlackLivesMatter. Like many urban areas in the United States, Denver’s young people of color had been disproportionately experiencing heightened pressures related to displacement and encounters with police. Gentrification had escalated racial tensions throughout the city, resulting in the forced displacement of African American, Asian, and Hispanic/Latino populations, which are now more well represented in the nearby city of Aurora than in downtown Denver or elsewhere in the state. Students in this particular high school, who lived in areas near both Denver and Aurora, likewise participated in protests, as did those in several high schools and universities throughout the area (Clark, 2016; Clark & Marchi, 2017). Students in the DMC decided they wanted to use media to make a difference in the relationships between students of color – including students from new immigrant communities – and members of law enforcement. Once they had made this selection, one of the co-leaders of the group made contacts with various community organizers in the city to find out about ongoing efforts that might connect with the students’ goals. The co-leader
learned about the host city’s initiative to test police body cameras. The city’s Office of the Independent Monitor (OIM), which is a civil-society citizen advocacy organization empowered to moderate relations between citizens and members of the police and fire departments, was interested in developing a program that would improve relations between students of color and members of law enforcement. The high school students in the Digital Media Club invited the city’s staff to a meeting to discuss mutual interests, and students then decided to form a partnership with OIM and its staff. The OIM staff was particularly interested in partnering with these students because of their backgrounds as members of new immigrant communities, as the OIM regarded them as a target audience for the program that they wished to develop, which would introduce students to their rights and responsibilities when involved in encounters with police officers. The OIM staff therefore had a different but complementary set of objectives for the project. And OIM in turn was able to recruit participation in the project from among members of Denver’s law enforcement team. In the midst of negative publicity about relations between law enforcement and students of color, some officials in law enforcement contacted by the Office of the Independent Monitor were happy to learn of the interests the young people expressed in examining ways to improve relations between young people and police. The objectives of members of law enforcement for this project were consistent with other initiatives that Denver law enforcement officers were pursuing at the time, including a community policing initiative and several onetime efforts to bring together students and police officers. The second author of this chapter, who was the club’s co-leader, invited her university research methods class to design their own project that related to the high school students’ exploration of
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Lynn Schofield Clark and Margie Thompson police-youth relations. This group had yet another set of objectives. Students from the university, which is an historically and predominantly White institution, conducted interviews and observed the young people in their project and then presented their findings to the high school DMC members. This created an opportunity for the high school and university students to have an in-depth discussion about the role of race, ethnicity, and national origin in differing experiences with law enforcement, which highlighted concerns of institutional racism and white privilege as well as stories of resilience in the face of adversity. University students thus met their objectives of reflecting on privilege and oppression through a community-engaged research project while deepening the reflections of the DMC members. The school that was host to the DMC had a different but complementary set of objectives for the project as well. Because the project was part of an after-school club that had a history of bringing together high school and university students and brought university faculty and staff to the high school, the school was supportive of the endeavor. Over time, the high school students’ views of the project’s objectives evolved. Initially, several of the students wanted to teach their school peers about how to de-escalate situations between police officers and students of color, and their goals were thus aligned with OIM’s interests in developing a program on students’ rights and responsibilities. They discussed developing a documentary or an app as an objective for their research. However, other students became especially interested in countering the negative images of police officers that were flooding the media, thus aligning with the project objectives of law enforcement participants. Based on one-on-one experiences with police officers, they wanted to seek out ways that others could have similar experiences with police so that both youth and police officers could foster a
more balanced view of one another. A few young people were especially interested in efforts to increase the accountability of police and expressed interest in citizen journalism and body-camera initiatives. The host school’s administration expressed nervousness about this latter objective, however, fearing that it could draw negative publicity to the school. This in turn caused tensions among university and high school co-leaders and members of the Office of the Independent Monitor staff, tensions that were resolved as a few vocal youth club members steered the group’s investigative interests toward how to foster ‘positive’ interactions between police and youth, a focus that came to be embraced by most of the students.
Involving young people in the collection, analysis, and presentation of data Once the DMC club members had decided to work with the Office of the Independent Monitor, the OIM began to query local police departments about working with the young people on their project. The young people themselves began searching the internet, spending time during their club meetings reporting to one another about stories of negative interactions between young people of color and members of law enforcement, and participating in facilitated discussions with adult co-leaders about media stereotypes and mediated discourses of policing. We drew on Foucault’s (2003) approach when asking the young people to analyze media discourses to understand the genealogy of youth/police relations. We also wanted the young people to consider the ways that members of law enforcement have come to operate within a system of data colonialism (Couldry & Mejias, 2018). For this, youth and club leaders jointly looked at trends in predictive policing that have encouraged law enforcement officers to use data to evaluate previous times and locations of crimes so as to deploy officers
Participatory action research to those times and locations when crime is predicted to be most likely. We also viewed videos recommended by the Office of the Independent Monitor, such as those of the Boston area’s Strategies for Youth: Connecting Cops and Kids program, which advocates for the training of police officers in youth development and in mental health. One of the young students continually raised the need to seek out positive stories of interactions between youth and police officers, a reminder of the fact that the young people participating in this study had had a range of experiences and relations with law enforcement, not all of which were negative. Students thus continually held one another and adults accountable for the ways that personal biases might be informing their analyses. The Office of the Independent Monitor made arrangements for the high school students to visit the area’s largest district police station late in the fall. There, they met with and digitally recorded interviews with several police officers as a means of gathering data to inform their understandings of the relationships between police and young people. Several students agreed to participate in photo ops for the police department after those interviews. A few weeks later, again through arrangements made by the OIM, DMC club members attended a citizens’ meeting in which data about a police body-camera pilot project were shared. There, students recorded interviews with OIM staff members, city officials, and citizen volunteers involved in the police body-camera initiative. A few weeks after this, the students were able to host a meeting with a group of police officers who visited the high school at OIM’s request. At that meeting, several students told the police officers that for them to see police always carrying guns made them extremely nervous. They asked the officers why that was necessary, because it made them afraid and also more likely to react more defensively. One student relayed a story of a time when a family member had been involved
in a car accident for which she believed he was not at fault. As the family member was unable to speak English, the young person in the car offered to translate. But the officer opted instead to rely on the report of the person who had caused the accident, who chose to place the blame on the innocent party. The police officers listened and offered their own stories. Students recorded these interactions. Between these meetings, the students conducted interviews with their peers in school about their own interactions with police officers. They also interviewed the school’s Student Resource Officer, a member of the police department assigned to their school who preferred not to have his interview recorded. The adults were permitted to take notes during that meeting, however, and those notes were shared and discussed among the students at the following week’s meeting. The young people met on several subsequent occasions for less formal interactions with the Student Resource Officer and also participated in adult-facilitated discussions amongst themselves about racial/ethnic identity and law enforcement, sometimes bringing along a new friend or two to participate in the discussions. The young people also digitally recorded the discussions they had with university students on institutional racism, privilege, oppression, and resilience. By April, 22 students had worked with the leaders to collect seven sources of qualitative data: (1) informal and video- recorded interviews with one another and with their peers about experiences with members of law enforcement, (2) video-recorded interviews with six police officers during an invited trip to the police district offices, (3) a later visit to the students’ school by the same officers, (4) discussions with 12 relatively more privileged university students and with 10 invited high school peers about the interrelations between race/ethnicity and the negative or positive law enforcement experiences they had had with police and
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Lynn Schofield Clark and Margie Thompson security officers, (5) repeated interviews and discussions with members of the Office of the Independent Monitor staff, (6) video recordings and observations of a citizen meeting regarding police body cameras, and (7) one formal and several informal interviews with the police officer assigned to their high school. The fact that the young people had recorded all of these interactions was significant, particularly in an era of citizen journalism when recorded materials of negative police actions were being widely circulated in an effort to hold police to greater accountability. The police officers agreed to being recorded as an act of good will, trusting that the various stakeholders, and in particular the Office of the Independent Monitor, had entered into this relationship with the intention to improve understandings. But the presence of the cameras provided the young people with a measure of authority over how the interaction would play out, because as the guardians of the footage, they were in control of what action might follow from that interaction. Having control over the raw video materials contributed to both the young people’s self-understanding of the potential power of their youth voice and to their sense of efficacy regarding how they might utilize that power in the form of action. Some of the youth originally hoped to produce a documentary on this topic with the video materials that the group had collected, as noted earlier. As students were given opportunities to interact directly with members of law enforcement, even some who had believed they had an antagonistic relationship with the police came to appreciate the importance of developing relationships of understanding and respect between members of law enforcement and students of color. They wondered about how to foster such relationships and considered how video recordings could help one group to understand the experiences of the other group. As the months progressed, however, different young people
came to be involved in the project, as is common for the churn of voluntary afterschool programs. Some of the original participants had left the project by the end of January, but more young people chose to attend the subsequent meetings in the months that followed. We began devoting time during the weekly meetings to the screening of the video interviews and observations as a way of bringing newly interested young people on board with the project. This quickly became a means of reflecting on the interviews themselves, on earlier interactions young people had had with police officers themselves, and on the readings and videos the group had observed earlier in the school year. Thus, data analysis of the collected materials began informally through conversations. These reflections further contributed to the young people’s sense of efficacy as they discussed next steps both for the footage and for their overall project. Rather than create a documentary with insufficient time, skill, and resources, DMC members opted to work with a university student to curate the materials on a website that the students and others could access so that they could share what they had found. As the students in the DMC reviewed and organized these materials for the website, the students and adult leaders identified patterns that became the basis of the organization of and presentation on the website. This process thus provided a template for how to organize the data that had been collected. The Office of the Independent Monitor then requested a report on our year-long experiences. Thus, although admittedly it was not our original intention, the videos we had recorded came to be viewed, first by the adults and later by the young people themselves, as data. We devoted six weekly one-hour sessions to the analysis of the data we had collected. The group leaders (Clark and Thompson) structured the process of data analysis as we screened the videos and discussed earlier conversations in an effort to identify themes,
Participatory action research utilizing a grounded-theory methodology (Charmaz, 2006; Charmaz & Belgrave, 2019). The young people, with guidance from the adult leaders, initially identified four themes that emerged throughout the conversations between themselves and police officers, and which they wanted to highlight in their report: 1 Students had asked officers about why they had to carry their weapons in such an obvious way, with a hand hovered above the gun, ready to draw. They explained that this was intimidating to many of the school students of color, in particular. 2 Another theme that emerged focused on immigrant youth and their stories of experiences with law enforcement officers who demonstrated what the youth interpreted as a lack of respect for their family or community members. 3 A third topic highlighted discrepancies between law enforcement’s ‘one bad apple’ approach to police violence against youth and the youth who wanted to discuss issues of structural racism such as historical power asymmetries. These concerns were raised even as youth also sought to express gratitude for the officers participating in educational interactions with them. 4 A final topic highlighted the discrepancies between the youth and law enforcement approach to understanding youth experiences, as officers frequently laughed and said, “we were young once,” while youth saw their lived experiences as quite distinct from those of the officers and unacknowledged as such. Clark then drafted a ‘research brief’ by rearticulating the identified themes as ‘findings’: (1) New immigrant students most want police to know that when they are in an encounter with the law, they are scared; (2) Students and officers have different ideas about how an officer
could show respect to people during interactions; (3) Students have specific, culturally grounded impressions that shape their expectations of law enforcement, including a sense that racism needs to be addressed at the level of systems, not only with individuals; and (4) The lived experiences of youth for students from immigrant, refugee, and asylum-seeking backgrounds differ dramatically from the lived experiences of most police officers. To these, Clark added three more, based on her own observations: (1) “Usually when students interact with the police, the police do the talking and the students do the listening. Students would like to flip the script and feel heard,” a finding that was greeted with great enthusiasm by the young collaborators on the project, and (2) “No young person used the phrase ‘the teen brain’ when discussing what they hoped that officers would come to understand about young people. In contrast, no officer used the phrase ‘youth voice’ when discussing what or how they thought they might learn about young people.” This finding was met with the laughter of recognition. All of the students wanted to include these findings in the report, but they had suggestions for modifying a third finding Clark proposed: (3) Not all students came to the project with the same assumptions about law enforcement. Whereas Clark and another adult leader had suggested that some young people were “skeptics” who had either had or knew others who had had negative experiences with law enforcement, and others were young people who expressed the view that “doing the right thing” was the best course of action, the young people suggested two other categories: “defenders,” who had family members in law enforcement, and “the cautious,” who were supportive of law enforcement but concerned about systemic racism. The young people also suggested an observed linkage between race/ethnicity and some of the categories, noting that the defenders had been most frequently white, male,
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Lynn Schofield Clark and Margie Thompson and relatively more privileged, and the skeptics were most frequently stereotyped groups, including dark-skinned African and South Asian males. The young participants further reordered the findings, as they did not want the first one to suggest that they were primarily frightened and thus vulnerable. They preferred instead to lead with the finding, “Not all young people came to the project with the same assumptions about law enforcement and their relations with immigrant communities,” ending with the observations about “the teen brain” and “youth voice.” Ultimately, the ‘research brief’ report that was produced became the primary way in which the data were presented to an audience of stakeholders. The brief was an exercise in translation, drafted first by Clark but then discussed, edited, and jointly authored by all 22 participants who had been involved in the discussions about and writing of the report in the final six weeks of the project. And the brief, presented in the form of a short academic paper, translated the data collected and its analysis, along with the voices and reflections of the young people themselves, into the language of data in order to be heard by those in positions of power. The final version of the research brief proved useful for the Office of the Independent Monitor in developing what was to become its own effort to train police, a program titled Bridging the Gap: Kids and Cops (https://kidsandcops.org/). Over the course of the pilot year with the Club, the OIM moved toward a model of joint training, with both police and youth listening and learning from each other. They found particularly useful the finding that stated: “Usually when students interact with police, the police do the talking and the students do the listening. Students would like to flip this script and feel heard by officers.” In the brief, students fleshed out this finding, noting that police often came to their school to speak at school assemblies, addressing topics such as cybersafety and bullying, and offering
explanations regarding school behavioral expectations and rules. The report noted that none of the students could recall a time when police had come to listen and learn from them. The students further reinforced their point by quoting their interviews with police, who had joked that “[they] were teenagers once.” The report suggested that this statement, accompanied by laughter, implied that police believed they did not need to listen to or receive training about youth development or youth lived experiences. Police, they argued, seemed to assume that little had changed between their own and the next generation. Moreover, this statement implied that police might not be cognizant of the vast differences between their own youthful experiences and the experiences of those who had come to the United States as refugees or immigrants, or who had experienced other forms of racism and oppression. Several students had discussed the need to “change the dynamic” and “give students the power and the voice.” They noted that they wanted to create opportunities to talk to officers about their concerns. This aligned well with the OIM staff’s desire to create opportunities that would bring together youth and officers for both joint and separate trainings that could take place on the same day. Discussions of ‘adultism,’ or the systematic discrimination against young people by adults, had never been part of the policy of police training in the past, and even those police officers who had participated in conversations with the students expressed little interest in receiving such training (Kennedy, Dechants, Bender, & Anyon, 2019). Nevertheless, the Office of the Independent Monitor was able to leverage this and other findings of the brief, making an argument for training in both youth development and in cultural bias, and making an argument for a dialogic model of interaction between police and youth, which subsequently became part of the voluntary training of the Bridging the
Participatory action research Gap: Kids and Cops program. The voices of the student participants in the Club, as expressed in the co-authored research brief that the OIM circulated widely among their constituents, gave the OIM staff an important source of legitimacy for the Bridging the Gap program. This legitimacy in turn provided the impetus for leaders among the police to encourage officer participation in the program.
ACTION RESEARCH AND CONTRIBUTIONS TO POLICY CHANGE Over the course of the year following the project outlined here, the Bridging the Gap program was then developed by the Office of the Independent Monitor and tested among students and members of law enforcement who participated in halfday forums on a voluntary basis. Young participants in that program, which included a few members of the Digital Media Club, received training on their rights and responsibilities and on implicit biases they might bring into their encounters with police officers, while officers received training on youth development, implicit bias, and the effects that experiences of trauma leave on young people. In the program, young people and officers would come together to share a meal and then had a time in which they could meet as members of small groups. With an adult and youth facilitator in each small group, youth were encouraged to ask questions of police, and police were encouraged to resist the urge to become defensive. All were invited to answer questions personally rather than speaking about or on behalf of ‘all’ officers or ‘all’ young people. The forums themselves became the subject of research to explore how some aspects of the curriculum might be more permanently incorporated into both public education and police training.
policy and/vs. politics – Chapter 20, p. 423
As of 2019, according to the OIM’s own reporting, this program had empowered more than 1,700 at-risk Denver youth with new skills for safe and effective interactions with law enforcement officers; educated more than 330 Denver Police Department officers on adolescent development and de-escalation techniques when contacting youth; equipped more than 180 adult and youth community members with the skills necessary to facilitate transformational dialogue at youth/officer forums; held more than 39 youth/officer forums in schools and neighborhoods throughout Denver; been cited by Mayor Michael B. Hancock’s My Brother’s Keeper Initiative as a promising juvenile justice prevention and education program and has been honored twice by the My Brother’s Keeper Initiative for outstanding contributions to young men and boys of color in Denver; raised over $500,000 of grant funds from a diverse array of public and private funders that believe the program is helping transform youth/officer relations in Denver; been featured by the Police Executive Research Forum in a case study as a program that furthers the goals of President Obama’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing; been evaluated by a third-party researcher from the University of Colorado, Denver, who found that the program “clearly lays the foundation for more productive relationships between youth and police” (Irlando, 2018); received the Denver Bar Association 2018 Education in the Legal System Award for outstanding dedication to teaching youth about civics, the American legal system, and the rule of law; received the National Award of Merit from the National Association of Housing and Redevelopment Officials; and has been nominated for a National Award of Excellence by the National Association of Housing and Redevelopment Officials (Horton, 2019). The media-rich YPAR project was only the first step in what was to become a much larger coordinated effort on the part
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Lynn Schofield Clark and Margie Thompson of the Office of the Independent Monitor to facilitate culture change in the Denver Police Department. For the purposes of this chapter, it is important to note that a turning point occurred when the young people involved in the pilot project came to reconceptualize the media materials they had collected as data and as evidence that constituted part of a larger initiative for social change. The group involved in the initial pilot project that eventually supported the Bridging the Gap program was able to marshal that evidence in relation to efforts already underway with the Office of the Independent Monitor, and to align with those who were seeking to address a social problem through a change in the policies and practices governing police and youth training.
