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AUTHOR Burci, Gene TITLE The Co-Existence of Qualitative Studiesand Social Science: Toward Parity and Detente? PUB DATE Aug 83 NOTE 47p.; Paper presented at the Annual Meetingof the Association for Education in Journalismand Mass Communication (66th, Corvallis, OR,August 6-9, 1983). PUB TYPE Speeches/Conference Papers (150)-- Viewpoints (120) -- Information Analyses (070)

EDRS PRICE MF01/PCO2 Plus Postage. DESCRIPTORS *Communications; tomparative Analysis;*Mass Media; Media Researchi *Research Methodology;Research Needs; Research Problems; *Research Tools;*Research Utilization; Science Fiction; Social Science Research; Sociology IDENTIFIERS *Qualitative Research; *Quantitative Research ABSTRACT Noting that there are signs ofa relaxation in the long ten3ion caused by the methodological "coldwar" between quantitative and qualitative researchproponents, this paper points to communications researchas one area where the trend is developing. Placing communications studies inthe framework of current public attitudes toward research and the evolutionof academic research methods, the paper finds evidence ofan eclectic consensus on res arch growing out of external needs in society andinternal needs fo; communications theory. Thepaper closely examines the rediscovery of communications by soCiologists usingthe critical approaches of participant/observation, and exploressome unorthodox research tools such as use of media technologyas a method, archeology as a part of the historical tradition, and theuse of science fiction as a predictive technique for communications.(Author/FL)

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QUALITATIVE STUDIES DIVISION.

THE CO-EXISTENCE OF QUALITATIVESTUDIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCE: TOWARD PARITY AND DETENTE ?

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF EDUCATION EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER IERICI XThis document has been reproduced as received from the person or organization originating it. 0 Minor changes have been made to improve by reproduction quality. Points of view or opinions stated in this docu . ment do not necessarily represent official ME Position or policy. Gene Burd University of Texas Department of Journalism Austin, Texas 78712 "PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE THIS MATERIAL HAS BEEN GRANTED BY Gene Burd

TO THE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC)."

Presented to the Qualitative StudiesDivision of the Association for Education in Journalism andMass Communications, Annual Convention, Oregon State University, Corvallis, Oregon,August 1983. 2,

Abstract

THE CO-EXISTENCE OFQUALITATIVE STUDIES ANDSOCIAL SCIENCE: TOWARD PARITY AND DETENTE?

by

Gene Burd University of Texas Department of Journalism

This analytical studysuggests that communications is taking a renewed look research at qualitative and otherdescriptive approaches such as history,meta-research, participant-observa- tion, criticism, and,interdisciplinary contextssuch as sociology, political science, and religious and philosophicalmetaphor. The paper places studies ofcommunication in the framework of current public attitudes toward research and theevolution of academic research methods.It finds signs ofan eclectic consensus on research growing out of external needs in societyand internal needs for communicationstheory. This study pays special attention to re-discoveryof communi- cations by sociologists usingthe critical approachesof partici- pant/observation. It also addssome unorthodox tools such of the media technology as use as a method, archeologyas a part of the historical tradition, andthe use of science-fictionas a future predictive technique forcommunications. The of blending quantitative over-all tone is one and qualitative approachesrather than encouraging their continuedrivalry.

Presented to the Qualitative Studies Division ofthe Association for Education in Journalismand Mass Communications, Oregon State University, Annual Convention, Corvallis, Oregon,August 1983.

3 THE CO-EXISTENCE OF QUALITATIVESTUDIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCE: TOWARD PARITY AND DETENTE ?

There are signs of a relaxation inthe long tension caused by

the methodological "Cold War"between quantitative andqualitative

research techniques. Acase for peaceful co-existence, parityand

detente appears today in theacademy in contrast to themood of con-

frontation between the socialscience and humanisticapProaches in the past years. Communications research isone area where the new consensus may be developing.

