Download MC53001B Media and Social Research: Critical Skills and

MC53001B
MEDIA AND SOCIAL RESEARCH:
CRITICAL SKILLS AND APPROCHES
LECTURE ONE: INTRODUCING MEDIA RESEARCH?
Veronica Barassi, PSH240
[email protected]
@veronicabarassi
INTRODUCING MEDIA RESEARCH?
THE LECTURE
Part 1: Social Research, Studying Society and Culture
• Foundations of Social Research in sociology and anthropology
• Qualitative vs Quantitative methodologies
• The crisis of method in the social sciences, and the understanding of social research as biased
Part 2: Media Research
• Understanding media research
• The relationship between question and method
• Three different media research approaches 1) understanding media as texts 2) understanding media as
organisations 3) understanding media as practices
UNDERSTANDING SOCIAL RESEARCH
INTRODUCING MEDIA RESEARCH?
SOCIOLOGY AND THE STUDY OF SOCIETY:
• He was interested in collective life, not individual psychology but
rather how individual issues are shaped by the collective
• He believed in the importance of developing a sociological method
that enabled us to scientifically and objectively studying society
(sociological positivism)
• In 1895 he wrote The Rules of the Sociological Method, and
founded the first European Sociology Department in Bordeaux
E. Durkheim
INTRODUCING MEDIA RESEARCH?
ANTHROPOLOGY AND THE STUDY OF CULTURE
• Ethnology of the 19th Century and the work of earlier ‘armchair’ anthropologists Frazer (U.K.): Tylor (U.K); Mauss (France)
• Malinowski B. (1914) The Argonauts of the Western Pacific
• The importance of the ‘native’s point of you’ – becoming
involved
B. Malinowski
INTRODUCING MEDIA RESEARCH?
QUANTITATIVE AND QUALITATIVE SOCIAL RESEARCH
INTRODUCING MEDIA RESEARCH?
THE BIAS OF EARLY SOCIAL RESEARCH
• Cultures and societies are systems/ social structures that we can map and analyse
• All Social and Human beliefs or cultural forms have a specific function within the
system and we can analyse these scientifically.
• Social Research enables the production of ‘scientific truths’ about society and
cultures
INTRODUCING MEDIA RESEARCH?
POSTCOLONIAL AND FEMINIST CRITIQUE
• Postmodernism and the understanding of society/culture
not as a social system, but defined by fragmented,
contradictory and complex social processes
• Social research is not ‘objective’ but influenced by relations
of power
• The researcher will be always be biased, and influenced by
his/her own cultural and personal understanding.
MEDIA RESEARCH
INTRODUCING MEDIA RESEARCH?
MEDIA RESEARCH AND SOCIAL RESEARCH
• Media Studies as interdisciplinary field which has been highly influenced by
different approaches in social research (sociology, anthropology, psychology,
cultural studies etc.)
• Media scholars have thus adopted a variety of quantitative and qualitative
methodologies, and drawn on a variety of research traditions
• Media Research has also been influenced by the postmodern tradition and is
defined by a critical perspective
INTRODUCING MEDIA RESEARCH?
MEDIA RESEARCH: QUESTION, APPROACH AND METHODOLOGY
• There are a number of ways in which we can approach the study of the media,
our approach is usually defined by our research question/focus.
• There is thus a bound relationship between the questions we ask and the
methodology we choose.
INTRODUCING MEDIA RESEARCH?
MEDIA RESEARCH: THREE EXAMPLES OF APPROACHES
• There are a number of ways in which we can approach the study of the media,
but if we look at media research we can see the predominance of three different
approaches:
• Understanding media as cultural text (e.g. critical discourse analysis)
• Understanding media as organisation (e.g. political economic approaches)
• Understanding media as practice (e.g. anthropological/sociological approaches)
• There is thus a bound relationship between the questions we want to ask, the
methodology we choose and the approach we follow.
INTRODUCING MEDIA RESEARCH?
Are social media in China changing
family life?
Media as Practices
What type of gendered ideologies do
women magazines construct?
Media as Texts
How can we understand the power of
the BBC, and its influence on the British
media?
Media as Organisations
THANK YOU
[email protected]