ACTION RESEARCH AND YOUTH CRITICAL CONSCIOUSNESS “Is the documentary done yet?” one infrequent participant in the Digital Media Club asked fellow students when participating in a club meeting after an extended absence. One club member explained that rather than creating a documentary, the group was concentrating on analyzing what they had learned so that they could have an impact in how the city was designing its police and youth training programs. Indeed, we have noted that the project itself shifted from creating a film or multimedia product to focusing on leveraging media materials as data. We have argued that participating in communicative actions such as recording and analyzing media materials can also contribute to political change. In an era of citizen journalism, when any video material can be uploaded onto a social media site with commentary that might leverage the material for intentions unforeseen when originally recorded, the act of recording itself provided the young people who made and curated those materials with power over those materials and over the
interpretation of those interactions. Thus, in the case of this media-rich participatory action research project, it was not just that young people created materials and understood themselves differently; equally important was the fact that they also translated the video materials they gathered into the language of data and analysis that policymakers relied upon in their decision-making processes. Rather than producing media and then later confronting the problem of how to assemble an audience, therefore, the young people involved in this media-rich youth participatory action research effort came to see their media production work in relation to data collection and analysis; the brief was a ‘speech-act,’ to use Habermas’s phrase, as it employed language not only to assert but to do things. The work of these young people not only illuminated a problem but also provided policy suggestions based on their analysis of the data, which in turn was rooted in their own lived experiences. This project and, we argue, action research writ large, therefore must be considered for its potential to contribute to questions of youth civic engagement and political participation. Further research is needed to better understand the ways that youth communication competency, such as the ability to leverage, analyze, and distribute media recordings, may contribute to a young person’s growing sense of political efficacy or the ability of young people to believe that they can understand and influence political affairs. In this way, the fields of communication and media studies have a great deal to offer to the scholarly debates regarding youth political participation or how young people come to see themselves as agentive within what Benedict Anderson (1983) termed the “imagined community” of the United States. Scholars have expressed concerns that youth political engagement in the United States is at an all-time low, citing survey results indicating less interest in politics and less support for institutions overall among youth (Delli Carpini, 2000;
Participatory action research Kellman & Fingerhut, 2018). Heightened competition for attention in the digital age and the rise of antidemocratic movements have deepened concerns over political engagement among both youthful and older audiences. The issue is particularly acute among youth in communities of color. As Ginwright and James note, in such locations, “young people face intense economic isolation, lack political power, and are subjected to pervasive social stigma” (2002: 27). Many marginalized youth of color feel that the systems of politics, governance, and policing are less responsive to their needs compared with Whites (Gordon, 2010). This results in lower rates of political participation and civic empowerment, which are made manifest with gaps in voter turnout between communities of color and White communities. And with lower turnouts in these communities, candidates and elected officials may be less likely to reach out and address their specific needs and issues. Indeed, a close look at the US political climate reveals the widespread perception that the formal institutions of US American democracy are becoming more dysfunctional and less trustworthy, are dominated by political and economic elites, and that as everyday people become more disillusioned and less engaged, they are retreating to the private sphere (Jenkins, Shresthova, Gamber-Thompson, Kligler-Vilenchi, & Zimmerman, 2016). At the same time, unconventional forms of political participation that do not involve electoral and institutional politics have emerged in the public sphere, particularly among youth (Brough & Shresthova, 2012; Castells, 2012; Jenkins et al., 2016; Zuckerman, 2014). From climate striker Greta Thunberg to Indigenous anti-pipeline activist Jasilyn Charger to Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school anti-gun activist Emma Gonzales, young people are leveraging social and political networks online for social media campaigns and online petitions while
embracing historically alternative strategies such as street protests and demonstrations. Youth are employing multiple tactics to amplify grassroots mobilization and are bringing a diversity of voices into their efforts to pressure governments and other institutions to make change. While some research has been documenting the ways in which young people have been taking digital tools into their own hands to tell their own stories, research has also revealed unevenness in how digital tools are taken up among different groups of young people (Ekstrom & Ostman, 2015; Gauntlett, 2011; Kirschner, 2015; Ito et al., 2009; Kafai & Peppler, 2011; Middaugh, Clark & Ballard, 2017). There is considerable evidence demonstrating that economic differences are predictive of what young people do, or do not do, online (Robinson, 2009; Schradie, 2011, 2012). Moreover, students who live in families of lower socioeconomic status are more likely to live in distressed neighborhoods and to attend schools that have subpar technological equipment, few instructional opportunities linking digital media use and the fostering of political voice, and little encouragement to use these tools for civic or political engagement (Gray, Thomas, & Lewis, 2010; Tatian, Kingsley, Parilla, & Pendall, 2012). Young people who experience discrimination based on race, ethnicity, or religion express frustration and disillusionment with traditional political and media systems (Maira, 2009; O’Loughlin & Gillespie, 2012). They also are more likely than others to voice concerns about surveillance and to participate in self-censorship (Shrestova, 2013). In spite of these barriers, some young people from disadvantaged backgrounds have used digital tools to agitate for access to education and to counter negative stereotypes among their peers (Barron, Gomez, Pinkard, & Martin, 2014; Shrestova, 2013; Zimmerman, 2012). Yet to date, little research has been done that explores how young people from
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Lynn Schofield Clark and Margie Thompson diverse backgrounds come to be prepared for lives of inclusive and participatory politics (Bachen, Raphael, Lynn, McKee, & Philippi, 2008). Specifically, there is no analysis of the role of digital media in projects on how young people of color from urban lower socioeconomic backgrounds learn to use media to claim power for themselves and to gain access to those wielding political power, and how they may adjust their own messages and goals in the process of seeking influence. We argue that media-rich youth participatory action research such as the project outlined here may be a way to address this gap. Research has established that oppressed youth who develop a critical consciousness of inequality are more likely to be motivated to take action for community and social change (Diemer & Li, 2011; Ginwright & James, 2002). Moreover, for marginalized youth, critical consciousness is associated with better mental health, greater school engagement, and career development and occupational achievements as adults (Diemer & Li, 2011). As the young people in this project developed a deepened understanding of the various factors that contributed to the negative coverage of and problematic relations between youth of color and law enforcement officials, they came to recognize the discrepancies between what is and what ought to be. And discussions of what is and what ought to be, as noted earlier, are discussions relying on what Habermas has termed communicative rationality. Ultimately, our work in this project, we hope, has demonstrated that action research can serve as a means of creating the space for the facilitation of communicative rationality. As Habermas has argued, it is through the analysis of communication, in this case including analyses of media discourses about policing as well as the analysis of data materials collected by the students themselves, that researchers participate in processes of communicative rationality. Through these processes,
participants were invited to evaluate the systemic, or the current situation as they experienced it, in light of the normative, or what they believed would be necessary for the sustenance of an equitable lifeworld as they imagined it. Action research invites people into a context in which they are encouraged to deliberate on their current situation and come up with a vision for what might be different and better for them. And as the young people convincingly articulated their findings about the tensions and discrepancies they found between the systemic and the normative, they successfully made claims to the validity of their alternative views of the situation. This, in turn, established legitimacy for their ‘research brief’ and for their recommendations regarding next steps for the police officers. The decision on the part of the Office of the Independent Monitor to circulate the brief and to use it to legitimize their own recommendations with reference to those of the young people is evidence that mutual understandings had emerged between the young people and the OIM. As noted earlier, the brief served as a ‘speech act,’ to again use Habermas’s term, recognized as normative and deemed acceptable because it was found by those working in the OIM to be rational. If the validity claims of the brief had been deemed unjustifiable, then mutual understanding would not have emerged. And because the OIM is respected as an important constituent that brokers meaningful relationships between community members and the police and fire departments of the city, those departments were also positioned to give appropriate consideration to the validity claims of the brief and the rationale of the recommendations. A review of this process of deliberation among the stakeholders of students, the OIM, and police officers suggests, following Habermas’s argument, that rationality, or how we know something based on reason and logic, has both a normative and an evaluative dimension. It also suggests that the ways that normative
Participatory action research validity claims are evaluated as justifiable will always be dependent upon specific contexts. In this context, the fact that the Office of the Independent Monitor was amenable to offering legitimacy first to the young people’s claims to authority (by allowing the recording of video materials) and second to the young people’s claims to validity (by affirming and circulating the brief) was a key part of how youth voice came to be heard by stakeholder constituents, including people in the Denver Police Department. It is important to note that Habermas’s theory of communicative rationality has been criticized for being utopian and unrealistic. Projects like the one outlined here are unusual for the way that they take place outside of the normal systems of schooling and of evaluation practices for police, and it is worth noting the significant time commitments made by the many young people involved as well as by those of us working with them. It is naïve to imagine that such projects of communicative rationality might emerge spontaneously in a societal context as deeply divided by power differentials of race, gender, ethnicity, economic and religious or cultural difference as is the modern United States. To hope that such efforts might be ‘scaled’ so as to include more young people and more systems of power is equally unrealistic, given the roles of exclusion and conflict in how democratic deliberations have taken shape over time and how they occur in practice in contemporary situations of governance. And even with this inspiring story of youth voice, certain questions remain. Why is it, for instance, that young people have to go to such lengths to convert their lived experiences into the data language of policymakers? And why is it that organizations like the Office of the Independent Monitor and initiatives like this are too frequently grant reliant and underfunded, affirming the adultist, as well as the racial/ ethnic, socioeconomic, and gender biases of many top-down, better-funded youth
initiatives by comparison? These are questions that those interested in participatory politics must consider in the future. Nevertheless, we do think that it is important to observe the indeterminate aspect of such efforts. Young people and adults who are granted opportunities to participate in such situations of communicative rationality may themselves be changed through such processes. They remain subjects who are capable of speech and action. They may also come to see themselves as part of social groups who differently answer the question, ‘How shall I then live?’ Such personal transformations remain important, particularly for those who are committed to seeking ways to stem the demise of public life and democratic deliberation.
CONCLUSION There is a long tradition of discussions in the fields of communication and media studies concerning action and social justice research (Frey, 2009; Frey & Carragee, 2007), with some arguing that the research process itself can be a critical aspect of a social justice agenda (Rodino-Colocino, 2011). We have argued that action research, and the particular approach of media-rich participatory action research discussed here, fits into and extends this tradition. In particular, we hope that our use of the concept of media-rich youth participatory action research also makes a distinctive contribution to reflections on action research in the field. Media technologies facilitate increasingly networked forms of interaction through which, as Jensen writes in this volume’s introduction, “minimal acts of communication contribute to the ongoing structuration of society.” In the instance discussed here, young people were able to leverage the ways that mobile phones enabled them to record their interactions with police. Because anything recorded with a mobile phone may be shared publicly, the young people in this study were able to hold
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Lynn Schofield Clark and Margie Thompson police accountable in a manner consistent with citizen journalism. Even though both young people and police officers entered into this interaction with good will and with intent to improve relations, it was the presence of the cameras that provided the young people with a measure of authority over how the interaction would play out and what action might follow from that interaction. And it was the amenable relationship established by the intermediary stakeholder, the Office of the Independent Monitor, that enabled young people to have a voice in decisions about police training through the translation of both their gathered video materials and their lived experiences into the language of data. The project reviewed here has therefore served as a model for how action research can engage young people in research that is both personally meaningful for them and that results in pragmatic outcomes for the community. Such efforts can contribute positively both to social change and contextually grounded research. We believe that youth participatory action research, and in particular research that is attentive to the ways that media can reinforce legitimacy, are important avenues for further exploration. In this chapter, we have argued that when youth participate in media-rich youth participatory action research like the project reviewed here, they become empowered through engaging in the performance of citizenship, because they are learning to exercise their right to voice their opinions in a way that shapes the public policies that directly affect their lived experiences.
The chapter has also fleshed out our understanding of the relationship between research, communication, and action. We have argued that action research is particularly well suited for accounting for the ways that research can be harnessed for emancipatory purposes when marginalized people are afforded the space, in media-rich settings, to gather data and communicate their own understandings and visions and are encouraged to consider the actions that might bring those visions into being. As this chapter has demonstrated, an action approach in communication and media research can broaden our understandings of the relationship between communication, action, and civic engagement. Action research provides a means for people to find hope rather than despair in their observations of the discrepancies between the systemic and the normative, or between what is and what they believe ought to be. And hope, as YPAR researcher Shawn Ginwright has written, can encourage healing, which “fosters a collective optimism and transformation of spirit that over time, contributes to healthy vibrant community life” (2010: 86). Thus, as young people who are newcomers to politics are invited to participate in processes of communicative rationality that involve them in the work of generating imaginative approaches to systemic problems, they are involved in that healing. Through such efforts, they may be participating not only in their own healing but in the healing of democracy itself.
Communicating research
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The social origins and uses of media and communication research Klaus Bruhn Jensen
• • • • •
a presentation of several types of theory that link research to social practice a review of normative theories of media an account of media and communication research as a social institution a description of the main applications of media research in policy and politics a discussion of ethics and logistics as aspects of the interchange between researchers, the rest of the academic community, respondents, and the public at large
THEORIES IN PRACTICE Making public This final chapter returns to some of the ‘big’ issues that motivate both individual media researchers and the commercial and public organizations housing and funding them. Why study the media? (Silverstone, 1999). Media are sources of both meaning and power. Like their objects of analysis, media studies originate from particular historical, cultural, and institutional circumstances; they contribute to shaping the conditions under which communication will take place in the future. If media are institutions-to-think-with, university departments and other research units constitute second-order institutionsto-think-with, describing, criticizing, and reflecting on the role of media in society – past, present, and future.
media as institutions-to-think-with – Chapter 1, p. 17
Media and communication research participates in a double hermeneutics (Giddens, 1979) by interpreting media – their institutions, discourses, and users – and feeding those interpretations back into society at large. One implication of hermeneutics is that all human and social practice is informed by ‘theories’ – generalized conceptions of what the world is like and how we may engage it, individually and collectively (Lobkowicz, 1967). Whereas researchers are often, sometimes deservedly, perceived as too theoretical – detached from the world of practical affairs – “nothing is as practical as a good theory,” as suggested by one of the founders of media studies, Kurt Lewin (1945: 129). By examining the different types of theory that media professionals, legislators, and ordinary users hold and act on, communication research can make a practical difference. Researchers publish. Publication in journals and at conferences, however, is only one way of presenting findings and
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Klaus Bruhn Jensen insights. To make research public is to make it available and accessible for social use. The audiences of research can be large or small, specialized or general, representing consensual or oppositional views of society, and assessing its relevance in either the short or the long term. Among the key audiences are media businesses that pay not only to have studies conducted but to make sure, for competitive reasons, that findings are not published. The further effects of media research, like those of media, are diverse and difficult to predict; they include unanticipated – and unrecognized – consequences for the media, their users, and for researchers themselves. Following a brief account of five different kinds of theory, this chapter first reviews the so-called normative theories of media, addressing how media ought to operate. Those theories have fueled the rise and subsequent transformations of the modern mass media, and they still motivate much contemporary research. The next section traces the development of media and communication research. The intellectual cultures driving its academic and commercial variants have emphasized, to varying degrees, either ‘policy’ or ‘politics’ – concrete collaborations with the end users of research or long-term contributions to understanding, and perhaps changing, the role of media in society. Qualitative as well as quantitative approaches enter into studies from both policy and political perspectives – methodological boundaries, to a degree, dissolve when it comes to the social uses of media and communication research. In conclusion, the chapter reviews a number of political, ethical, and practical issues that arise in planning and conducting media studies – from student projects to national and international research programs.