Reasons for any spirit of compromiseon acceptable research methods may be due to a number of conditions: negative publicatti-

tudes toward science and declinein support for research;the failure of social science prescriptions to solve social problems;and the in-

ternal pressures for adjustmentsin communications researchcircles

as well as in related fields, which hadalso omitted the humanequa- tion in statistical formulationsabout science and society.

In research on mass media, therehas been a renewed lookat traditional methods like history,participant-observation, and criti- 2

cisml and a renewal of communications research byinterdisciplinary

scholars, especially sociologists. Add to these there-examination

of media and reporting as a research tool, andthe exploration of

unorthodox approaches such as archeology, science fictionand futures

and one f3nda a delectable and eclectic pursuit ofinquiry about the

nature of communications media and society. But firstlareflectior: The larger social and political climate in the U.S. might be

noted as one observes the challenge to social science and the rise

of more humanistically-oriented approaches. The logical positivism

popular in the 1950s was weakened by the forces of frustratingwars

and failures in the civil rights movement in the 1960sas the country's

"best and brightest" could not resolve either foreignor domestic issues. The urban and environmental crises of the 1970s and early

1980s remained while "think tnks" and grants subsided, colleges be-

came vocational, high school graduates could not read or write, the

occult and pseudo-science thrived, creationists attacked scientific

evidence, and the magic of technology from Sputnik to themoon

landing did not prevent pollution, narcissismor the Guyana tragedy. The public appeal of Sen. Proxmire's "Golden Fleece" Awards

for meaningless research was bolstered by frequently irrelevant,

unreadable, and poorly reported research findings, and siach seeming

cultural contradictions as federal reports on the danger of smoking

and federal subsidies for tobacco; and common high blood pressure

and traffic congestion,yet rare heart transplants and space trips.

In part of the same time span, scholarship came under indictment by an some for being/isolated, self-serving cultwhich fled to libraries

and cried "research" like medieval thievesfled to churches and 1 cried "sanctuary" and became "untouchable by lawor society". '1 3

Social science was denouncedas sorcerywhich, hid behind method-

ology, used jargon as a smokescree.n,employed quantificationas camou-

flage, evaded issues under the guiseof objectivity, and corruptedthe 2 citadels of learning. Those who buckedthe scientific establishment

with unorthodox theories oftensaw their careers, grants and reputa- 3 tions go up in smoke. The polarity of C.P. Snow's "twocultures" of

science and humanism.seemed to .bedivided by the extremes ofa "mind- 4 less antiscientism" and "a blind faithin science".

In the arena of communications researchand media practice, the

biggest issue for more thana decade was whether communicationwas a scholarly discipline which shouldfollow the model of social science 5 (the Chi Squares) or media forms(Eye Shades). The schism in journal-

ism education alinost destroyed theliaison with the profession,some of whom still said as recentas 1977 that communications research

studies "do no good, have onlyan artificially incubated market and

conatitute nothing but make-work forfrightened faculties which must 6 publish or perish".

Some inside academe have also citedthe isolation of researchers

and their distance from the media, since "westill lack a corresponding 7 social responsibility model of thepurposes of journalism research", 8 and much of the research is "gobbledygook"and "academic obscurity".

Also, in obtaining data, communicationresearchers (and "their broth-

ers and sisters in the social sciences") haveignored many of the hu-

man and ethical issues of deception, informedconsent, de-briefing, 9 privacy and confidentiality. Socialscientists have also been called 10 to task in regard to lies and the truth.

Perhaps a deeper condemnation of social and communicationscience 11 is that it employs tools and methods and theillusion of technique at '11

the expense of creativity,serendipity, and the "eurekaP040t4 ghich 12 can generate new ideas and discoveries. Unfortunately sMiak %Clentists

are not trained in conceptual creativity."Our literature 011 "thods

devotes hundreds of pages to therules for testing conceptar NVor 13 none to the generation of them". The failure to think cs%-qiNlYin journalisMresearch is assailed byMaxwell McCombs, who gAyO 0eftsarch is as much a creative enterpriseas painting, sculpture, Ot Oting a newspaper. We tend, however, to stereotype the scholar i4kelos of his tools. This is especially true of the bJhavioral scisA0-4involved 14 in journalism research."

