Klaus Bruhn Jensen

A handbook of qualitative methodologies for mass communication research

Contributors: Fred Wester, Gaye Tuchman, Horace W. Newcomb, Teun A. van Dijk, Peter Larsen, Dave Morley, Roger Silverstone, Michael Schudson, Michael Green, Kurt Lang, Gladys Engel Lang

A handbook of media and communication research : qualitative and quantitative methodologies

1 Introduction: The state of convergence in media and communication research, Klaus Bruhn Jensen PART 1 - HISTORY: SOURCES OF MEDIA AND COMMUNICATION RESEARCH 2 The humanistic sources of media and communication research, Klaus Bruhn Jensen 3 Media, culture, and modern times: Social science investigations, Graham Murdock PART 2 - SYSTEMATICS: PROCESSES OF COMMUNICATION Media organizations 4 The production of entertainment media, Horace Newcomb and Amanda Lotz 5 The production of news, Stig Hjarvard Media texts 6 Discursive realities, Kim Christian Schroder 7 Mediated fictions, Peter Larsen Media users 8 Media effects: Quantitative traditions, Klaus Bruhn Jensen 9 Media reception: Qualitative traditions, Klaus Bruhn Jensen Media contexts 10 Communication in contexts: Beyond mass-interpersonal and online-offline divides, Klaus Bruhn Jensen 11 The cultural contexts of media and communication, Klaus Bruhn Jensen 12 History, media, and communication, Paddy Scannell PART 3 - PRACTICE: SCIENTIFIC APPROACHES AND SOCIAL APPLICATIONS Empirical research designs 13 The quantitative research process, Barrie Gunter 14 The qualitative research process, Klaus Bruhn Jensen 15 The complementarity of qualitative and quantitative methodologies in media and communication research, Klaus Bruhn Jensen Multiple media, multiple methods 16 Audiences in the round: Multi-method research in factual and reality television, Annette Hill 17 A multi-grounded theory of parental mediation: exploring the complementarity of qualitative and quantitative communication research, Lynn Schofield Clark 18 Personal media in everyday life: a baseline study, Rasmus Helles Communicating research 19 The social origins and uses of media and communication research, Klaus Bruhn Jensen

Five traditions in search of the audience

This article presents a comparative analysis of the main research traditions examining the nexus between media and audiences: effects research, uses and gratifications research, literary criticism, cultural studies and reception analysis. First presenting short histories of each traditions roots in the humanities and/or social sciences, the authors then proceed to build a typology of audience studies in terms of theories and modes of enquiry characterizing each tradition. While identifying some controversies arising from different theoretical and political orientations, the analysis also suggests that the current confluence of traditions could be useful for further theoretical, methodological and empirical developments. In particular, cross-cultural, multi-method research would seem to represent a promising avenue for further studies of the mass-media audience.

Qualitative audience research: Toward an integrative approach to reception

Recent research about the mass communication audience suggests that a combination of textual and social science approaches to reception should be adopted. This essay analyzes earlier work in the area and describes a theoretical and methodological framework for further empirical studies. Special attention is given to the explanatory value of qualitative research. The social and cultural implications of the reception process are discussed with particular reference to television. Finally, the essay discusses the applications of qualitative reception data in research and their wider social relevance.

When Is Meaning? Communication Theory, Pragmatism, and Mass Media Reception

This chapter offers an outline of a social semiotics of mass communication and defines meaning simultaneously as a social and as a discursive phenomenon. The argument draws its concepts of signs, d...

The internet as a cultural forum: Implications for research:

Twenty-five years ago, Horace Newcomb and Paul Hirsch proposed a model for studying television as a cultural forum, as the most common reference point for public issues and concerns, particularly in American society. Over the last decade, the internet has emerged as a new communicative infrastructure and cultural forum on a global scale. Revisiting and reworking Newcomb and Hirsch’s classic contribution, this article: first, advances a model of the internet as a distinctive kind of medium comprising different communicative genres — one-to-one, one-to-many as well as many-to-many communication; and, second, the article presents an empirical baseline study of their current prevalence. The findings suggest that while blogs, social network sites and other recent genres have attracted much public as well as scholarly attention, ordinary media users may still be more inclined to engage in good old-fashioned broadcasting and interpersonal interaction. Despite a constant temptation to commit prediction, future research is well advised to ask how old communicative practices relate to new media.

NEWS OF THE WORLD: World cultures look at television news

This is the first in-depth study of how television viewers around the world respond to the ever increasing mass of information available from news programmes. Based on individual and household interviews in seven countries including India, Mexico, Italy and Denmark, the contributors examine the flow of news information across national and international borders.

Television futures: A social action methodology for studying Interpretivecommunities

This article presents a qualitative methodology for studying audience assessment of the mass medias service to the public. The methodology emphasizes the audience‐publics articulation of evaluations that may point to specific reforms and relevant courses of social action. An empirical study of older and younger television viewers suggests that such demographic groups, while constituting distinctive cultural formations or interpretive communities, share fundamental interests vis‐a‐vis media. The findings imply that viewers are capable of a sophisticated critique of television. The methodology raises implications both for the politics of communication and for further reception studies.

What’s mobile in mobile communication?

Interrogating the terminology of “mobile” communication, this article notes that media and communicative practices have been mobile for millennia. What’s mobile about cell phones and other current mobile media is a new range of contexts in which personally meaningful and socially consequential interactions become possible. Mobile media should be studied, above all, as resources of social action across physical space. Mobile media, further, provide the wider field of research with an opportunity to revisit the great divide between technologically mediated and embodied communication. Technologically mediated communication remains grounded in human bodies residing in local places. Humans can be understood as a first degree of media whose communicative and performative reach has been extended in time and space by historically shifting technologies.

THE TOXIC EFFECT OF A STAPHYLOCOCCAL POLYSACCHARIDE ON ISOLATED GUINEA-PIG ILEUM AND THE ANTITOXIC EFFECT OF NORMAL HUMAN SERUM

In 1952, Dworetsky, Zeitlin, Kahn & Baldwin ( i ) demonstrated that an extract of a pathogenic staphylococcus is toxic to normal guinea-pig. Intravenous and intraperitoneal injection of the animals with the toxic extract results in cough, dyspnoea, itch, and various degrees of shock. Isolated segments of guinea-pig ileum react to the toxic extract with marked contraction. Extract of a nonpathogenic staphylococcus albus strain is not primarily toxic to guinea-pig. In 1956, Dworetsky, Baldwin & Smart (2) showed that the toxic effect on isolated segments of guinea-pig ileum is not identical with the effect of the previously known enterotoxin. In 1957, Dworetsky, Beiser, Smart & Baldwin (3) demonstrated that human gamma-globulin protects guinea-pig against the toxic effect of staphylococcus extract.