Five types of theory In his classic textbook, Denis McQuail (2010) laid out five types of theory addressing media and communication:
• Scientific theory is the most common understanding of ‘theory.’ It refers to general explanatory concepts and models that apply to a specified set of empirical instances. Historically, it has been associated particularly with natural sciences and with socialscientific research traditions that rely on surveys, experiments, and other quantitative methodologies; • Cultural theory is the legacy of arts and humanities. It covers textual, historical, and other qualitative approaches to the interpretation and social uses of media; • Normative theories address the legitimate ends and means of organizing media as a public infrastructure of communication. As such, they occupy a middle ground between scholarship and public debate and policy; • Operational theory is made up of rules of thumb and sometimes tacit knowledge that (media) practitioners hold, including professional and ethical standards (Schön, 1983); • Everyday theory, finally, underlies the common human practice of communication – our interaction with media institutions and with each other as citizens, consumers, and sources of information in our own right. While it often remains an implicit, practical consciousness, everyday theory may be articulated through research. Academic communication theories are, in one sense, much less important than other types of theory – neither media professionals nor media users need explicit or abstract theories in order to communicate. McQuail’s typology itself illustrates the grounding of theories in practice. It emerged ad hoc, not as “a systematic, empirically grounded typology. . . . It developed gradually as a way of describing what I was doing and accounting for different ways of thinking about mass media” (personal email practical consciousness – Chapter 8, p. 164
Social origins and uses of research
lay theories
communication, March 20, 2007). In preparing the first edition (McQuail, 1983), he was especially concerned that everyday or commonsense notions of media and communication be included as a kind of theory. Lay theories (Furnham, 1988) are indispensable guides to everyday life. The academic definitions of what counts as (scientific) theories themselves change over time. In the fifth edition of the textbook (McQuail, 2005), the original four types of theory had become five: Cultural theory now appeared in parallel with (social) scientific theory. While rooted in the social sciences, McQuail recognized the two “as having more or less equal weight. I suppose this does reflect an obvious development and greater integration of the ‘field.’ ” A common denominator for the five types of theory is that they enable action – in media research, production, policy, education, and public debate. The interrelations between the five types are of special interest in a field that has developed, in important ways, as a practical discipline that understands itself as solving communication problems. As such, communication research has the opportunity to affect journalism and other media production (operational theory) as well as educational programs advancing media literacy (lay theory). Normative conceptions of communication occupy a special place at the juncture of theory and practice. Like academic theories, they are general. They assess the pros and cons of different ways of organizing media and communicative practices on a macrosocial scale. Unlike academic theories, normative theories of media involve the general public in assessments and deliberations. In addition to classic discussions concerning a commercial free press, a publicly funded broadcasting system, or an open-architecture internet, normative considerations bring up the ideological and existential implications of communication: the meaning of communication, as in ‘the meaning of
life’ (Jensen, 2008: 2803). Political and existential aspects of communication are the questions that most people care most deeply about.
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NORMATIVE THEORIES Normative theories illustrate how ideas with a long history can be mobilized for contemporary purposes. Some of their constituents date from the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, even from the Socratic dialogue as an avenue toward truth and doing what is morally good. As currently defined, the normative theories of media and communication were formulated in the shadow of the Cold War. Also in communication research, that period pitted different models of society against each other. The classic publication (Siebert et al., 1956) identified four theories, with special reference to the printed press: • Authoritarian theory. The medieval understanding of public communication took for granted a cosmology – at once social and religious – in which everything had its rightful place and where information flowed top-down from the monarch, the representative of divine authority on earth. This so-called Great Chain of Being – or pyramid – could be understood as enabling individuals to flourish en route toward their destiny. Only especially reliable individuals were allowed to disseminate information on any social scale, still subject to censorship. Audiences were just that – recipients of messages from political and religious authorities who knew better. While rarely advocated as such, authoritarian media theory provided a point of departure from which the other theories would distance themselves in distinctive ways. • Libertarian theory. It was liberal theories of politics and communication the Great Chain of Being – Chapter 2, p. 32
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that first came to challenge authoritarian models. Liberalism informed the larger shift from traditional to modern social structures, as articulated in and symbolized by the public sphere. Not only were humans redefined as ends in themselves, with certain inalienable political, economic, and cultural rights; humans were also conceived as rational animals with the capacity to collectively define and administer such rights. One unifying metaphor became the ‘marketplace of ideas’ (Peters, 2005), suggesting both that ideas might be advertised, bought, or declined in a market of sorts, and that the economic market for goods and services could advance this cultural and political process. Free enterprise and the competition of ideas, arguably, would benefit the public interest and the common good. • Totalitarian theory. The occasion for formulating the normative theories, as noted, was the Cold War, specifically the implementation of a totalitarian or communist theory of the press in a number of countries following World War II. The distinction between totalitarian and authoritarian theory (and their relationship to 1930s fascism) has been debated. A central characteristic of totalitarian theory, however, was the understanding of central control over the media as a means of fundamentally restructuring society rather than preserving an existing social pyramid. Centralized state control, moreover, applied to all means of production, whether it was meaning or material goods being produced. Whereas the communist press systems in Europe broke down after 1989, in the People’s Republic of China, the Party-state remains in control of the main media. • Social responsibility theory. After 1945, a growing concentration and the public sphere – Chapter 1, p. 18
conglomeration of media called into question the classic liberal notion of a ‘free press.’ In the case of radio and television, the number of channels was further limited, at least for a period, by the available bandwidth. More generally, because their operation requires significant economic resources and professional skills, mass media have tended to be few and large. In response, normative theory witnessed a shift of emphasis from liberal and free-market ideals toward an understanding of the press and other media as trustees, or representatives of the general public, that ought to exercise social responsibility. European public service broadcasting represents a particular type of media that embody social responsibility theory. Other instances include quality newspapers that could be said to deliver “public service for private money” (Lund, 2001: 41). Formulated in the 1950s, the four types of normative theory seemed less applicable to some later media developments. Specifically, media systems in the developing world and media that facilitate public participation – from community radio to the internet – prompted the formulation of two additional positions (McQuail, 1983): • Development theory. In the wake of decolonization, the 1960s witnessed renewed debates about media in the ‘Third World’ (while the other two ‘worlds’ were confronting each other in the Cold War). As also addressed in theories of intercultural communication, cultural imperialism, and postcolonialism, the issues included structural inequalities as well as imbalances in the flow of news and entertainment in the world. Interests in the intercultural communication, cultural imperialism, and postcolonialism – Chapter 11, p. 223
public service broadcasting
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area were complex and often conflicting: The generally desirable ‘free’ flow of information in the world must be weighed against the rights of states and nations to shape their own media systems and to gain a hearing in world media. At the same time, references to ‘free flow’ and ‘self-determination’ could be used as fronts for either economic expansionism or the silencing of critical voices locally. While difficult to articulate as one normative position or theory, development communication has continued to generate both research and public debate. Studies have identified a persistence of digital divides, for example, both between and within countries and at several levels: A distinction is commonly made between a first-level divide concerning basic access to the internet and other digital resources and a secondlevel divide of literacy, which suggests that access without the relevant interpretive and communicative skills still leaves many users at a significant disadvantage (Büchi, Just, & Latzer, 2015; Litt, 2013), with a third-level digital divide focusing attention on the (lack of) outcomes of internet use in terms of enhanced political, economic, or cultural participation (for overview, see Scheerder, van Deursen, & van Dijk, 2017) (for a global comparative study, see Ahmed, Cho, Jaidka, Eichstaedt, & Ungar, 2020); • Democratic-participant theory. Particularly in the western world, the 1960s witnessed a second type of social upheaval, centered in antiauthoritarian movements that engaged in social and cultural criticism as well as political mobilization. On the one hand, the quality and diversity of the mass media was being questioned once again. On the other hand, new information and communication technologies offered cheaper and more accessible means
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of political and cultural expression (Enzensberger, 1972/1970). Just as social-responsibility theory had identified the limitations of liberal press theory, democratic-participant theory pointed to a lack of social responsibility in the practices of mainstream media. The participatory ambition fueled various print and electronic grassroots media (Downing, 2000; Glessing, 1970), and it gained new momentum with reference to the interactive potentials of the internet (Jenkins, 2006; Rheingold, 1994). Research has continued to develop and debate normative media theory (Christians, Glasser, McQuail, Nordenstreng, & White, 2009; Nerone, 1995), with implications for national, international, and intercultural communication. One difficulty of assessing the relative merits of the various positions has been the vagueness of some of the key concepts that they share, specifically the ‘freedom’ of media in relation to both state and market, and the ‘rights’ of individuals, groups, and private and public organizations to communicate. As noted by, among others, Jürgen Habermas (1989/1962: 226) in his classic treatise on the public sphere, rights come in two main variants – positive and negative. Whereas some political theorists and practitioners have advanced a negative definition (freedom from state interference into the affairs of individual citizens), others have emphasized a positive definition (freedom to require certain provisions and services from the collective). A negative definition had marked the transition to the modern period as, from the eighteenth century, the new middle classes reasserted their rights in opposition to the authority of the state. A positive redefinition, involving more substantial economic regulation and social services along Keynesian principles, was the outcome of world economic crises in the late nineteenth century and during the 1930s. More recently, a positive
from negative to positive definitions of freedoms and rights
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conception of communication as a human right has been manifest in international research and public debate (Tumber & Waisbord, 2017). A specific focus of concern has become privacy, in the face of the surveillance of users as a standard operating procedure in digital communication systems. (On privacy as a normative as well as conceptual issue, see, e.g., Baruh, Secinti, & Cemalcilar, 2017; Nissenbaum, 2011; Trepte et al., 2017.) When considering positive and negative rights of communication (and other social interaction), one should keep in mind that current research, policy, and public debate address highly regulated societies and media. The relevant question is not so much the presence, absence, or degree of regulation – ‘less state interference, more freedom of expression’ – but the kinds of regulation that apply to different types of media at various levels of social organization – from legislation supporting national film production to international agreements on the internet as a business. Also in the future, media and communication researchers will be asked to assess who benefits most from specific conceptions of the general right to communicate – which was included in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (www.un.org/en/universaldeclaration-human-rights/index.html, accessed November 15, 2020). The ‘fourplus-two’ normative theories continue to provide useful reference points for clarifying some of the abstract political, economic, and cultural ideals that inform public and policy debates. The normative theories represent, in pragmatist terminology (Perry, 2001), beliefs that individual communicators, media corporations, and entire societies will be willing to act on. Roughly since the 1956 formulation of the normative theories, the field of media and communication research has established itself as a surveillance and/as communication – Chapter 10, p. 208
social institution with diverse instrumental and reflective uses, and with normative implications. The field emerged at several crossroads of theory and practice, state and market, and conflicting intellectual currents.
MEDIA AND COMMUNICATION RESEARCH AS A SOCIAL INSTITUTION Intellectual cultures In a classic statement on theory and practice, Karl Marx noted, in his Theses on Feuerbach (1845), that “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change it.” While individual researchers may see themselves as administrators, reformers, or, occasionally, revolutionaries, research as an institution necessarily participates in shaping and maintaining modern society. Over time, a great deal of basic research comes to be applied. Compared, however, to a widespread nineteenth-century notion of science as a means of both material and cultural progress, much twentiethcentury research found itself struggling with its sense of a mission. For one thing, the complicity of research in world wars, colonialism, and debatable forms of social engineering raised profound doubts about the traditional legitimacy of institutions of learning. For another thing, the growing availability and accessibility of information through mass media meant that the status and social uses of research lent themselves to increased and intense public scrutiny. Media and communication research took shape after 1945 at the juncture of several intellectual and disciplinary cultures. The history of the modern university (Fallon, 1980; Rudy, 1984), in one aspect, is the history of reality being partitioned into manageable domains, to be studied through increasingly specialized theory and methods and to be managed in practical affairs by specialist graduates
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from these domains. Following the founding of the modern research university in the early 1800s, the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries had witnessed the establishment of social sciences as a separate faculty alongside the humanities. A recognizable specialty of (mass) media research emerged from the 1930s, as witnessed by the early ‘milestone’ studies that are laid out Figure 9.1. It was not until the 1950s, however, that an institutionalization of the field occurred, centered internationally in the social sciences but in diverse national configurations (Resource Box 20.1). Studies began to accumulate a distinctive body of findings, theory, and methodology. During the same period, humanities departments, including film, literature, linguistics, and history, similarly prepared important contributions to the field. They did so both by extending their domain of interest beyond high arts and histories emphasizing the classic institutions of political and economic power, and by revising their analytical procedures and theoretical frameworks. Following the anti-authoritarian upheavals of the 1960s, which questioned both establishment uses and disciplinary boundaries of research, a process of interdisciplinary convergence across social-scientific and humanistic traditions gained momentum from the 1980s, while collaborations with partners in public administration, private business, and civil society were consolidated and diversified. One continuing debate has considered whether media and communication research constitutes an established (or emerging) discipline or a more loosely configured interdisciplinary field (for overview, Levy & Gurevitch, 1994). Regardless of nomenclature, there is no doubt that the field has a permanent presence in academia, in the media themselves, and
in other social institutions; the indicators include university departments, scholarly journals, conferences, consultancies, and participation in public debate. At the same time, it should be recognized that the field has remained heterogeneous. First, summative studies have suggested the existence of three relatively selfcontained literatures, representing social sciences, interpretive studies, and critical analysis (Fink & Gantz, 1996). Second, other analyses have found that, at least in journal publications, quantitative studies continue to outnumber qualitative ones, that combinations of the two and of interdisciplinary perspectives are surprisingly rare, and that US scholars still dominate publications in the field (Kamhavi & Weaver, 2003; Trumbo, 2004; Walter, Cody, & Ball-Rokeach, 2018). Third, until quite recently, communication study has consisted of two separate subspecialties, focusing on interpersonal and mass communication (Rogers, 1999). Last but not least, digital media have recently produced increased interest in research across the mass and interpersonal prototypes, both in existing flagship journals and in new journals (Günther & Domahidi, 2017; Tomasello, Lee, & Baer, 2010); digital media also provide specific opportunities for research across traditional qualitative-quantitative and online-offline divides (Jensen, 2011). In his frequently cited account of divisions within academia, C.P. Snow (1964) identified two separate, even opposed cultures, represented by “the literary intellectuals” and “the physical scientists” (p. 4). The social sciences occupy a third position, sometimes a middle ground. Humanistic, natural-scientific, and social-scientific research traditions generate specific forms of knowledge about different reality domains, each with characteristic social uses. Furthermore,
the modern research university – Chapter 2, p. 25
humanistic, natural-scientific, and socialscientific models of communication – Chapter 1, p. 11
social sciences as a separate faculty – Chapter 3, p. 55
interpersonal vs. mass communication
arts and sciences
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RESOURCE BOX 20.1 HISTORIES OF MEDIA AND COMMUNICATION RESEARCH AS A FIELD In recent decades, more historical accounts of the development of the field have begun to appear (for overview, see Park & Pooley, 2008; Simonson, Peck, Craig, & Jackson, 2013a). While such publications bear witness to the fact that media and communication research has been consolidated, both as an academic discipline and as a social institution, its origins and implications have remained contested. In overview, two main tendencies internationally have been the centrality of US social science in setting research agendas around the world since the 1950s and a more recent move, since the 1980s, toward a convergence of social-scientific and humanistic traditions. Debates reflect the various administrative and critical, functionalist and emancipatory positions that have informed the field from the outset, theoretically and politically; history is being claimed and written by several self-defined victors. In addition, different national and regional research traditions have emerged. The following sources offer a variety of accounts and reflections on the development of the field: •
•
•
The International Encyclopedia of Communication. This milestone reference work (Donsbach, 2008) includes overviews of developments in different regions of the world, under the common heading of ‘Communication as an Academic Field.’ North America. As a prime mover of international communication studies, North American research has produced some of the most comprehensive – and contested – accounts of itself. Following an early contribution by Delia (1987), the 1990s witnessed a number of interventions in the genre of ‘remembered history,’ as told by key figures in the field. Wilbur Schramm, widely considered the central figure shaping and institutionalizing communication studies in the United States, published a personal memoir, supported by perspectives from Steven M. Chaffee and Everett M. Rogers (Schramm, 1997). Dennis and Wartella (1996) presented an edited collection with contributions from several central US figures, including accounts of the roots of the field in Europe and in Chicago School sociology. In a review of that volume, Hanno Hardt (1999) suggested that this ‘remembered history’ by key individuals served more as professional position statements than as an analytical historiography. In a monograph, Hardt (1992), in contrast, emphasized critical and interpretive aspects of US communication studies, linking these to philosophical pragmatism and to the wider intellectual history of the United States. Recently, more researchers have revisited and, in part, rewritten the North American history of the field, as exemplified by contributions in Park and Pooley (2008). Karin Wahl-Jørgensen (2004) documented important interdisciplinary sources and tendencies before – and in contrast to – ‘the founding of the field’ by Schramm. In addition, studies have recovered unrecognized contributors to and shapers of the field (e.g., Malin, 2011), specifically some of its ‘founding mothers’ (Rowland & Simonson, 2014) (see also Dorsten, 2012). Europe. Compared to North America, media and communication research in Europe has been shaped, to a degree, by differences between countries – in their media systems, academic traditions, and national cultures (McQuail, 2008).Vroons (2005) offered an overview of the different starting points in the mid-1950s. Nevertheless, European research can be characterized as a crossroads between significant US influences and a variety of humanistic sources and critical perspectives. cont.
Social origins and uses of research
Together, current European and North American communication research can be taken as an international ecosystem in which studies are characterized more by theoretical and methodological traditions that span the continents than by their origins in national academic cultures. • Asia.The field of communication naturally gives rise to considerations about national, regional, and cultural specificities, first, of the media and, second, of research about media and the communicative practices they afford – its methodologies, epistemologies, and ontologies.While such considerations are ongoing, to varying degrees, in different regions of the world, research in east and south Asia, traditionally dominated by US approaches, has advanced debates about whether and how to ‘de-westernize’ communication research. A collection edited by Georgette Wang (2011) included a range of perspectives from Asia, Europe, and North America on culture-specific and universal aspects of human communication and on the complementarity of different regional research traditions. • Central and peripheral countries. Despite international flows of research, the published literature still exhibits a center-periphery structure in which authors from developed countries predominate over authors from developing or dependent countries. As noted by Marton Demeter (2018: 1001) regarding two separate circuits of publication, Authors from dependent countries are underrepresented in the most prestigious journals, and, although authors from developed countries frequently collaborate with one another, their coauthorship with authors from dependent countries is idiosyncratic; therefore, authors from dependent countries tend to look for alternative ways to produce noticeable publications.
the three faculties have been associated with distinctive conceptions of epistemology and politics – how human knowledge of reality is possible in the first place, and why new knowledge should be produced. All scientific knowledge is interested in the sense that it serves (more or less controversial) human and social interests.