The preoccupation with methodat the expense of subjc ter has made method an end in itself rather than a means, and e'eateda

"social scientism" in which"people are more likeautomatc49 15 human beings." One might ask whetherscience is necess01,0ya rnethod with the invariant steps Of hypothesis, observation,test.114 ak con.- firmation, or perhaps "apompous exercise of professional 1NIKkP111.4rY" used by "implicit gods'as the only way to valid know1ed21A Aysioist suggests that "The so-called scientific method is merely 0 OVOIcase of the method of intelligence,and any apparently unique Ctia..rkAeti.stics

are to be explained by the nature of thesubject matter rOthak. V14n 17 ascribed to the nature of themethod itself." An even moka 11A0h in-

dictment suggests that "The scientificpaper is a fraud irs t11% %else

that it does give a totallymisleading narrative of thepc)00%00 of thought that go into the making ofscientific aiscoveries, In this reflective context, there hasemerged a new 004Gvri in

mass communications research for alternativesto traditionAt soqial science methods. The mood isone of consensus rather than 040tntation,

and a desire for bridges rather than bombs. Ifnot integrati,pq,vz1 use 5

the racial metaphor, then at least equal; and ifseparate, it's a change, which some say is better than slavery to onlyone research method.

Emergence of a New EclecticConsensus on Research

Mass communications andjournalism research havebeen tied to the trade and craft training on campuses, which have beentied tà the by society througn hiring/professional journalists.Journalism schools have not separated themselves as clearly as law from politicalscience, dentistry from medicine, home ec from physicaleducation, and even English from journalism. Leading universitypace-setters have never fully accepted journalism. The Ivy League accepteda professional master's at Columbia and the Nieman Fellows atHarvard and the Califor- nia schools have largely relegated it to thestate teaching colleges.

The "roots" and MotherLode of journalismare in the Midwest,at home more with the huge undergraduate populations andservice-oriented, land grant collegesewhere itgot its start after 1900.At one time, journalism almost found a home with sociology as theUniversity of Chicago around the turn of the century consideredtraining journalists along with social workers, ministers and politicians.But by the time

of Robert Hutchins in the1930s, journalismwas ranked in esteem with homie economics, the football team and marching band. Itremained for urban neighbor Northwestern to create the praessionalrather than the scholarly tradition in the field, and inneighboring Wisconsin to lead the way toward a social sciencedirection.

It was Wisconsin alumni andthat university which "turnedthe car- avan into the social science road"rather than a literaryor English 20 pathway as they'"sold the.productto the.university establishments". '1 6

By World War I, itwas clear that journalism on campus would notcom- pete with English departments with a stylisticor critical approach, which might also anger state press associationsand .college presidents alike. Any normative, qualitative thrust wouldremain in the safearea of journalism history and other interdisciplinaryties would allow it to borrow from psychology's behavioral techniques.This would boost journalism's campus inferiority complex among scholarsand with the profession seeking a potential tie to appliedsocial science in the commercial market.

By the end of World War II, the firstPh.D. in mass communications had been grantedat the University of Iowa, and by the 1950s,profess- ionals were willingto accept more of the social sciences andliberal arts to balance trade courses. But it was at thegraduate level that the Cold War set in between professionaland research emphaseswhen around 1964 the national journalism teachers inthe Association for Education in Journalism nearly split upover arguments on quantitative social science theoryand methodology as opposed to mere mediavoca- tional forms. The compromise which remains to thisday is a loosecon- federation of divisions, with social and policypressures creating a division of mass communications & society in 1966,a minorities divi- sion in 1969, and in 1975 a humanities (qualitative)studies divisiontL3). -QS was non-quantitative in api.roach, humanistic,wholistic, eclec- tic, and interdisciplinary. Its umbrella coveredresearch alternatives ranging from literary, philosophical, and criticalanalysis to cultural, musical, aesthetics, and classical languages.It filled a void andgot massive response from journalism teachersinterested in linkagesand liaison with other fields, less specializationof methods, and social concerns with media impact on human society and not juston commerce. 7

In a half dozen years, the qualitativemovement had reached a kind of maturity as it hadpromoted "the use of inter-disciplinary

research tools in order to re-associatehuman studies to the quality 21 of human values, (and) to humanizeresearch in an era of dehumanization."

However, it faced a lack of tradition withinits own field, scattered

syllabi and scholars withoutcourses or followerst no standard texts,

and muitiple purposes becauseof multiple methods. Its legitimacywas still doubted by some in the fieldwho had reluctantly acCepted the

more established historical method (strongat Wisconsin), but which (like qualitative studies)was considered descriptive, impressionistic,

and anecdotal. Also, by the 1980s,the largest over-all journalism

enrollment growth was in theSun Belt schools (Texas, Florida, Georgia),

where graduate researchprograms still "hitch-hiked"on large under- graduate professional student bodies,and where the Midwest research

model still dominated andwas "exported" to other schools.

A major breakthrough'for alternativeresearch approaches came in

1981 in the first new researchmethods text in the field in23 years.

In it, qualitative scholars and theirstudents "staked out a scholarly domain" and "entertained the hopethroughout that social sciencecan be freed from exploitative uses and enlisted instead in thecause of free- 22 dom and justice". With an eye to respectabilityand "intellectual toughness", the scholars explainedthe "logic and aims" by "separating 23 ; wheat from chaff" in qualitativestudies.

Qualitative approaches andmethods involved naturalistic observa- tion, study of the context ofcommunications behavior, maximizedcom- parisons, sensitized conceptsrevealing insight and meaning,and mean- ingful portraits rather than statisticalformulations. The emphasis was on seminal ideas, integrating and introspective schemes,whole

10 8

macro systems outside the laboratory,sympathetic immersion in real

life settings, and the searchfor underlying irregulatiesrather than

for abstract truth. The qualitativeapproach suggests that the physi-

cal science model may not betransferrable to the humanities,but it does not ignore statistical tools. It also argues that factand values

need not be so severely separatedin studies (or in life)and that

communications scholars studynot so much how media affect people,but what they mean to people andhow they interpret them.

The qualitative approach had become"a research method in its 25 own right" and some said "a rejectionof statistical techniquesas the only 26 way to meaningful results". Some receptivity to the idea ofalternate

and supplementary techniqueshad already been alluded to inthe stand- 27 ard communications researchmethods text used from 1958-1981.In it, authors concerned with survey research, experimental methodsand con- tent analysis noted that "thequantitative-qualitative dimension has 28 always seemed a false and misleadingdistinction"; that "sophistica- ted statistical techniques 29 are poor substitutes for good design";that there was "no such thing as the reliability of an instrument, andone 30 can only select that method thatseems most appropriate"; and that "Not

every problem, however, must involve machines.Some can still be done 31 more efficiently by three people withscratch pads."

The notion of the qualitative inquiryof phenomenology is also 32 being bridged tomass communications research, andmore research with 33 a qualitative and humanistic focus hasbegun to appear. Encouragement has come from within other segments ofthe communications field. In 1979, the new mass communication divisionof the International Communi- cation Association expressedthe futility and cynicism aboutbuilding theory from experimental and survey research and becamemore receptive

1 ' 9

to ethnology and naturalistic methodsto balance "our discipline's

preoccupation with traditional scientificmethods of empirical inves-

tigation and the probabalistic models"as the only means of study.

"This methodological privincialismhas slowed progress towarda more

realistic approach to the study ofhuman behavior in relation to the

instruments of mass communicationtheintegration and convergence of

various precise methods of inquiryinto the daily work ofresearchers 34 who take common phenomenaas substance for study." In a similar way, the new intercultural communicationdivision of the Southern Speech Communication Association hasa more humanistic, problem-oriented

concern'in order to "rise aboveour own naive and simple provincial- 35 ism and achieve amore worldly and sophisticated cosmopolitanism."