Knowledge interests The concept of knowledge interests implies that purposes – sometimes implicit or unrecognized – are fundamental to any scientific inquiry. Importantly, knowledge interests are not merely reflections of the personal convictions of researchers or of the institutional agendas of their commercial or public funders. Knowledge
interests are constitutive of methodology and epistemology – the principles and procedures that guide different research practices. While the notion is familiar from classic debates about human and social values in science and scholarship, the concept of knowledge interests was formulated as such by Jürgen Habermas (1971/1968). He distinguished three types, each relating to a particular reality domain and university faculty: • Control through prediction. In natural sciences, a central purpose of inquiry is to be able to plan activities in the material world. Predictions and hypotheses that can be tested under controlled circumstances enable human intervention
intercultural communication and cultural imperialism research – Chapter 11, p. 223
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Klaus Bruhn Jensen into and, to a degree, control over nature. Modern experimental sciences have mastered the natural environment to an unprecedented degree by developing, refining, and accumulating criteria that describe and anticipate physical, chemical, and biological processes. As such, science has facilitated the management of natural resources, time, and space in social planning on a grand scale, notably in agriculture and industrial production. (Media example: Quantitative surveys predicting the preferences and trajectories of media users.) • Contemplative understanding. In the humanities, scholarship has traditionally centered on cultural forms of expression that are examined by contemplation – interpretation through introspection. Artworks, for one, can be understood as ends in themselves that are analyzed for their immanent meaning and value. Historical events, for another, might bear witness to universal, even eternal aspects of the human condition, although the religious overtones of contemplating mundane events have gradually been downplayed. By disseminating their interpretations of cultural artifacts and historical events to the general public, humanistic scholars have served as the professional keepers of cultural tradition. (Media example: Qualitative studies interpreting media representations of social reality.) • Emancipation through critique. The modern social sciences came to occupy a middle ground between natural and human sciences, addressing both material and experiential, collective and individual perspectives on social life. Because it is in a position to imagine unrealized potentials, Habermas suggested, the distinctive knowledge interest of social-scientific inquiry is one of human emancipation. By performing a critique of prevailing forms of social organization, and identifying
alternatives, the social sciences can promote the emancipation of humans from the conditions in which they find themselves. (Media example: Democratic-participant models of communication.) The three forms of knowledge interest are, of course, ideal types, subject to a great deal of variation and combination in scientific practice. (Habermas later changed his position [Habermas, 1973], but his original account still offers a helpful comparative framework.) Habermas (1971/1968) further argued that the different knowledge interests do not transfer well from one reality domain to another. In particular, he noted, if the more technical knowledge interest of the natural sciences is pursued within the social sciences, their emancipatory potential may be lost. The argument is familiar from media studies that consider, for instance, television audience studies and the online tracking of internet users as means of social control (e.g., Ang, 1991). It should be added that a critical knowledge interest does not equal, and does not necessarily entail, a specific ideological criticism of the social status quo. If criticism involves a rejection of what is and the identification of a preferred alternative, critique amounts to asking, what if? Like communication as such, research draws on the human capacity to consider how things might be different (Jensen, 2010). Also critical research is concerned with researchable, rather than merely debatable, issues, with a view to action. The relationship between knowledge and action has been approached in distinctive ways in different social sectors.
Sectors of research The intellectual currents and knowledge interests of the field have fed variously into companies, organizations, and agencies that depend on research findings and insights as part of their operations. Early
critique and/vs. criticism
Social origins and uses of research on, Lazarsfeld (1941) pointed to two main purposes of media and communication studies: • Administrative research refers to goal-oriented and instrumental studies that resolve specific issues for the purpose of developing, planning, or maintaining some communication activity, typically in the commercial sector. Studies in this vein “solve little problems, generally of a business character” (p. 8). • Critical research addresses the wider social, cultural, and historical issues that technologically mediated communication raises, often from a user perspective and with reference to the public interest. Here, studies take up “the general role of our media of communication in the present social system” (p. 9).
the Frankfurt School
When describing the critical variety of communication research, Lazarsfeld (1941) did so, in part, under the influence of the first generation of Frankfurt School scholars, who had fled Nazi Germany and continued their work in the United States. While fundamentally suspicious of “the culture industry” (Adorno & Horkheimer, 1977/1944) that they encountered there, the Frankfurt scholars did not simply reject US popular culture on ideological grounds. As suggested by the distinction between critique and criticism, one purpose of critical research is to identify the material as well as immaterial conditions of people’s beliefs about self and society, which, in turn, condition the status quo (Hammersley, 1995: 30). By reflecting on media as they currently exist, critical studies outline what might be. Lazarsfeld also noted this potential of critical research. And it was this quality that Habermas, who is commonly considered the central representative of a second generation of the Frankfurt School, specified as the characteristic knowledge interest of social science.
Lazarsfeld (1941) found that critical and administrative research could and should cross-fertilize as basic and applied forms of inquiry. His own accomplishments, centered in the Bureau of Applied Social Research at Columbia University, suggested the potential of that strategy. In addition to some of the early ‘milestones’ in media studies, he and his collaborators pioneered several methodological approaches, from panel studies to focus groups. Critical researchers, however, including European expatriates who, like Theodor Adorno, found a temporary home in Bureau projects, were mostly unsympathetic to administrative research (Delia, 1987: 52). Commercial and other instrumental interests, arguably, would narrow the theoretical scope of studies, limit their later social uses, and, in the longer term, undermine the intellectual freedom of researchers to choose both their research questions and their methods. Readers of the very last sentence of Lazarsfeld’s original article may have felt confirmed in the view that critical research was assigned the role of generating bright ideas to be exploited (financially and ideologically) in the administrative mainstream of research: there is here a type of approach which, if it were included in the general stream of communications research, could contribute much in terms of challenging problems and new concepts useful in the interpretation of known, and in the search for new, data. (Lazarsfeld, 1941: 16) On closer examination, the two approaches to communication research exhibit a number of similarities and are often combined in practice. For one thing, both types rely on qualitative as well as quantitative methodologies – a fact that milestone studies – Chapter 9, p. 179 panel studies – Chapter 13, p. 264 focus groups – Chapter 14, p. 293
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reactive and proactive research
Klaus Bruhn Jensen is sometimes missed in accounts associating administrative with quantitative, and critical with qualitative, approaches. In commercial settings, qualitative studies provide evidence that decision makers are willing act on to a significant extent. For another thing, both critical and administrative studies may be either reactive or proactive, evaluating what already is, or shaping what is not yet. Critical projects, in some cases, are the most instrumental of all, developing research designs to address inequalities of access to communication resources or in order to develop such resources. In cultural studies, some researchers have advocated more focused social uses of this tradition in policy contexts (Bennett, 1992), while others have called for a greater reliance on quantitative evidence to support the critical points of cultural studies (Lewis, 1997). Figure 20.1 displays some main types of media research organizations, with national and cultural variations. The nature and output of research projects is explained, in large part, by the infrastructures embedding and enabling them – funding, organizations, time frames, and anticipated uses. Together, these infrastructures entail more or less administrative or critical practices, and different forms of reflexivity on behalf of research communities, commercial clients, political agencies, and the public at large. As in other contemporary social life, a central divide exists between private enterprise and public service – commercial research entities and university departments. Even though the relative size of each of these main sectors of research is difficult to calculate, it is safe to say that commercial projects outdistance academic ones in terms of both financial resources and the number of studies undertaken. At the same time, commercial media and universities, in many countries, increasingly enter into collaboration: Universities fund (part of) their research through
commercial sponsorship, and media can base business development on research evidence, with an added bonus of legitimacy deriving from such collaboration. The research entities of public-service media occupy an additional middle ground. The third type – independent research institutes – has been a staple of media and communication research since Lazarsfeld’s Bureau, avoiding some of the negative connotations of both ‘state’ and ‘market’ and attracting clients from both sides of the divide. The fourth type – documentation centers – has more commonly been associated with historical, arts, and other humanistic archives than with empirical research on contemporary culture and society (although some film institutes have filled this role). At present, such entities are gaining importance, both as strategic resources in media production and planning and as a support function for affiliated research activities. It should be added that the internet and other digital media have raised additional issues concerning the social production, organization, and dissemination of knowledge in society, including the relationship between proprietary and public-domain research (Benkler, 2006; Lessig, 2006). Such issues have gained new centrality in view of the collaborative, storage, and distribution capacities of digital media, as exemplified by opensource initiatives, file sharing, and peer production. One classic debate, familiar from public-service broadcasting, concerns the extent to which certain forms of knowledge should be understood as public goods (Samuelson, 1954), like water and electricity – from updated and reliable information about political issues and events to diverse analyses and reviews of the state of the economy. At stake, once again, are the interrelations and relative powers of different social agents and institutions representing market, state, and civil society.
cultural studies – Chapter 2, p. 51
museums and archives – p. 425
public goods
Social origins and uses of research Commercial company
University department
Independent research institute
Documentation center
Funding
Income from clients
Public or private funding
Commercial income and/or public funding
Commercial income and/or public funding
Organization of research activity
Management hierarchy
Autonomous researchers within (degree of) collegial government
Board of trustees and management hierarchy
Board of trustees and management hierarchy
Time frames
Days to years
Years to decades
Days to decades
Years to centuries
Anticipated uses of results
Strategic planning and product development
Description and critique of past and present media forms
Descriptive as well as proactive analyses
Description and documentation of media and communication institutions, contents, and uses
Examples
Marketing sections; Advertising agencies; Consultancies
Media studies departments; Schools of communication
Research bureaus and ad hoc centers; Thinktanks
Archives with proprietary and/or public (museum) access
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Figure 20.1 Types of media and communication research organizations
The production and application of knowledge takes time. A distinctive feature of each of the four types of research organization is its time frame. Whereas commercial projects typically are scheduled for short-term instrumental purposes, academic studies suggest courses of action in the (very) long term. Research can be defined summarily as the collective representation of reality for a common purpose; the practical question is when, where, and how this purpose is to be enacted. Short-term and long-term purposes of research translate into three categories of social uses: policy, politics, and a third more indirect and diverse set of ‘standpoint’ interventions into social practice.
POLITICS AND/VERSUS POLICY Policy contexts Policies are codified plans of action. The importance of policy in both public
administration and commercial enterprise is a structural consequence of the increased complexity of modern societies, in material production, in organizational bureaucracies, and in politics from the local to the global level (Beniger, 1986). Collective and coordinated action depends on deliberation and planning through explicit policies; because of their scale and cost, policies, further, require evaluation and adjustment. Both the nature of such deliberations and the criteria of evaluation follow largely from predefined goals. Policies focus on specific contexts of action and on agendas set by existing social institutions. The area of policy research has expanded since 1945, one key figure being the communication scholar Harold D. Lasswell (Lerner & Lasswell, 1951). The field of evaluation research (Patton, 2015), which examines organizational ends, means, and Lasswell’s communication model – Chapter 1, p. 13
evaluation research
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Klaus Bruhn Jensen outcomes across the private and public sectors, can be seen as a variant of policy studies. Media studies have contributed, from their inception, to planning and evaluating media and their performance. Three main policy contexts can be identified:
organizational communication
state or government commissions
• Business administration. Within private enterprise, media employ in-house as well as commissioned research to support their business. In addition to audiences or customers, studies address the development of content, the internal work practices, and the strategic placement of the given organization in relation to competitors, regulators, and the general public (Scott & Lewis, 2017). • Public planning. Compared to the more ad hoc policies of media businesses, public policy delineates the general frameworks in which media operate. A central area of influence for researchers is commission work leading into legislative and executive decisions, sometimes supported by specially funded studies. To exemplify, most European countries during the 1980–90s witnessed a great deal of commission work and research regarding satellite and cable technologies and their implications for public-service broadcasting (Blumler & Gurevitch, 1995). • Non-governmental organizations. Beyond and between state and market, citizens’ groups, thinktanks, and other organizations regularly develop and advocate particular policies. They do so with a view to a variety of stake holders in politics and business, as well as the educational system. One example of civil-society involvement in international media policy is the Internet Governance Forum that followed the World Summit on the Information Society (2003–2005) (www.intgovforum.org/multilingual/, accessed November 15, 2020).
The three policy contexts – business, state, and civil society – correspond to the three columns of the public-sphere model of modern society. It is by engaging organizations and agencies in each of these domains – as collaborators or adversaries – that researchers may most directly affect the future infrastructures and conditions of communication in society at large.
Political processes Compared to the relatively delimited contexts of policy, a second set of strategies shifts the emphasis toward certain less well-defined but potentially more far-reaching processes of change. Here, studies typically question or bracket current institutional agendas. (As in the case of policy contexts, both qualitative and quantitative approaches to media and communication research lend themselves to such political processes.) By critiquing and sometimes criticizing institutional logics, much academic research adopts a long-term strategy of change, seeking to identify the unacknowledged and sometimes covert interests driving either commercial or government policies. In this regard, academic media and communication researchers carry on aspects of the classic role of the intelligentsia that the sociologist Karl Mannheim described as relatively autonomous or ‘free-floating’ (Mannheim, 1976/1922: 136–146). Corner (1991) identified two different political projects, originally within reception studies but with wider implications for media and communication research as such. On the one hand, the field has been broadly committed to Enlightenment ideals concerning the democratic accessibility of public knowledge, as typified by factual genres. From propaganda research to decoding studies of news to research on political debates online, an important research question has been how well the public-sphere model – Chapter 1, p. 18
critical role of the intelligentsia
public knowledge project
Social origins and uses of research
popular culture project
media literacy
media users are able to access and process the information on offer and to apply it in political and other forms of participation. On the other hand, particularly recent decades have witnessed much textual and audience research seeking to rehabilitate popular culture, especially fiction genres, as relevant and valuable resources of cultural participation and personal identity. The central arenas of political influence for media studies range from various publicsector institutions to the public sphere as a general forum of social and cultural reflexivity: • Public debate. Media and communication research regularly contributes to (and occasionally initiates) debates in the public sphere, its political as well as cultural domains (Figure 1.3). The interventions range from popular publications and interviews at the conclusion of projects to syndicated commentaries. In the process, researchers also feed the self-reflexivity of media, as they address contemporary issues such as political disinformation and lifestyle advertising. Through social media, researchers are in a position to participate more directly in public debates concerning the media field. • Media education. Beyond their own graduate and undergraduate students, media and communication researchers have contributed to a democratization (or relativization) of the cultural heritage – canonic texts and other standards that inform curricula at various educational levels. In addition, the field has been successful, in a number of countries, in advancing a component of media literacy in general education (Hobbs & Mihailidis, 2019; Masterman, 1985; Messaris, 1994; Potter, 2019). This is in spite of the fact that the exact purpose and placement of media education (separately or within other subjects) has remained social media – Chapter 10, p. 201
debated. The ubiquity of digital media, along with more computer-supported learning, present additional questions concerning the definition of literacy and its implications for political and cultural participation. • Museums and archives. As suggested in Figure 20.1, documentation centers constitute a strategic resource for media research as well as media production. Also in a longer historical perspective, the preservation of contemporary media, their software and hardware, poses important public issues (Jensen, 1993b). One key question is whether and how the breadth and depth of modern media, including their everyday uses, will remain available and accessible alongside the high cultural forms that still reign supreme in museums and archives (and among employed archivists). If not, future scholars may not be able to (re)write the history of contemporary media or to reassess our theories and findings (Borgman, 2015). The Payne Fund (Jowett et al., 1996) and Mass Observation (Richards & Sheridan, 1987) studies of the 1930s suggest the value of such evidence for an understanding of media in their social and historical contexts.