Renewed public and campus intereitin the humanities has helped broaaen research inquityas "we must think as well about the problems of man that cannot be quantifiedor even verified by scientific anal- 36 ysis." Yale University President AngeloB. Giamatti stretches the umbrella of the communications context to say "The arts-music,theater, painting, architecture, film-eachwith its own sign systemor 'lang- uage' and its own 'texts',are also very much a part of my view of 37 language and the humanities."

The blend of physical-quantitative andhumanistic-qualitative approaches may be appearing. NorthwesternUniversity's medical school may require future physicians to be trained in thehumanities as well 38 as the social sciences, and in the spirit of peacefulco-existence, a 39 mathematician has observed:

Brilliant scholarship uses both quantitativeand qualitative skillseach guiding the other And the greatest think- ers in the social sciences start with quantitative results and go on to address such qualitativeissues as meaning, value and ethics. Quantitative socialscience without valuescan be sterile, qualitative social sciencewithout data, naive.Brilliant scholarship is a delicate blend fromboth. 10

The notion of a complementary blend of methods rather thana dichotomy of-alternatives is one view because " 'quantitativemethods' have been code words for survey research--as if only thesurvey could yield legitimate quantitative data". Such a "counterproductive mis- repreientation" involves the mistaken idea that "theresearcher be- gins with 'soft' methods to develop ideas and thenmoves on in the 40 'hard' science methods of testing those ideas." The separation of knowledgeCfrom methods of obtaining it) faces both thepractitioner and researcher in communications, but contactwith other disciplines helps them to understandtheir own field.

Interdisciplinary CommunicationResearch Methods One of the best ways to understand one's own selfor specialty is to look at it through the eyes of anotherperson or discipline. In journalism and communications, borrowinghas been common. Much in the quantitative "tool box" came from psychology,and if one looks at sister disciplines like history, sociology and politicalscience, it is history that is the closest relative andthe oldest research method and the continuing major alternative tosocial science methods. It has been used to record media activity as wellas thet day-to- day technique of record-making by journalists writinghistory. Like reporting, journalism history has been largely descriptivewith little criticism and even loss theory, and it dominatedresearch techniques before the arrival of social science approaches. Themethods of the modern researcher and journalist have been those of thehistorian and These methods are of course the general ones of scholarship,not the particular ones of statistical and mathematical work,or the labora- 41 tory and field techniques oftesting and interviewing."

Although such social sciencetechniques are being implemented 42 in the teachingand practice of journalism, the methodsof historical rnsearch have remained largely qualitadve."Indeed, inone sense, qualitative studiescan be seen not so much as innovation asrestora- tion--an attempt to return to the imaginativemethod and tha ambitious scope of history beforethat science was challenged, changed,and nearly submonmed by positivismin the eighteenth 43 and nineteenthcenturies." Aside from thearguments as to whether social science isscholar- ly in the histnricaltradition, or whether histori, can be writtenquan- titatively, the current atmosphere incommunications researchis one 44 of a "newera of good feeling". It has been describedas "methodolog- ical pluralism" inwhich the mutually tolerant humanist andsocial scientist historians can use whatever methodsare dictated by their goals and the natureof the data. The spirit of detenteis expresied by the conclusion that "Genuine socialscience history isa modest affair, barelyunderway and scarcely able to displacehumanistic his- 45 tory as a reliable guideto the past."

While humanisthistorians have used generalization to explainunique events, the social scientist historian has triedto build general theories, discoverlaws and processes not bound by time,space or events. The debate on journalism as history and historyas journalism is one of the methodological questions, as wellas the need for a cultural 46 and intellectualhistory of the field, and "One mustgo so far as to challenrie the fundamental assumption that thereexists a field called 47 journalism history." The spirit of congenialityeven suggests that good literary style 48 can be used in writingcommunications history: The exercise of some rigor in presentationof evidence. . .does not preclude . the inclusion ofanecdotal material where relevant. Rigorous,systematic history to be dull history. does not have 12

The discipltne of history, likequalitative studies, scoredtwo chapters for its first appearance in the standard researchmethods text in journalism and communications, although they bothwere toward the back of the "bus" behind behavioral science, statistics,data processing and measurement, content.analysis, survey researchand experiments. The interdisciplinary lens of fields-like sociologyand political science were not included, but "legal research"appeared as a methodology beyond its substantiv9nature. One might suggest

that communications researchmethodologies may grow out ofthe self interest of the media: history to preserve thepreferred record of media performance; social science techniques Useful inthe market of mass media; and legal concerns, a practical reportorial andinstitu- tional function in assuringa steady flow of saleable information. A chapter on research ethics deals more with the collectionof data and the researcher's conduct, rather than the uses of researchin the society in general. A finalnew chapter subject on presentation of research results dwells on internal problems: format, writingstyle,

how to publish; rather thanhow to serve the externalneeds of the society affected by research.

Another omission in research techniquesis how to use a library.

Communications researchers using socialscience may be overly-impressed with the machinery of molerndata processing andcomputers and the originality of such results, perhapslike working journalists have

long evaded the secondary informationcollected in libraries (outside of their own morgues), and been more anxious to dealwith primary sources. The need for communications research to systematically reviewttle al- ready collected results isa type of research method anda "legitimate and important scholarly activity", according to Everett M. Rogers,the 13

past presicent of the InternationalCommunication Association.

Rogers, a sociologist, notes thatmost reviews of the literature

are "sterile, unintegrated, and rambling",and urges use of the'meta-

research techniques from psychologyand education through synthesis,

translation, decoding, andgeneralizations with the aid ofstatistics,

sampling, content analysis anddescription. Such synthesisand research on research is "the intellectual certientthat glues a research discipline 49 together". Such mete-analyses ofpast research and recorded datapeo- vides a type of historical method and interdisciplinarylinkage.

Sociologists Unite Participant-Observer,Critical Techniques

In the past few years sociologistsand/or the sociologicalcon- text have provided the glue for a wholistic view of communicationsre-

search. Although probablynot as familiar with journalisticpractices

as most journalism teachers, sociologistshave appeared to be less ob- sessed with need to finda legitimate research method to make them

accepted on campus, and they havebeen free of the vocationaltrade

school and its related mediaestablishment which cultivatesthe idea of non-involvement as professionalobjectivity. Due to this perhaps,

sociologists have re-discoveredcommunications and did it byreviving their own traditions ofparticipant-observation and criticism.

In renewed study of society andcommunications, sociologists have

also used newer social sciencemethodologies (from sampling to socio- biology), and with their total viewhave, in a sense, put the baby back into the bath which communicationsscholars threw out with their restricted emphasis onnarrow, limited psychological models of stimulus, organism and response, and thin mediaconcerns like libel and obscenity.

Although the long used media researchtext said "participant observer 50 studies are clearly called for", the method was not included in the 14

new text. Ironically, personal participation of journalists, from

first person feature stories to undercover investigations,are standard 51 research techniques and are included in updated trainingtexts.

As for critical techniques, they are also not instandardized

communications research tool boxes, but sociologists,as critics, de-

tectives and artists, have gone inside media institutionsto detect

and evaluate their performance. Thenarrow journalimm research view neglected has often/Context and perspective--like studyingplumbing rather than sanitation. Even Canadian English profosserMarshall Mauhan had to

remind them that the medium andmessace were close (04 i same. It 52 took a sociological profile of American journalistsin 1976 to cast

light on the 1969 media criticisms by VicePrecident Spiro Agnew who

said there was a liberal Eastern Establishmentmedia--an allegation

which angered the media and frightenedmany journalism profemsors. And

it took the crises of the 1960s to make journalismeducators aware of

media and society throughnew substantive and policy courses popula-

ted by those from outside the discipline and basedon anthologies of

articles by scholars outside journalismdepartments, for the most part.

Contexts and connections to study midia have beenmissing or are

disappearing because of the media themselves, whichunravel culture and 53 history. Sociologists, historians and working journalistshave found a context for media. One is to use communicationas both a theory and

method of community. Another is to join mediaand geographical commun- 55 ity, whether "media-made" Dixieor California, or regional configura- 56 tions of post-industrial society as the communicationsage o, mediacracy, 57 as community and communication are joined.