Standpoint interventions A third and more heterogeneous group of strategies share an explicit commitment to social and cultural change – in and through the practice of research, through alliances with particular constituencies or stakeholders, and in the (very) long term. Emphasizing political and epistemological alternatives to mainstream social uses of research, studies in this vein mostly rely on qualitative forms of analysis and argument. Several of the strategies in question can be considered revolutionary rather than digital divides, p. 415
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power/ knowledge
political correctness
Klaus Bruhn Jensen reformist, at least in their own understanding. They are not only anti-establishment but, sometimes, anti-institutions, opposing the constitutive operations of, for instance, markets and families as they currently exist, even the very institutionalization of society. Some of them, further, advocate a radical break with the methodological and epistemological premises of other research traditions, which might be said to reproduce knowledge in the service of power. A common figure of thought and discourse is that alternative social arrangements are to be identified through alternative epistemologies. As theorized most influentially by Michel Foucault (1972), this argument shades into a position questioning the legitimacy of any and all forms of knowledge, a fundamental distrust of “power/knowledge” (Foucault, 1980). Within media and communication research, it is particularly the culturalstudies tradition, broadly speaking, that has considered these strategies, generating debate with other research traditions (e.g., Ferguson & Golding, 1997). Since the 1970s, a great deal of work has taken other social and cultural research to task for articulating and promoting interests associated with the western world, the economic middle-class, the political mainstream, and a patriarchal mode of social interaction. One counter-strategy has been to treat knowledge in the plural, also terminologically, exploring alternative ‘knowledges’ in the interest of the disempowered. In response, other participants in these debates have argued that attempts by research to make up for past and present silences and injustices in society may result in political correctness (for overview, see Levy, 1992): Studies may be seen to shy away from certain controversial questions and hypotheses and may, as a result, produce less-thanrobust empirical findings and theoretical frameworks. Unless scholars are allowed
to make claims to knowledge, however debatable and fallible, and regardless of their immediate legitimacy and relevance, the critical potential of research – for or against change – might be lost. At least three kinds of standpoint interventions can be identified.
cultural studies – Chapter 2, p. 51
essentialist feminism – Chapter 2, p. 48
Feminist methodology The term ‘standpoint’ derives from methodology and theory of science in the feminist tradition, as elaborated especially by Sandra Harding (1986). The premise is that all knowledge is produced from a socially situated standpoint, and that the life experiences of women – silenced in much of the history of ideas – provide a necessary corrective to other standpoints and in scholarship. Accordingly, feminist research might enable an enhanced or ‘strong’ objectivity by allowing women (and men) to transcend classic canons of objectivism and to take up (more) reflexive positions within the research process (see also Alcoff & Potter, 1993; Harding, 2004). Compared to the biological essentialism that has characterized some feminist work, standpoint feminism represents an attempt to historicize the nexus between knowledge and power. In practice, however, the position may slide into another extreme of sociological essentialism, suggesting that feminism and cognate critical traditions offer more insightful theories and better empirical bases of change not because of the quality of the scholarship but because they tap the authentic experience of – stand on the shoulders of – the disempowered. In media studies, a related tendency can be found in work asserting that studies of women’s culture, of ethnic minorities, and of marginalized youth subcultures are the unrecognized origins of key ideas regarding the place of media in everyday life (Drotner, 1996: 41). Feminist methodology and epistemology orient themselves toward change in
standpoint epistemology
Social origins and uses of research the long term. By reshaping the research institution and education, feminist studies may, in turn, help to reshape other social institutions. In doing so, feminist standpoint research can be understood as a socially situated practice within wider feminist movements.
Textual deconstructionism
research as story-telling
A second, related position – deconstructionism – joins feminism in challenging unified conceptions of knowledge. Compared to feminism, however, deconstructionism focuses rather more narrowly on texts not only as a source of social dominance but also as the site of critique and change. Departing from poststructuralist theories of discourse and postmodernist conceptions of culture, textual studies in this tradition seek to expose misrepresentations, or reified representations, of social reality by media. Deconstructionism dissolves boundaries not only between text and reality but between the text being analyzed and the text performing and presenting the analysis. Like criticism in the arts, media criticism in this vein could be understood as an artwork in its own right. The work of the philosopher Richard Rorty has been influential in promoting a definition of research as one kind of story-telling (e.g., Rorty, 1979, 1989). Science and scholarship might be taken as one contribution to ‘the conversation of humankind,’ on a par with literature or journalism and without epistemological privileges. This view has been influential in parts of the literature on qualitative methodology, which, among other things, has emphasized an expansion of the range of genres in which researchers report their findings and tell their stories (Denzin & Lincoln, 2018).
It is characteristic of deconstructionist media and communication studies that they rarely address empirical audiences or the social contexts in which texts are used, interpreted, and take effect. Instead, deconstructionist studies perform an interpretive reworking of media texts and offer their own preferred reinterpretations. While key publications have expressed revolutionary aims (e.g., Kristeva, 1984/1974), the likely agents of revolutionary or other social action have mostly remained unspecified. In practice, there appears to be an inverse relationship between the political ambition and the methodological detail of deconstructionism. Given its comparative isolation from other social institutions, textual deconstructionism might have an impact in and through the educational system, which may trickle down to other social sectors. One specific area of impact is the media themselves, where notions of postmodernism have been widespread and where program developers have taken inspiration from deconstructionism (e.g., Caldwell, 1995).
Action research
feminism as theory and practice – Chapter 2, p. 47
A third type of standpoint intervention is action research, including several participatory and applied variants (for overview, see Bradbury, 2015; Greenwood & Levin, 2007). Like the other two types, action studies challenge established institutions and practices, sometimes in fundamental ways. Unlike the other types, action research emphasizes concrete and operational strategies for social change in cooperation with, or initiated by, stakeholders within the organizations in question, for example, for community development or workplace democracy. (Action research also incorporates quantitative approaches.) By involving everyday theorists as partners in the formulation of research questions, as well as in research
poststructuralism and postmodernism – Chapter 2, p. 46
everyday theory – p. 413
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Klaus Bruhn Jensen procedures, studies become collaborative ventures of generating new and applicable knowledge. In media and communication studies, action research has been less widespread than in community and workplace studies, education, and some other fields. Development communication programs included some involvement by the cultures and communities that were the end users of the technologies being diffused. Also studies of community media and of human-computer interaction (HCI) (Jacko, 2012) have relied on strategies involving end users. Given their participatory and broadly interactive features, digital media lend themselves to, and may stimulate, additional forms of action research (Hearn et al., 2009). Like political and policy approaches to research, standpoint interventions return the field to the ‘big’ ideological and epistemological questions: Why study the media – with or on behalf of whom? In practice, in student projects as well as in comprehensive research programs, researchers face these questions as logistical as well as ethical considerations – which are addressed in the final section.
THE SOCIAL TRIAD OF RESEARCH PRACTICE Research practice can be understood as a specific kind of social interaction, involving three key agents: • the researcher • his/her respondents (and other sources of evidence) • the community of peers or colleagues who assess the quality both of findings and insights, and of the researcher’s professional conduct. The social triad applies to studies across the various sectors and intellectual cul development communication – Chapter 11, p. 223 community media – Chapter 11, p. 221
tures of media studies. It is through innumerable concrete interchanges within the triad that the field accumulates and adjusts a body of theory and evidence, simultaneously reproducing itself as a social institution on a daily basis. Researchers’ relations with respondents and colleagues are examined in research ethics (for overview, see Israel, 2015) (on issues relating specifically to the internet, see also Franzke et al., 2020). Ethics, to one side, blends into politics. Politics articulates and enforces rules of human conduct at a collective or structural level, whereas ethics addresses standards of conduct in the perspective of the individual social agent. To the other side, ethics, as it applies to particular domains of social activity such as research, overlaps with morality – general standards of conduct that are prevalent in a historical period and cultural setting. Certain aspects of research ethics are stated in legislation and codes of conduct, and are subject to enforcement by national authorities and institutional boards. Whereas the legal and ethical frameworks of media and communication research vary between countries, some of the main issues can be laid out with reference, first, to research subjects and, next, to the research community.
Research subjects Research subjects are just that – subjects. Unlike rocks and books, subjects can be harmed, socially and emotionally, by empirical studies. It is the responsibility of researchers to anticipate and prevent such harm and, simultaneously, to consider the beneficence of research – the good it may do. Research competence requires not only theoretical and methodological skills but also an awareness of ethical pitfalls, as established in previous work, and a general capacity for empathy and respect in encounters with others. It is worth noting that, for example, the International Communication Association only quite recently presented a code of ethics
research ethics
Social origins and uses of research
the categorical imperative
(ICA, 2019); other fields such as psychology and sociology have long offered detailed codes that can provide guidance for media and communication researchers as well. The requirements of ethical research can be summarized as practical rules of thumb: “Do as you would be done by” and “Leave things as you find them” (Deacon et al., 2007: 377). The first principle is a variation on Immanuel Kant’s (2004b/1785: n.p.) categorical imperative: “Act always on such a maxim as thou canst at the same time will to be a universal law.” The second principle emphasizes the right of human subjects to self-determination. A researcher should not intervene proactively in a domain of study unless this is part of an explicit agreement, for instance, in action research. Depending on their research questions and concrete fields of analysis, empirical studies face various dilemmas. First, harm can take many different forms and may only manifest itself in the longer term. Although empirical media studies rarely pose issues of life and death, as in medical research, the disclosure of, for instance, documents concerning product development can result in significant losses, financially and in terms of the legitimacy of people within the media organization in question. Equally, the publication of politically controversial viewpoints from focus groups without sufficient anonymization may cause participants to lose social status or ‘face’ in their community. Second, these examples further suggest that research subjects are vulnerable in different respects and to different degrees. In their reception study of women viewing mediated violence, Schlesinger et al. (1992) exercised special care in screening and debriefing their respondents, some of whom had been physically abused in their own lives. By comparison, in production and other organizational studies, informants are normally approached as action research, p. 427
informants or representatives of a company or profession, who are aware of this relationship and, to a degree, of the nature of academic research. Nevertheless, also in professional settings, ethical dilemmas arise when considering the appropriate means of serving the ends of research. A classic case in point is the undercover work of the Glasgow University Media Group (1976) in documenting and criticizing practices of news production within British television. The standard procedure is informed consent. Its purpose is to enable subjects to agree or decline to participate in a specific study. The decision should be based on information about the elements of the study, its potential consequences for themselves, and its anticipated social uses. Informed consent is one key element of the Nuremberg Code (NIH, 1949), a set of protocols for research on human subjects that was established during the Nuremberg Trials on Nazi war crimes, which had included cruel scientific experimentation. While debated in terms of both its sufficiency and its practicability, informed consent represents a central operational principle in determining what (not) to do with research subjects. In medical and natural-scientific research, a standard procedure of double-blind experiments is observed (neither patient nor therapist knows who gets the active drug being tested and who gets the placebo). In comparison, informed consent aims for a standard of double insight that, ideally, also involves the objects of research as subjects. When next reporting findings and conclusions, researchers face additional issues of confidentiality in general and anonymity in particular – issues that can be stated in terms of information and communication theory. In most instances, it is an ethical requirement that researchers preserve the anonymity of respondents by not communicating or withholding informants and/vs. respondents – Chapter 14, p. 289
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the right to be forgotten reverse copyright
information. In quantitative research, abuses may follow from a recycling and recombination of data sets, for instance, so that particular individuals are targeted in subsequent marketing campaigns. In qualitative research, harm is more likely to result when the readers of a report are able to identify a given individual through a rich contextual description. In both cases, the problem is not so much that the information in itself is publicized. (Such problems may occur when the information is proprietary, typically for commercial reasons, and hence confidential.) The problem arises if the communication by a researcher links the information to its original source. In most cases, neither qualitative nor quantitative methodologies depend for their explanatory value on such links. From the researcher’s perspective, media practitioners and media users are of interest not as unique entities with biographical, demographic, and biological characteristics but as prototypes and as representative or illustrative instances of a social category. From the sources’ perspective, they have a right not to be associated with the information that they offer in the context of research. (In public communication, a comparable right has been referred to, in the European Union, as the right to be forgotten – a right not to be associated with long past statements or actions.) This right can be understood as a reverse copyright: Most media studies imply a social contract according to which subjects speak as types, not tokens – as an Anybody, not a Somebody. The principles of reverse copy right and double insight respond to the position of media and communication studies – and of social sciences generally – somewhere on a continuum between nomothetic and idiographic research – between studies of laws and of cases. Figure 20.2 outlines a set of guidelines for the conduct of empirical studies, with idiographic and nomothetic research – Chapter 16, p. 330
implications for student projects as well as larger research programs.
The research community A second set of issues within the triad of research concerns the relationship between researchers and their professional peers. As an ideal community, scholarship calls for the complete dissemination of all potentially relevant information as far as possible in global media of presentation. As an interested social practice, research requires individual scholars to weigh this ideal against anonymity and confidentiality requirements but also against material considerations such as intellectual property rights and their own careers. The research community is itself a social system of checks and balances, privileges and sanctions. The chief issues can be reviewed with reference to the different stages of the research process. Especially in academic research, an early and decisive juncture is the approval of an empirical project by a national or institutional review board (IRB). In some countries, such approval is required before any study can be undertaken with human subjects and officially on behalf of a university. While debated along similar lines as the informed consent procedure, an initial review process provides some assurance that gross ethical misconduct will not occur. Next, the basic criteria of ethical research include intellectual honesty in the presentation of the sources of ideas, a complete accounting of successes and failures in data collection and analysis, and a systematic documentation of evidence and the bases of theoretical inference. At their conclusion, research projects normally face a second review, typically in the form of a peer review – an anonymous (double-blind) evaluation by experienced researchers within the same specialization. This has been standard procedure in many fields since the mid-twentieth century and determines whether a study will be published in major journals. Once again, peer
Institutional Review Boards
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• 1 First make sure to ascertain the rules and procedures in your social and cultural context and academic institution regarding a preparatory review of research involving human subjects. • 2 Always treat the people under study as – people. They are neither things nor texts. A standard procedure for ensuring their rights and preventing harm is informed consent. • 3 Exercise caution and concretion. Be prepared to give up a question (or an entire study) if, in context, it violates the ethical, cultural, or personal limits of the people involved. Be prepared to explain concretely the relevance of any question to informants and others. • 4 Practice reflexivity. The analysis of (cautiously collected and concrete) data begins in the empirical field. In qualitative as well as quantitative projects, supplementary evidence and notes will support both the respectful use of respondents’ contributions and the explanatory value of later interpretations. • 5 Safeguard the anonymity of people and the confidentiality of information throughout the research process. • 6 Be honest about the sources of ideas informing a study and the contributions of peers in developing and conducting it. • 7 A research report includes accounts both of process and outcome and of successes and failures in each respect. • 8 Two key requirements of a research report are a systematic documentation of evidence and an explication of the bases of theoretical inference. • 9 Explore several different publication formats, including a means of feedback to the people contributing to a study. • 10 Consider what’s next – further research, the social relevance of findings, and the possible unanticipated consequences of the research.
Figure 20.2 Ten rules for the conduct of empirical studies
review has been the object of criticism, for example, for favoring entrenched traditions. Still, the procedure presents itself as perhaps the least worst alternative in the inevitably controversial enterprise of evaluating the quality of new contributions to research. In a further step, access to the original data sets of other researchers is a way of keeping the research community critically reflective and in dialogue. An example of debates arising from such a secondary data analysis was Hirsch’s (1980, 1981) questioning of Gerbner and colleagues’ cultivation hypothesis. The wider intellectual backdrop of media and communication research, during recent decades, has been intense conflicts – ‘wars’ – over the status and social uses of scientific knowledge. Within cultivation research – Chapter 8, p. 171
the research community, science wars flared up following Alan Sokal’s hoax in a 1996 article (reprinted in Sokal & Bricmont, 1998) – a deliberately nonsensical publication that invoked the vocabulary of atomic physics and which was submitted to a major journal in order to expose the lack of scientific rigor in postmodern cultural studies and related traditions. Beyond the confrontations, this provocation also helped to generate insightful debates about epistemology and politics across theoretical and disciplinary boundaries (Ashman & Baringer, 2001; Labinger & Collins, 2001). In the wider public sphere, two types of culture wars have been ongoing. First, especially in US public debate, orthodox (religious) and progressivist (modern) conceptions of humanity – what we can know and how we should act as individuals and
science wars
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Klaus Bruhn Jensen societies – have been pitted against each other (Hunter, 1991). A second conflict continues to revolve around the relative aesthetic value and social relevance of high arts and popular culture, occupying and occasionally dividing media and communication researchers. Intellectual conflicts with social implications are inherent in the study of media and communication, both from a contemporary and a historical perspective. A particularly bitter controversy that brought history into the present centered on the work of Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann (1984) on the spiral of silence. The theory suggests is that if people perceive their views to be in the minority as represented, not least, in the media, they are less likely to express these views. As a result, they come to participate in a circle or spiral of silence that is potentially vicious for democracy. One of Noelle-Neumann’s specific arguments was that a predominance of leftwing views among German journalists and media helped to silence rightwing political views in that country. Noelle-Neumann herself was quite explicit regarding her rightwing political sympathies and her work as a strategy adviser for the German Christian Democratic Party. However, following up on previous public criticism, Simpson (1996), in a Journal of Communication article, drew attention to her apparent sympathies with the Nazi party during World War II. Most importantly, Simpson linked the conclusions about a spiral of silence in the present with a set of theoretical assumptions and methodologies that had originally been developed for Noelle-Neumann’s research in Germany during the war. In a fierce response, Kepplinger (1997) suggested that the critique was ad hominem. His counterargument, in essence, was that the quality of research methodologies as well as of the findings they produce can be judged independently of their origins and applications, past and present. Whereas this particular debate was especially vehement and painful against
the background of world-war atrocities, the issue it raised is general: What is, and what ought to be, the relationship between scientific knowledge and social action? Like other forms of communication, researchers’ deliberations about evidence, inferences, and potential courses of action necessarily come to an end.