In numerous case studies, it has been the blond ofquantitative survey research techniques and critical participant-obsorvor approaches 15

by sociologists which have provideda massive alternative to the limited pathway of communications researchers, In some ways, sociologistsare closer to the practice of journalism.The early "Chicago School" of

sociology "was essentially journalistic"and American sociology "really 58 grew out of the womb of journalism". Community problems and studies

were inseparable. Media and societywere joined. Ex-journalist Robert Park urged students to do "seat of the pants" research viaparticipation. The legacy of qualitative studiescontinued, while journalism teachers

and practitioners tendedto accept un-involved objectivityas a profess- ional code and research tool forthe masa market.

Sociologists wrestled with theirown schisms over value-free objec-

tivity and humanistic commitmentas Alfred McClung Lee formed the Society for the Study of Social Problems and later the Associationfor

Humanist Sociology. The lattergroup, created in 1975, the sameyear as journalism's Qualitative Studies,went beyond humanistic emphasis

in teaching and research andurged "ethical responsibilityof social scientists to contribute actively through their scholarly practiceto

improvementc in the quality ofhuman life, rather than merelyto in- . crease understanding of social realityas an end in itself."

Sociologist Lee criticizes theimage-conscious sociologist tied

to commercial specialists, foundationgrants, and research contracts

as a value-free scientist "wedded to esotericterminology, to impressive

quantification, to statistical manipulation,and to theories of human

relations and social structure basedon what is claimed to be 'hard data".

To humanists, Lee notes, "system,theory, and quantificationare useful tools, but they are not a 'holy trinity' that should be permittedto

dominate. . "60 QualitativeStudies has some similarconcerns.

Study, not action, has beenmore practiced by media sociologists It 16

but the trend toward critical involvementhas caused them to "get out 61 of the car", so to speak, and touse multiple quantitative and qualitative

methods. Communications researchersfrequently quote land.tark articles 62 like sociologist Warren Breed'sstudy of social control inthe newsroom, and Morris Janowitz's long heralded 63 work cn the urban communitypress. Others more recently use interpretivesocial science as an alternative

to objective, positivist methods whichmay "bridge the seemingly unre-

solvable distance between socialscientific and journalistic notionsof 64 objectivity".

Over a 7-year period of 103 to 1980,numerous sociological studies used a mixture of multiple methodsto study the media, especially in

the Northeast, whereas recent as themid-1960s, newsrooms were off limits to observing social scientists. Harvard Ph.D. candidatePaul

Weaver had failed to get into theinside of the New York Times forhis

dissertation on the politicaland organizational nature of theNew 65 York press, but a later Harvard Ph.D., Edward Jay Epstein,emerging

popular journalist arl politicalsociologist, gainedaccess to the

internal workings of TV networksand produced his 1973 NewsProm No- where. Epstein attended staff meetings,traveled with cameracrews,

sat in on policy discussions andoff-the-record conferences, and had

full access to internal records.Interviews were only one part of his research.

Epstein defended such direct observationbecause he said historical research and content analyses dohot reveal media distortions ofevents, whose coverage is beyond themeans of academic researchers, and such events do not take place under controlledcircumstances lending them- selves to methodological analysis.Epstein's pioneer work(on how in- ternal media organizational needsaffect the external images ofthe

I!) 17

world) was inspired by journalistWalter Lippmann's observationa

half-century before that "no American sociologisthas ever written a book on newsgathering."

The organization and politics of newsmakingbetween Reporters and

Officials was studied by 1971Harvard Ph.D. Leon Sigel, who not only

interviewed and studied memoirs ofparticipants, but observed inter-

actions in newsrooms of the Times andWashington Post. In an organiza-

tional study Behind The Front Page (1974)of the New York Times, Harvard

management expert Chris Argyriswas hired by the paper to study it

through interviews and attendanceat staff meetings, and also to inter- vene to solve internal problems.