THE END OF COMMUNICATION In an imagined dialogue between two central twentieth-century American social scientists – C. Wright Mills and Paul F. Lazarsfeld – Stein (1964) pinpointed two approaches to social and cultural research. Mills reads aloud the first sentence of The Sociological Imagination (Mills, 1959): “Nowadays men often feel that their private lives are a series of traps.” The fantasy imagines Lazarsfeld replying: How many men, which men, how long have they felt this way, which aspects of their private lives bother them, do their public lives bother them, when do they feel free rather than trapped, what kinds of traps do they experience, etc., etc., etc. (Stein, 1964: 215; discussed in Gitlin, 1978: 223) The field of media and communication research continues to engage in such dialogue and debate concerning the comparative relevance and legitimacy of qualitative and quantitative methodologies. This can be considered part of the self-reflective business of any field; sometimes, self-reflection takes the form of self-criticism. While rooted in cultural studies, Morris (1990), for one, put this tradition on trial for banality, a solemn textual paraphrasing of the fact that cultures and societies are complex and contradictory phenomena. Ritchie (1999), for another, questioned the validity of much survey and other quantitative research cultural studies – Chapter 2, p. 51
Social origins and uses of research
the end of communication is to end
because of its ambiguous conception of probability. What different traditions and temperaments typically share is an ambition of having research respond to real-life problems and concerns. Both Mills’s sweeping generalizations and Lazarsfeld’s mundane operationalizations assumed that, by describing and interpreting contemporary social and cultural conditions, research may make a practical difference. The orientation toward social action is a common denominator for research and (other) communication. Both media studies and communicative practices have ends – and they end. The end of communication, arguably, is to end: Ideally, having been enlightened and empowered through communication, individuals, groups, and institutions, as well as entire societies and cultures, go on to act. Political democracy is a case in point. Michael Schudson (1997: 307), for one, has critiqued a . . . ‘romance of
probability – Chapter 16, p. 344
conversation’ that confuses ordinary sociable conversation with problem-solving conversation, which is of a formal, rule-governed, and public nature. It is counterproductive, to the point of undermining political democracy itself, to think of public debate among citizens as just another conversation among either intimates or strangers. . . . At least as far as democracy is concerned, the response to the familiar rhetorical question, ‘Can’t we just talk about it?’ must be: No. (Jensen, 2010: 5) It is the conclusion of communication and its transformation into concerted social action that is a hallmark of democracy. Research, equally, comes to an end. The end of the research process is the beginning of other social practices. By reflecting on its origins, uses, and potential consequences, media and communication research can stake a claim to being both a scientifically mature and a socially relevant field of study.
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Index
Note: Italicized page numbers indicate a figure on the corresponding page. Page numbers in bold indicate a table on the corresponding page. abduction in research 335, 339 – 342 A/B testing 267 acculturation 5, 34 actant model of discourse 304 – 305 action movie genre 152 action research: communication research and 389 – 391; communicative action 390, 406; complementarities and distinctions 393 – 398, 394 – 395; overview of 427 – 428; participatory action research 254, 388, 389 – 398, 406 – 410; policy changes 405 – 406; practitioners of 391; youth participatory action research 388 – 389, 398 – 405 actio stage (rhetoric) 29 – 30 actors 88 adaptation in fiction 147 administrative research 68, 286, 391 – 392, 397, 421 Adorno, Theodor 421 Advertising the American Dream: Making Way for Modernity, 1920 – 1940 (Marchand) 248 After the Great Divide (Huyssen) 215 agency and structure 210 agenda setting research 165 – 166, 171, 181, 282, 342 Age of Oprah: Cultural Icon for the Neoliberal Era, The (Peck) 248 – 249 algorithmic curation 313 algorithmic gatekeeping 104
algorithms in observation 269 Althusser, Louis 5 always-on data sources 308 American Journalism 243 American Social Science Association 56 Analysing Newspapers (Richardson) 119 – 120 analytic dialogue 373 – 377, 386, 387 analytic induction 299 Anderson, Benedict 217, 406 Andrejevic, Mark 209 Annales School 241, 242 Annenberg, Walter 67 Annenberg Schools for Communication 67 annihilation of space by time 241 anonymization of research subjects 311 Anscombe’s Quartet 280, 281 anthropological perspective 17, 27, 224 anti-authoritarian popular culture 221, 222, 226, 417 anyone as someone 18 APIcalypse 319 application programming interface (API) 312, 317 – 319, 326 – 327 applied research 62, 391, 416 arbitrariness of sign relations 36 archives as resources 425 Aristotle 26, 30, 35, 346 art history 39 – 41 artifacts 17 – 18 artificial intelligence 2, 9 – 10, 49, 314 arts and sciences 286, 328 – 329, 417
496
Index Askanius, Tina 371 Atatürk, Mustafa Kemal 124 Attitudes Toward History (Burke) 251 attribution theory 170 audience commodity 162 audience engagement in media industries: analytic dialogue 373 – 377; engagement, defined 369, 370 – 371; Media Experiences project 368, 371 – 373; production research on 369 – 373; reality TV production 377 – 386; social media and 381 – 382 audience flow 193 audiovisual media 6, 38, 49, 52, 145, 164, 186, 297 audit trail 299 Austen, Patrick 375 ‘auteurist’ theories 81 authoritarian theory 108, 413, 414 avant-garde movements 39 Bacon, Francis 239 bag-of-words techniques 323 Balio, Tino 79 Barthes, Roland 37, 179, 207 basic research 202, 416 batch processing 16 Bateson, Gregory 204 – 205, 206 – 207 Bazin, André 44 Beard, Charles 250 Benjamin, Walter 7 – 8, 179 Benveniste, Emile 6 Berger, John 40 Berlin Wall 55 Berlo, David 64 biases of communication 27, 395, 397, 401, 405, 409 big data in digital research methods 313 – 320 bilateral flow 220 biological essentialism 48, 426 bivariate descriptive statistics 276, 276 #BlackLivesMatter 399 blogs/blogging 105 – 106, 111, 186, 202, 326, 377 Blumler, Jay 68 ‘Bobo doll’ study 266 bodies and tools 5 – 7 Bordwell, David 49 Bourdieu, Pierre 40 bourgeois ideology 46
bracketing (epoché) of experience 34 Brecht, Bertolt 44 Breed, Warren 94 Brennen, Bonnie 243 – 244 Brexit media coverage 113, 123 – 134 Bridging the Gap: Kids and Cops program 404 – 405 Briggs, Asa 237 British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) 153 British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) 80, 142, 145, 152 – 155, 386 British Cultural Studies 65 Broadcasters’ Audience Research Board (BARB) 385 Brown, Michael 399 Bücher, Karl 55, 56 – 58, 59 Bureau of Applied Social Research at Columbia University 62 Burke, Peter 237 business administration 7, 424 business practices 90, 100 cable distribution 219 calculation phase of data analysis 274 – 282 Cameron, David 127 – 128, 128 campaigns in media effects 166 – 168, 167 Canonic Texts in Media Research (Katz, Peters, Liebes, Orloff) 182 capitalism 46, 56, 82, 197, 209, 237 – 241, 248 – 249 Carey, James W. 13 – 14, 213 Carr, E.H. 246 Carroll, Noël 49 case studies, defined 291 Central Limit Theorem 278 Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies 60 Centre for Mass Communication Research 60 Centre for Television Research 60 change, promoting/preventing 167 channel flow 192 – 193 Charger, Jasilyn 407 Chesneaux, Jean 251 Chi-Squares 64 Chomsky, Noam 42 citizen journalism 105 – 106 civil rights activists 36 civil society 221, 399, 417, 422, 424
Index civil-society organizations 166, 218 Clark, Elizabeth 240 Classical Hollywood Cinema, The (Bordwell) 78 cleaning phase in data analysis 272 – 273 closed questions in questionnaires 263 closed texts 190 cluster sampling 258 – 259, 259 code is law 204 codes/coding: consensual coding 300, 343; in data analysis 273, 298 – 299, 331 – 332; group coding 300; heuristic coding 301, 303, 305; as representational devices 298 – 299 cognitive science 10, 49 – 50, 170 cognitivism 26, 45, 48 – 50 cohort phenomena 357 – 358 cohort studies 264 Cold War 55, 59, 60, 63, 65, 413 collectivist cultures 109 Coming of the Book: The Impact of Printing 1450 – 1800, The (Febvre, Martin) 241 – 242 commercial databases 270 commercial media 60, 68, 76, 101, 108, 223, 374, 422 commercial news organizations 100, 102 commission work in research 424 communication determinism 236 communicative action 390, 406 communicative engagement 371, 380 communicative turns 37 – 39, 50, 52, 211 communities of interest 214, 220 – 221 communities of place 214, 220 complementarity of research methods: abduction 335, 339 – 342; convergence in practice 347 – 348; deduction 335, 337 – 339; generalization and 343 – 344; induction 335 – 337; inference 335 – 342; paradigms of 330, 330 – 331; quantitative and qualitative methodologies 346; realism and 344 – 347, 346; reliability measures 342, 342 – 343; remediated methods 334 – 335; signs of science 328 – 330, 329; six levels of analysis 332 – 334, 333; unification of
342 – 347; validity measures 342, 342 – 343 computer games 9, 17, 72, 80, 137, 139, 172, 192, 212, 296 computer interfaces in data analysis 305 – 306 computer-mediated communication 42, 50, 139 computer science 17, 48, 308, 323 Comte, Auguste 336 confidence interval (CI) 278, 357 confidence level 277 – 283 connotation languages 207 consensual coding 300, 343 constant comparative method 300 – 301 Constituents of a Theory of the Media (Enzensberger) 180 constituted group interviews 293 constructivism 44, 189, 301, 344 – 346, 354 contemplative understanding 420 content analysis 113 – 114, 138, 273 contesting method 272 context flows 194 context of discovery 334 context of justification 334 contextual integrity 310 – 311 contract journalists 102 control groups 265 – 268, 271, 396 control through prediction 419 – 420 convenience sampling 260 – 261, 291 corporate records 84 correlation coefficient 279, 283 cosplay 147 – 148 coveillance 209 coverage errors in sampling 258 covering-law model 339 creative abduction 341 crime fiction 148, 150 – 155 critical cases 291 critical consciousness 254, 389, 392, 406 – 409 critical discourse analysis (CDA) 112 – 113, 116, 118 – 121, 126, 135 Critical Discourse Studies 123 critical linguistics (CL) 112, 117 – 118, 126 critical realism 344 – 345, 373 critical research 69, 319 – 320, 369, 389, 420 – 421
497
498
Index critical social analysis 5, 46, 90, 158, 173, 184, 226, 390, 392 critique and/vs. criticism 420 Critique of Judgment (Kant) 39 cross-sectional research 255, 263 – 264 Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly 163 cultivation hypothesis 171 – 172, 431 cultural autonomy 51 cultural capital 39 – 40, 175 cultural dumping 225, 226 cultural globalization 228, 229 – 230 cultural historians 141, 235 cultural history 240 – 247 cultural identity 20, 157 cultural imperialism 223, 225 – 227, 414 cultural public sphere 18 – 19, 39 cultural theory 46, 120 – 121, 369, 412, 413 cultural turn 39, 242 – 243 culture/cultural values: acculturation 5, 34; anti-authoritarian popular culture 221, 222, 226, 417; collectivist cultures 109; extraordinary realm of 215; fan cultures 187, 200, 380; folk culture 217; high culture 215, 369; Indigenous cultures 109; individualistic cultures 109; low culture 29, 40, 211, 215; ordinary practice of 215; popular culture 146, 151, 158, 185 – 188, 217, 222, 226, 340, 370 – 371, 421, 425; secular notion of 51; subcultures 220 – 223; time-in/time-out culture 211 culture of real virtuality 197 culture wars 217, 431 Curran, James 233 cyberspaces/cybercultures/ cybersocieties 2, 46, 198, 237 Czitrom, Daniel 247 – 248 Dada movement 41 Daily Sabah (DS) 124 – 125, 129 – 134 Daily Show, The (TV show) 19 Darnton, Robert 245 – 246 data aggregation 261 – 263, 274 – 275 data analysis: calculation phase 274 – 282; cleaning phase 272 – 273; codes in 273, 298 – 299, 331 – 332; computer interfaces 305 – 306;
descriptive statistics 275 – 277; discourse analysis 303 – 305; grounded theory 300 – 301; inferential statistics 277 – 282; interpretation 282 – 283; levels of measurement 273 – 274, 274; methods of 333; preparation for 272 – 274; in qualitative research 298 – 306; in quantitative research 272 – 283; thematic and narrative analysis 300; variants of 299 – 300 databases for research 269 – 270 data collection: data mining and 162, 209, 296, 314, 335, 396; ethical concerns 311 – 312; hypotheses prior to 282; methods of 13, 62, 183, 253, 271, 296, 308, 333 – 334, 373; in qualitative research 286 – 287, 289, 292, 296 – 297 data display 300 data mining 162, 209, 296, 314, 335, 396 data science 285, 319 data sharing 306 de-anonymization of research subjects 311 decoding research 184 – 186 deduction in research 335, 337 – 339 deep structures 13, 42, 339 defamiliarization 42, 44, 147 Defining Women: The Case of Cagney and Lacey (D’Acci) 80 Delia, Jesse G. 60 – 61 democratic-participant theory 415 Descartes, René 34 descriptive statistics 275 – 277 design science 397 determination in the first instance 2 – 5 development communication 159, 223 – 224, 415, 428 development theory 414 – 415 Devolder, Nabor 55 Dewey, John 13 – 14, 391 diaspora 228 Die Arbeitslosen von Marienthal (The Unemployed of Marienthal) 61 diegesis 145 difference feminism 47 diffusion research 158 – 160, 168 – 169, 179
Index digital archives 307, 309, 311 – 312, 314, 318 digital divides 169, 415 digital ethnography 334 digital field experiment 267 – 268, 285 digital humanities 52 – 53, 305 digital media: cognitivism 50; culture and 215; data collection 296; gratifications category in 161; interactivity with 207 – 208; introduction to 2, 9, 39; news flows in 226 – 227; research questions from 184; tracking use patterns 162 Digital Media Club (DMC) 398, 401, 406 digital research methods: application programming interface 317 – 319; big data in 313 – 320; in business world 313 – 314; ethics concerns over 309 – 312; found vs. made data 334; post-API era 319 – 320; sampling data 314 – 315; social networks 320 – 323, 321; technological networks 320 – 323; text mining 323 – 326; TF IDF method 324 – 326, 325 digital trace data 271 – 272, 313 directors 88 discourse analysis 119, 135, 143, 234, 301 – 305, 396 – 398 discourse mythological analysis (DMA) 120 – 121 discursive formations 201, 205 – 206, 228, 242, 296 discursive practice 113, 119 – 122, 199 dispositio stage (rhetoric) 29 – 30 documentation centers 422, 425 documents 324 domestication, defined 191 – 192 domestication theory 352 ‘dominant’ reading 185 Donovan, Julie 371, 375 double bind 205 double hermeneutics 158, 210, 338, 411 duality of communication 210 – 211 dysfunctions in U&G research 161 early adopters 159 early majority 159 Early Modern Era 237 echo chambers 196
Eco, Umberto 341 economic capital 39 – 40, 175 economic world system 216 economy of attention 370 editorial policy 100 education in journalism 98 – 99 effects, defined 156 Eisenstein, Sergei 44 elocutio stage (rhetoric) 29 – 30 emancipation through critique 420 emic analysis 288 empirical generalization 343 Endemol Shine Group 368, 371, 375 engagement, defined 369, 370 – 371 Enlightenment 45, 238 – 240 enrichment method 271 – 272 entertainment-education 224 entertainment media production: in digital era 83; field research 85, 86 – 87; individual agents 80 – 81; individual productions 80 – 81; industrial contexts and practices 78 – 79; levels of analysis 76 – 83; logistics 87; national and international political economy/ policy 76 – 78; organizations 79 – 80; sources and methods 83 – 86 Enzensberger, Hans Magus 180 epistemological essentialism 48 epistemological probability 343 – 344 epistemological realism 345 epoché 34 Erdoğan, Recep Tayyip 127 – 128, 128, 133, 133 – 134 essentialism 48, 426 essentially contested concepts 213 ethics in research 284 – 285, 309 – 312 ethnography of media reception 187 – 189, 189 ethos persuasion 30 etic analysis 288 evaluation research 337, 423 – 424 everyday theory 412 evidential paradigm 339 executive producer 88 existing databases 269 – 270 expectancy value model 163 expected distribution 281 – 282, 282 experience sampling method (ESM) 163
499
500
Index experimental research 265, 265 – 269, 395 – 396 explicit interlopers 111 Export of Meaning, The (Liebes, Katz) 181, 224 external validity 284, 342 – 343 extra-media influences 102 – 107 eye-tracking 162, 268 fabula, defined 144 face-to-face interaction 6, 17, 30, 139, 172, 217, 262 fact vs. fiction 136 – 138 falsification 337 fan culture studies 187, 200, 380 fanfiction 139 – 140 Farage, Nigel 123 Febvre, Lucien 241 – 242 feminism/feminist research: humanistic sources and 26, 47 – 48; in journalism 97; social origins and uses 426 – 428 fiction: as content 148 – 155; crime fiction 148, 150 – 155; as form 143 – 149; genre in 147 – 148; narrative in 143 – 146; as performance 141; prose fiction 145, 147, 244; style in 148 – 149; violence in 149 – 150, 152 – 154 field experiment 266, 267 – 268, 285, 335 field notes 295 – 296, 299 field research 85, 86 – 87 film: classification of 153; experiments on American soldiers 180; fiction and 149; Hollywood 78; production of 91; film studies field 43 – 45 filter bubbles 196 Financial Interest and Syndication rules 77 fine arts 7, 38 – 41, 52, 200, 214 – 217 first-degree communication 5 – 7, 204 – 205 first-wave feminism 47 Fish, Stanley 198 – 199 Fiske, John 181, 200 Flash player 313 flow, defined 192, 192 focused interviews 293 – 294 focus groups 168, 184 – 186, 292 – 294, 304, 372, 421, 429 folk culture 217
Ford Foundation 63 forensic crime genre 148 formalism 44 Forsberg, Uno 373 Foucault, Michel 228, 233, 242, 400, 426 fourth degree of communication 9 – 10 fourth-wave feminism 47 framing concept 169 – 171 Frankfurt School 421 freelance journalists 102 Freire, Paulo 392 Freud, Sigmund 5 functional linguistics 117, 122, 303 – 304, 305 fusion of horizons 33 Gadamer, Hans-Georg 32 Gallup, George 62 Galtung, Johan 98 Gans, Herbert J. 45, 94 gate-checkers 100 gatekeeping theory 93 – 95 gatewatching 106 gaze, the 45 Geertz, Clifford 242, 295 Gemeinschaft, defined 220 – 221 gender 47 – 48, 96, 185 General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) 312 generalization, defined 301, 302 generative model of meaning 13, 42 genre studies 147 – 148, 191 Geographic Information System (GIS) 250 German Democratic Republic (GDR) 65 – 66 German Publizistikwissenschaft 54, 59 German Sociological Association 57 Gesellschaft, defined 220 – 221 Giddens, Anthony 210 Ginwright, Shawn 410 Global Games (Kerr) 79 globalization 77, 228, 229 – 230, 237 – 238, 243 global media system 92, 226 Global Positioning System (GPS) 10 glocalization, defined 230 Goffman, Erving 205 Gonzales, Emma 407
Index Google 203, 261 Got to Dance (reality TV show) 377 – 386, 379, 384 Grafton, Anthony 237 Gramsci, Antonio 51 graphic user interfaces 10, 194, 202 gratifications obtained (GO) 163 gratifications sought (GS) 160 – 161, 163 Great Chain of Being 32, 413 Green-Eyeshades 64 grounded theory 300 – 301, 396 group coding 300 Gutenberg, Johannes 238 Gutenberg galaxy 27 Habermas, Jürgen 218, 239, 390, 408 – 409, 415, 420 habitus 64 – 65, 175 Hagemann, Walter 59 Hall, Stuart 4, 51, 184, 243 Handbook of Media and Communication Research: Qualitative and Quantitative Methodologies, A (Jensen) 232 – 233 Handbook of Qualitative Methodologies for Mass Communication Research, A (Jensen, Jankowski) 232 – 233 Harding, Sandra 426 hard news 96 – 97, 122, 124 – 125, 134 Hardt, Hanno 65, 243 – 244 Harvey, David 46 Hauser, Arnold 40 Hauser, G.A. 29 HBO 83 hegemony 19, 48, 51, 66, 68, 108, 245 Heidegger, Martin 34 hermeneutics 31 – 33, 32, 32 heuristic coding 301, 303, 305 hierarchy of influences 76, 93 – 95 high culture 215, 369 historical consciousness 243 historical imagination 235, 243, 251 historiography, defined 235 – 236, 237 – 243 history as academic discipline 240 history in media communication research: defining terms in 235 – 237; introduction to 20, 232 – 235, 235;
problems with 237 – 243; theory and method 243 – 250 history of history 235, 237 – 243 history of ideas: hermeneutics 31 – 33; phenomenology 33 – 34; rhetoric 29 – 31; semiotics 34 – 37, 35; sources of 29 – 37 Hjelmslev, Louis 37, 207 Hollywood 78 horizon of expectations 34, 190 horizontal intertextuality 200, 201 house style in television 79 HTML codes 324 human agency 4 – 5, 14, 26, 173, 210, 351 – 354 human-computer interaction (HCI) 67, 162, 428 human consciousness 34, 49 – 50, 215 humanistic sources: art history 39 – 41; classical agenda 25 – 26; cognitivism 48 – 50; feminism 47 – 48; film studies 43 – 45; history of ideas 29 – 37; interdisciplinary challenges 45 – 50; linguistic and communicative turns 37 – 39; linguistics 42 – 43; literary criticism 41 – 42; medium theory 26 – 29; postmodernism 45 – 47; pragmatic and digital turns 50 – 53 humanitas, defined 26 human rights 47, 126 – 133, 214, 416 Humboldt, Wilhelm von 25 Hurriyet Daily News (HDN) 124 – 129 Husserl, Edmund 33 – 34 Huyssen, Andreas 215 hypermedia 202 hypertexts 122, 192, 200 – 202 hypothetico-deductive research 165, 337 – 338 iconology 40 imagined audience 191, 374 imagined communities 20, 217, 220, 230, 238, 406 immaterial production 19 immersive engagement 371 impartiality, defined 99 imperialism 2, 37, 223, 225 – 229, 414 impersonal grammar in speech acts 302, 304 implications, defined 302
501
502
Index implicit interlopers 111 implicit premises 302 indeterministic model of meaning 12 indexical devices in data analysis 298 Indigenous cultures 109 individual creativity 82 individualistic cultures 109 induction in research 335 – 337 inferential statistics 275, 277 – 282 informant interviews 293 information flows 194, 413 information society 60, 68, 197, 224 informed consent 285, 310 – 311, 429 – 431 Innis, Harold A. 27, 236 – 237 innovation research 179 innovators 135, 159 Inside Prime Time (Gitlin) 78 institutional history 233 institutional racism 400, 401 institutions-to-think-with 2, 17 – 20 intellectual cultures 412, 416 – 419 intelligentsia’s role in research 424 intentionality 34, 390 interaction/interactivity: communication and 14 – 16; dimensions of social interaction 17; face-to-face interaction 6, 17, 30, 139, 172, 217, 262; human-computer interaction 428; turn-taking interaction 303, 304 intercultural communication 214, 223 – 225, 414 – 415 interdisciplinary research 45 – 50, 55, 60 – 63 interest groups 79, 80, 165, 186 intergroup communication 223 intermediality 195 internal validity 284, 342 – 343 International Association for Mass Communication Research (IAMCR) 59 – 60 International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR) 65 – 67 International Association for Semiotic Studies 37 International Communication Association (ICA) 54, 56, 65, 233 international political economy/policy 76 – 78
international statistics 160 international trade policy 77 internet of things 10, 210 interpersonal communication 43, 195, 322, 350 – 351, 351, 417 interpretation of data 282 – 283 Interpretation of Dreams, The (Freud) 5 interpretive categories 34, 190 – 191, 334, 338 interpretive communities 12, 190, 198 – 199 interpretive repertoires 190 intertextuality 42, 198 – 202, 201 interviewer effect 262 interviewing in qualitative research 292 – 294, 396 interview transcripts 295, 299 intransitive reality 345 Invasion from Mars (Cantril) 179 inventio stage (of rhetoric) 29 – 30 inverted pyramid form 99 Irigaray, Luce 48 Iron Curtain 60 Iser, Wolfgang 190 Israel, Jonathan 239 Is There a Text in This Class (Fish) 198 – 199 iterative research 288, 298 – 299, 341 Jackson, Jesse 36 Jakobson, Roman 206, 206 Jameson, Frederic 46 Jankowski, Nicholas W. 232 Jauss, Hans Robert 190 Jensen, Klaus Bruhn 232 Johnson, Boris 130 – 131, 131 journalists/journalism: autonomy 100; contract journalists 102; education in 98 – 99; as gatekeepers 93 – 95; as heteronomous field 102; lifestyle journalism 96, 104; national histories of 240; photojournalists 106; role perceptions 96 Journal of Communication 432 judgmental rationality 345 Justice and Development Party (AKP) 124 – 128 Kant, Immanuel 1, 39 Katz, Elihu 224
Index Kellner, Douglas 249 Kemalism 124, 126, 127 – 128 Kerr, Aphra 79 knowledge gaps 157, 168 – 169 knowledge interests 419 – 420 Kondo, Koko 371 Kracauer, Siegfried 44 Krippendorff, Klaus 66, 67 Kristeva, Julia 199 laboratory experiment 266 – 267, 268 Lacan, Jacques 228 laggards 159 Lang, Gladys 290 Lang, Kurt 290 Language and Cinema (Metz) 180 Language and Control (Fowler) 117 – 118 language: connotation languages 207; functional linguistics 117, 122, 303 – 304, 305; linguistic studies 10, 37 – 39, 42 – 43; meta-languages 207 – 208, 208; natural language processing 323; as privileged modality 6; spoken language 26, 29; written language 142, 207, 305 language games 15 language system (langue) 44 Lasswell, Harold D. 60 last.fm music site 316 late majority 159 Law of Large Numbers 257, 257 lay theories 336, 413 Lazarsfeld, Paul Felix 61 – 63, 432 – 433 legislative sources 84 leg-work 99 – 100 Leipzig Zeitungskunde department 57 – 58, 59 lemmatization, defined 324 Leopold, von Ranke 240 Le Pen, Marine 130 – 131, 131 letter writing 8 levels of measurement 273 – 274, 274 Levi-Strauss, Claude 17, 36 liberal market-based model 218 libertarian theory 108, 413 – 414 Liebes, Tamar 224 lifestyle journalism 96, 104 lifestyles and socialization 173, 174 – 175
limit cases 291 linguistic studies 10, 37 – 39, 42 – 43 Lippmann, Walter 98 Lipsitz, George 233 literacy, defined 217 literary criticism 41 – 42, 140 – 141 Literary Digest 258 literary theory 15, 140 live audience experiences 371 – 372 location realism 149 logical positivism 38, 334, 336 – 337, 344 – 346 logistical notes 296 logos persuasion 30 Logos tradition 38 Lonely Crowd, The (Riesman) 158 longitudinal research 263, 264 Long Revolution, The (Williams) 205, 215, 221, 244 – 245 longue durée (long-term) 241 low culture 29, 40, 211, 215 ludologists 146 Lull, James 181 Lund University 368 Lyotard, Jean-Francois 46 machine learning 110, 314, 396 MacLean, Malcolm 64 Mail Online 123 Making of Citizen Kane, The (Carringer) 80 male scopophilia 45 Mannheim, Karl 424 many-to-many communication 9, 194 – 196, 201, 345, 351 many-to-one communication 9, 208, 209 Marchand, Roland 248 marginalia 8 Marienthal research model 62 marketing semiotics 37 market research 62 – 64, 160, 175, 337 Martin, Jean-Henri 241 – 242 Marx, Karl 77 – 78, 241, 416 Marxism 4 – 5, 61, 173 Marxism and Literature (Williams) 244 Marxist-Leninist traditions 59, 65 mass communication: flows of communication 193, 195; interpersonal communication and 187, 351, 417; news production and
503
504
Index 107, 118; research on 59, 201, 233, 306 mass-interpersonal divide 2, 73 mass media: agenda-setting and 170; audiences and 191, 200 – 201, 205; communication theory and 412 – 417; cultural contexts of 215, 217, 225 – 226; debates over 217; defined 17, 23; internet impact on 201; interpersonal communication and 194 – 195; news production and 93; personal media and 350 – 353; research on 31, 43, 55, 57, 59 – 60, 65 – 68, 310, 337 – 339; violence and propaganda in 13 Mass Media and Violence report 181 Mass Observation research program 178, 179 maximum variation sampling 290 – 291, 362 McCaw, Neil 146 McLeod, Jack 64 McLuhan, Marshall 27, 338 McQuail, Denis 412 – 413 Mead, George Herbert 389 mean, defined 275 meaning, defined 178, 287 mechanisms of reality 346 Media and the American Mind: From Morse to McLuhan (Czitrom) 247 media ecology 27 media education 393, 425 media effects: agenda setting research 165 – 166, 171; campaigns in 166 – 168, 167; consumption and 161 – 163; cultivation theory 171 – 172; defined 156; diffusion of innovations 158 – 160; framing concept 169 – 171; gratifications obtained 163; gratifications sought 160 – 161, 163; institutionalization and 173 – 176; knowledge gaps 168 – 169; memory studies 163 – 165; research histories 157 – 158; socialization by media 172 – 173 media environments: audience and 185 – 186; commercialized 103; complexity of 308, 341; in digital era 83, 158, 172, 200, 209 – 227, 315, 371; intertextuality and 192 – 193;
three-step flows 195, 197; in Turkey 123 – 134 media events 176, 225, 371 Media Experiences project 368, 371 – 373 media literacy 61, 203, 234, 413, 425 median, defined 275 Media of Resistance: A Communication History of the Communist Movement in the Dutch East Indies, 1920 – 1926 (Subijanto) 249 – 250 media of three degrees 2 – 8 media reception: decoding research 184 – 186; ethnography of 187 – 189, 189; everyday contexts 182 – 184; media discourses in 189 – 192; milestones in 177 – 182, 178; in social action context 186 – 187 media repertoires 194, 261 media system dependency theory 176 mediated fiction: fact vs. fiction 136 – 138; fiction as content 148 – 155; fiction as form 143 – 149; modes of 139 – 140; Sherlock Holmes analysis 139 – 143, 144 – 146, 147 – 149, 154 – 155 media texts: coding of 298; critical readings of 249; decoding of 184 – 185; gender studies and 48; intertextuality and 200; language in 118, 135; multimodal discourse analysis of 113 – 114; social media and 82 medium is the message 27 medium theory 5 – 6, 26 – 29, 172, 176, 179, 191, 351 member checks 306, 343 memoria stage (rhetoric) 29 memory studies on media effects 163 – 165 mentalités (attitudes) 241 – 242 meta-analytical quality control 333 meta-communication 202 – 210, 211, 296 meta-data 270, 272 – 273, 296 – 297, 334 meta-languages 207 – 208, 208 meta-media 8 – 9, 201 – 202 metaphor 36, 302 – 303, 304
Index Methodenstreit 331, 335 methodology, defined 333 metonymy 36 Metz, Christian 44 – 45, 180 Meyrowitz, Joshua 7, 26 – 27 Michigan State University 64 – 65 microfilm copies 309 – 310 microhistory 242 microsociology 170, 181, 182 middle-range theories 227, 288 Mills, C. Wright 432 – 433 mimesis 145 mobile telephone research see personal media studies mode, defined 275 models of meaning 11 – 17, 12 Morley, David 181, 184 – 185 Morris, Meaghan 51 multilateral flow 220 multimodal critical discourse analysis (MCDA) 121 – 123 multiple regression 280 multisemiotic storytelling 122 multi-step sampling 290 Mulvey, Laura 44 – 45 Münster, Hans Amandus 62 museums 40, 183, 425 music arts 39 Myth Today (Barthes) 179 Narration in the Fiction Film (Bordwell) 49 narrative analysis 143 – 146, 300, 339, 396 – 398 narrative history 240 narratologists 146 narratology 143, 145 nation, defined 216, 217 National Association for the Promotion of Social Science 56 national flow 219 – 220 national histories of journalism 240 nationalism 131, 217, 238 national political economy/policy 76 – 78 National Socialist (NS) party 62 national statistics 84, 316, 355 nations as modern cultures 216 – 220, 219 nation-states 8, 20, 55, 216 – 218, 220, 290
Nationwide Audience, The (Morley) 181 native’s perspective 287 natural evolution 49 natural experiment 173 – 175, 266, 268 – 269 naturalistic contexts 287 naturalistic group interviews 293 natural language processing (NLP) 323 natural-scientific models 2, 11, 48 – 49, 287, 417, 429 Nazi Germany 15, 62, 421 negative definition of freedom/rights 415 – 416 ‘negotiated’ reading 185 neoliberalization 124, 151, 248 – 249 Nerone, John 233 Netflix 83 networked communication 2, 166, 181, 184, 187, 195 – 198, 204, 334 network society 197, 229 new rhetoric 30 news as historical construct 94 news discourse analysis: critical discourse analysis 112 – 113, 116, 118 – 121, 126, 135; critical linguistics 112, 117 – 118; multimodal critical discourse analysis 121 – 123; quantitativequalitative synergies 112, 113 – 116; Turkish media coverage of Brexit 113, 123 – 134 news flows 226 – 227 newsrooms 101 newspaper science 57 news production: extra-media influences 102 – 107; gatekeeping theory and 93 – 95; individual level 95 – 97; pressures of 94; routines of 94 – 95, 95, 97 – 100; societal level 107 – 109 news sourcing 94 news values 47, 97 – 99, 107, 119 Newton, Isaac 239 New World Information and Communication Order (NWICO) 226 New Worlds, Ancient Texts (Grafton) 237 nodes/node degree 321
505
506
Index Noelle-Neumann, Elisabeth 59, 68 – 69, 432 nominalization 117 non-disclosure agreements 90 non-governmental organizations (NGOs) 20, 424 non-parametric tests 281 – 282 nonprobabilistic sampling strategies 260 – 261 non-response errors 258, 284 non-western ontologies 225 Nordenstreng, Kaarle 68, 165 normal distribution curve 277, 277 – 278 normative theories 412, 413 – 416 null hypothesis (H0) 278, 281, 344 null hypothesis significance testing (NHST) 278 – 279 numerus clausus 61 Obama, Barack 248 objectivity, defined 99 objectivity norms 105 object of analysis 72, 171, 292 – 293, 298, 329, 332 – 333 objects-to-think-with 17 observational studies 97, 183 – 184, 269, 296 observation in qualitative research 294 – 296 observed distribution 281 – 282, 282 observer effect 269 obsolescence of technologies 313 offer image 126, 311 Office of the Independent Monitor (OIM) 399 – 405, 408, 410 on-demand services 77, 373 one-to-one-communication 350 – 351 online communities 101, 220, 309 – 311, 349 online user panels 316 – 317 ontological realism 344, 373 ontological security 165 open-ended questions in questionnaires 163, 263 open newsrooms 101 open texts 190 operational costs of sampling 257 operationalization in research 43, 190, 288 – 290, 328, 341, 433
operational theory 412, 413 ‘oppositional’ reading 185 oral history 200, 242, 294 ordinary least squares (OLS) 279 organic user interfaces 10 organizational communication 3, 68 – 69, 424 orientalism 228 Örnebring, Henrik 111 othering 130, 228 outsourcing 102 overcoded abduction 341 overdetermination 5 Packer, Jeremy 233 panel studies 264 – 265, 421 Panofsky, Erwin 40 paradigmatic axis 36, 346 parallel content analysis 166 para-social interaction 161 – 162, 183 Park, Robert E. 60 participating observation 72, 183, 287, 295, 310, 313 participatory action research (PAR) 254, 388, 389 – 398, 406 – 410 “Passing of the Dominant Paradigm, The” (Rogers) 224 Passing of Traditional Society, The (Lerner) 224 passivisation 117 pathos persuasion 30 Payne Fund research program 178, 179 Pearson chi-squared test 281 Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient 279 Peirce, Charles Sanders 35, 339 – 340 peoplemeters 162 People’s Choice study 179 performativity and communication 14 – 16, 15, 52 personal contact 86, 97, 160, 314, 380 personal influence research 180 personal media: diffusion of 355 – 356, 356; interpersonal communicative practices 350 – 351, 351; life phases and 355 – 360; mass media and 350 – 353; qualitative research 360 – 366; quantitative research 355 – 360; reliability measures 358 – 359, 359; sampling and
Index representativity 357; secondary analysis on 355 – 356; situational type 362 – 364, 365 – 366; strategic type 365 – 366; traditional type 364 – 365; trans-situational agency 351 – 353; typology of everyday life 360 – 362; validity measures 358 – 359, 359 personal pronouns in speech acts 302, 304 persuasion stages 159, 164 phenomenology 26, 33 – 34, 38, 50, 184 philology 36, 42 philosophical logic 15 photojournalists 106 physical field experiment 267 – 268 pilot season 88 pilot studies 295, 332, 348 planned spontaneity 365 Plato 27 political communication 30 – 31, 68 – 69, 165 – 166, 181, 190 – 196, 255, 261 – 273, 282, 315, 326 political correctness 426 political democracy 17, 27, 179, 302, 433 political economy/policy 1 – 2, 20, 27, 50, 76 – 91, 107, 158 – 166, 182, 226, 234 – 251, 335, 414 – 416 political public sphere 18 – 19, 39 political self-efficacy 392 politics, defined 216 polysemy 190 Popp, Richard 243 Popper, Karl 15 popular culture 40 – 41, 146, 151, 158, 185 – 188, 200, 217, 222, 226, 340, 370 – 371, 421, 425 popular culture project 425 popular music 222 population sampling 256, 264, 316 positive definition of freedom/rights 415 – 416 postcolonial theory 223, 227 – 229 postmodernism 26, 41, 45 – 48, 427 postmodernity 45 poststructuralism 12, 44, 46 – 48, 243, 346 Post-Theory (Bordwell, Carroll) 49 power/knowledge 426
practically significant data 282 – 283 pragmatic turn 31, 39, 50 – 53 predictive analytics 314, 396 preparation for data analysis 272 – 274 presence, defined 208 presentism on new media 355 pre-socialization 97 presuppositions 123 primary socialization 172 – 173 primary sources 240, 247, 250 primary texts 200 priming of audiences 166 print capitalism 238 printing press 8, 27, 229, 237 – 239, 241 print media 8, 139, 169, 183, 192, 217, 220 print romances 181, 186 – 187 privacy in quantitative research 284 – 285 privacy rights 416 proactive research 422 probability theory 256 – 257 production budgets 82, 84 production companies 79 – 80, 84, 88 – 89, 371 – 374, 380, 384 production crew 87, 88 production research 76 – 77, 83, 89 – 91, 109 – 111, 368 – 373 production set 88 – 89 produsage 105 professional meetings 85 profession-oriented education 57 Project Revere 180 propositional logic 15 prose fiction 145, 147, 244 Protestant Reformation 238 pseudo-investigative journalism 103 psychoanalytic theory 228 psychosemiotics 45, 46 public access channels 6, 221 public goods 422 public knowledge project 157, 424 – 425 Public Opinion Quarterly 56 public panic research 291 public planning 424 public research universities 67 public service media 96, 100, 164, 226, 374 – 375, 381, 414, 422, 424
507
508
Index public service news organizations 100 public-sphere model 2, 18, 18 – 20, 424 purposive sampling 260 qualitative research: basic concepts 287 – 288; data analysis 298 – 306; data collection 296 – 297; discourse analysis 301 – 303; interviews 292 – 294, 396; in microsociology 170; observation 294 – 296; personal media studies 360 – 366; reduction in 363; sampling cases 289 – 292; study designs 288 – 292 quantitative research: content analysis 138; data aggregation 261 – 263; data analysis 272 – 283; ethics and privacy 284 – 285; existing databases 269 – 270; experiments 265, 265 – 269; laboratory experiment 266 – 267, 268; limitations and challenges 283 – 285; methodologies 112, 113 – 116; natural experiment 268 – 269; nonprobabilistic sampling strategies 260 – 261; personal media studies 355 – 360; random sampling 256 – 261; sampling process 256, 256 – 258, 257; scope of study 263 – 272, 264; structured observation 269 – 272; surveys 261 – 263, 393 quasi-experiments 265, 268 questionnaires 62, 258, 262 – 264 quota sampling 260 Racism and the Press (van Dijk) 114 Radio Gratifications study 179 Radway, Janice 181, 186 – 188, 340 – 341, 343 random sampling 61, 256 – 261, 265, 355, 357 range, defined 275 reactive research 422 reading as communicative/social practice 340 – 342 Reading the Romance (Radway) 181 Reagan Revolution 248 recorded phone calls 310 recurrence of events/objects 330 reduction in qualitative analysis 363 Reeves, Byron 67 – 68
reflexive notes 296 Reformation era 8 regression analysis 279 – 280, 280 re-identification of research subjects 311 relational thinking 240 relational ties in communication 197 – 198 relational uses of media 182 relationship management 376 relative autonomy 75 relativism 27, 46, 345, 373 reliability measures 284, 342, 342 – 343, 358 – 359, 359 religion/religiosity 8, 109 remediated communication 195, 334 – 335 representamen, defined 35 representativity 298, 355 – 357 reproducibility 7 – 8, 313 republic of letters 239 researcher-administered surveys 262 research-generated databases 270 Research Institute on Social Change (RISC) 175 resistance through rituals 222 respondent interviews 293 retroductive research strategy 354, 361 Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism 265 rhetoric/rhetorical analysis 29 – 31, 396 – 398 Ricoeur, Paul 31 Riordan, William 240 ritual communication model 13 – 14 Rockefeller Foundation 62, 63 Rogers, Everett M. 64, 67, 159, 224 roleplay 147 – 148 Romantic movements 39 Rorty, Richard 48, 427 Roscoe, Jane 375 routines of news production 94 – 95, 95 Rowland, Willard 236, 237 Ruge, Mari Holmboe 98 Russian formalism 49 Sage Handbook of Media Processes and Effects, The (Nabi, Oliver) 158 sampling: cases in qualitative research 289 – 292; cluster sampling
Index 258 – 259, 259; convenience sampling 260 – 261, 291; coverage errors in 258; digital research methods 314 – 315; experience sampling method 163; maximum variation sampling 290 – 291, 362; multi-step sampling 290; nonprobabilistic sampling strategies 260 – 261; operational costs of 257; personal media studies 357; population sampling 256, 264, 316; process of 256, 256 – 258, 257, 361 – 362; purposive sampling 260; qualitative research 289 – 292; quantitative research 256, 256 – 258, 256 – 261, 257, 260 – 261; quota sampling 260; random sampling 61, 256 – 261, 265, 355, 357; self-selection error in 258; snowball sampling 260, 291; stratified sampling 259; systematic errors in 258; theoretical sampling 291 satellite distribution 219 Saussure, Ferdinand de 35 – 37 Scannell, Paddy 232 – 233 Schiffman, Zachary 240 Schiller, Dan 234 Schleiermacher, Friedrich 31 Schramm, Wilbur 56 Schudson, Michael 94, 232 – 233 Sciences de l’information et de la communication (SIC) 60 scientific communication 55, 68, 328, 345 scientific theory 412, 413 scope of study 263 – 272, 264 screenwriters 137 search engines 125, 202 – 204, 207, 269 secondary media use 162 secondary socialization 172 – 173 secondary texts 200 second-degree communication 7 – 8, 204 – 207 second-level agenda-setting 166, 171 second-wave feminism 47 secularization 51, 217 selective tradition 244 self-administered questionnaires 262 self-selection errors 258, 284 Selznick, David O. 82
semantic networks 303, 304 semiology, defined 37 semiotics/semiosis 34 – 37, 35, 40, 190 September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks 14 – 15 Sherlock Holmes analysis 139 – 143, 144 – 146, 147 – 149, 154 – 155 significant other concept 209, 331 signified/signifier 36 – 37, 37 signs, defined 35 Silverstone, Roger 389 – 390 Siskin, Clifford 239 situational type 362 – 364, 365 – 366 six degrees of separation 322 six levels of analysis 332 – 334, 333 sjužet, defined 144 skepticism 35, 46, 58, 208, 344 smallworld topography 322 SMS activity 356 – 360; see also personal media studies Smythe, Dalla W. 162 Snow, C.P. 50 Snow, John 268 snowball sampling 260, 291 social democratic welfare model 218 social fields 102, 175 social history 45, 94, 242, 245 Social History of the Media, The (Briggs, Burke) 237 socialization 5, 97, 102 social media: citizen journalism on 106; engagement research 381 – 382; as news outlet 93; panel studies on 264 – 265 social network analysis 320 – 323, 321 social practices 118 – 120, 183, 188 – 189, 233, 249 – 250, 310, 340, 345, 411 – 412, 423, 430 – 433 social processes 31, 117, 389 social profiling 209 social responsibility theory 414, 415 social roles in production units 80 – 81 social schemata 138 social sciences 33 – 34 social-scientific media studies 11, 13, 44, 56 – 58, 59 social-scientific sources: American and European roots 54 – 56; Bücher, Karl 55, 56 – 58, 59; current geography of 67 – 69; empirical social-science
509
510
Index discipline 63 – 65; European successors 58 – 60; future perspectives 69; IAMCR and 65 – 67; Leipzig Zeitungskunde department 57 – 58; propaganda work 60 – 63; World War II and 62 – 63 social structure 14 – 16, 140, 157, 168 – 173, 198 – 199, 208 – 211, 215 – 222, 331, 354, 361, 414 Social Uses of Television, The (Lull) 181 socio-demographic categories 162, 190 – 191 sociological imagination 235, 244, 294, 334, 432 Sociological Imagination, The (Mills) 432 sociology 61 sociology of culture 244 soft news 96 – 97, 99, 102 Solnit, Rebecca 241 Sonic Memorial project 9 sound recording technology 8 soundscapes 8, 222 sousveillance 209 spaces of flows 197 spatial organization of newswork 94, 100 – 101 speech acts 141, 302 – 303, 304 speech communication 61 Spiegelhalter, David 282 – 283 spiral of silence 432 Spivak, Gayatri 48 spoken language 26, 29 sports 219 standard deviation 275, 277 – 278 standard error (SE) 278 standpoint epistemology 48, 426 Stanford University 67 state, defined 216 state-owned media 103 state-supported media 76 statistically significant data 277, 282 – 283, 360 statistical probability 337 – 338, 344 Statistics Denmark 355 stemming, defined 324 stimulus-response model 164 stochastic research 12, 337, 343 Story/Plot distinction 145 Strand, The magazine 147
strategic communication 166, 168 strategic essentialism 48 strategic rituals of objectivity 94, 98, 99 Strategies for Youth: Connecting Cops and Kids program 401 stratified reality 345 stratified sampling 259 – 260 structural functionalism 173 structuralism 36, 42 structural uses of media 182 structuration theory 354 structured interviews 262 structured observation 253, 261, 269 – 272, 285 structure of feeling 244 – 245 studio realism 149 style in fiction 148 – 149 subcultures 36, 214, 220 – 223, 260, 291, 426 subject-object divide 34 Subrahmanyam, Sanjay 238 substantiations, defined 301, 302 substantive notes 296 substantive responsibility 389 subtle realism 372 – 373 Summers, David 40 super flows 192 – 193 super-themes 170 surface structures 13, 42 “Surgeon General’s Report on Television and Social Behavior” 181 surveillance as communication 208 – 210 surveillance capitalism 209 surveys for data collection 261 – 263, 265, 393 symbolic diffusion 160 syntagmatic axis 36 systematic errors in sampling 258 systemic functional linguistics (SFL) 117, 122 tacit rules of newswork 94, 103, 105 technology/technologies: meta-media technologies 8 – 9, 201 – 202; network analysis 320 – 323; as second degree media 7 – 8; sound recording technology 8; as structural influence 105; see also digital media; digital research methods
Index Television and Behavior research studies 181 Television Culture (Fiske) 181 Television in the Lives of Our Children research study 180 television (TV) 91, 149, 172, 187 term frequency–inverse document frequency (TF IDF) method 324 – 326, 325 Terms of Service (ToS) 312 tertiary texts 200 text, defined 40 text messaging (sms) 5, 194, 212, 311, 351, 358, 358, 360 text mining 307 – 309, 318, 323 – 326 textual blanks 190 textual deconstructionism 427 thematic analysis 300 theoretical generalization 315, 343 theoretical sampling 291 theoretical saturation 301 theory of science 34, 48, 254, 330 – 331, 335, 339, 343 – 347, 426 Theses on Feuerbach (Marx) 416 thick description 242, 295 thin causality 284 think-aloud techniques 186 third-degree communication 8 – 9, 207 – 208 third-wave feminism 47 Third World 226 “This Sex Which Is Not One” (Irigaray) 48 Thompson, E.P. 6 three-layered model of CDA 119, 121 three-step flows 194 – 197 Thunberg, Greta 407 time-in/time-out culture 211 timeless time 197 Tönnies, Ferdinand 220 topic modeling 326 topos 30 Torres, Camilo 392 totalitarian theory 414 Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (Wittgenstein) 38 trade literature 85 trade press 78, 84 – 85, 249
traditional type 364 – 366 transfactual reality 345 transmedia storytelling 81, 138 transmission communication model 13 – 14 trans-situational agency 351 – 354, 363, 366 travel journalism 104 treatment groups 265 – 267 triangulation 248, 348 Trump, Donald 130 – 131, 131 Tuchman, Gaye 94, 99 turn-taking 17, 192, 205, 211 – 212, 303, 304, 351 TV: Technology and Cultural Form (Williams) 180 – 181 tweets 310 ubiquitous communication 10, 23, 150, 158, 309, 313, 352 UK Independence Party (UKIP) 123 undercoded abduction 341 UNESCO 59, 65 – 66 unification in the final instance 21, 346 United Nations 20, 216, 226 units of analysis 289 – 290 univariate descriptive statistics 275, 276 Universal Declaration of Human Rights 214, 416 Urueta, José Luís 371 usability tests 268 user flows 193 – 194, 209 user-generated content (UGC) 105, 196 uses and gratifications (U&G) research 160 – 161, 163, 179, 182 US land-grant universities 67 US National Security Agency (NSA) 208, 326 validity 284, 342, 342 – 343, 358 – 359, 359 van Dijk, Teun 114, 118 – 119 Venturi, Robert 45 Verein für Socialpolitik (Association for Social Policy) 56 – 57 Verfremdung (alienation) 44, 145 verification 337 verstehen 396 vertical intertextuality 200, 201 violence in fiction 149 – 150, 152 – 154
511
512
Index virtual communities 220 virtual ethnography 189, 334 virtual reality 10, 197 visual analysis 396 – 398 visual anthropology 296, 297 visual arts 39, 40, 49, 199 visual media 6, 38, 40, 49, 52, 140, 145, 149, 164, 186, 241, 368 Wahl-Jorgensen, Karin 63 Wall Street Journal 6 Waples, Douglas 60 Warner, William 239 Watzlawick, Paul 172 Weaver, Warren 11 Weber, Max 57, 390 web metrics 99 web scraping 319, 324 Weiser, Mark 10 West, Cornel 250 Westphalian peace accords (1648) 216 –2 17 “What Is the History of Books?” (Darnton) 245 – 246 White, David M. 93 – 94 Williams, Raymond 180 – 181, 236, 244 – 246, 249 – 250
Winfrey, Oprah 248 – 249 Wire, The 151 Wittgenstein, Ludwig 15, 38 – 39 Wood, Douglas 371, 375, 376 working documents 296, 299, 303 Work of Art in the Age of Technical Reproduction (Benjamin) 179 world, as a medium 10 world, as context of action 230 world, as frame of reference 230 World 1 15 World 2 15 World 3 15 World Internet Project 265 written language 142, 207, 305 Yale Program of Research on Communication and Attitude Change 180 youth participatory action research (YPAR) 388 – 389, 398 – 405 YouTube 82 – 83 Zeitungswissenschaft 57 Zu den Sachen selbst (to the things themselves) 33 – 34