Sociologist Bernard Roshco, formernewsman, combined personal experience and academic researchto study the institutionalpressures that result in Newsmaking (1975). GayeTuchman, another sociologist and involved in the women's movement,employed interviews and partici- pant ob3ervation in newsroomsover a 10-year period to write about

Making News-A Study in the Constructionof Reality(1977). Michael

Schudson turned his Harvard doctoraldissertation in sociology into a book on Discovering the News (1978), showinghow the ideal of objec- tivity grew out of the "social history"of the 19th century.

In 1979, sociologist Herb Gans continuedhis long career as a participant-observer of "journalisticcommunities" (and popular cul- ture) in his Deciding What's News, whichused both personal observa- tion and qualitative and quantitativecontent analyses to detect values in news in network television and majornews magazines. On a smaller, more local scale, Mark Fishman took notes forseven months as a novice reporter on a small California newspaper to observehow Manufacturing The News(1980) results froma symbiosis of bureaucratic needs and Jour- 18

nalists' routines.

Todld Gitlin, sociologist, journalist, and heavilyinvolved at one

time in the Students for a DemocraticSociety(SDS), used his past ex-

perience, organization records andcontacts, to help study performance

of the New York Times and CBS News in The Whole World is Watching7Mass

Media in the Making and Unmaking ofthe New Left(1980),, Although he

pointed out that quantitative methodsare useful for media analysis

"if they are harnessed to the qualitativeapProach", he preferred "the

suppleness of the qualitative 'literary' approachto cultural artifacts." 66 His methodological argument continues:

I wanted to 'tease out' those determiningbut hidden assump- tions which in their unique ordering remainopaque to quan- titative content analysis. At its best,qualitative analysis is more flexible than the quantitative kind:itaspires to a level of complexity. . .that remains true to the actualcom- plexity and contradictoriness of mediaartifacts . the 'literarychoice emphatically does not amount toa choice of the intuitive against the objective. Bothquantita- tive and qualitative methodologies relyon preliminary interr- ogations of the material, interrogations whichproceed, at least implicitly, from 'intuitive' assumptionsabout what matters in the content, what needs to be either U6170. analyzed or

Next to sociological involvementjoining media and society, poli- tical science research has linkedmedia with power by revealingthat the press is a political actor andis part of the power structure, which affects its nature and behavior.The closest examination of this has been at the Washington levelshowing the relationship of the press and presidents. Douglao Cater's1965 book on the press as The

Fourth Branch of Government helped shatterthe myth of a separation of media from the politicalprocess, and journalists themselvesare now more willing to write about it.

Journalists,combined with politicalscientists,also developed the notion of the press settingthe public agenda, one of the most studied research topics in media researchthe past decade. Lippmann '1 19

originally posed the idea in1922? and in 1958 Norton Long,political sciontist at Northwestern University, wrote about it inthe American Journal of Sociology. Later Bernard Cohen in his 1963 bookon The Press z:nd Foreign Policy discussed the notion and commented that'of the three

most perceptive and insightfulbooks dealing with thepress and public

. .policy in the past fiftyyears, two were by practicing journalists." Communications researchers have followed the flowers ofcross-fertiliza- tion across professionaland interdisciplinary fields.

Other interdisciplinarycontexts, metaphors and analogieshave been used to interpret and explain media and as such might beconsidered a research frame if not a research method. The legal lens has beenused by Jerome Sarron,'RalphNader and Nicholas Johnsonto see communication

as a problem in access to media. Philosophyhelped John Merrill write

Existential Journalism. Religionhas been used to explain the ri.tuals,

symbols and Communion of television,especially with sports in Michael Novak's notion that "television shapes the soul". Tony Schwartzspeaks

of Media:The Second God andBruce Herschensohn complained ofThe Gods of Antenna.

From psychology comes the frameworkof media uses and gratifications

and television as dreams, while thenacotic role of media isan older notion and Marie Winn called TV The Plug-1n Drug. Chemistsand physicists are probing the energy and mitter ofdissipative structures, including communication; and from medicine, the idea of preventive journalismhas 68 been examined, and the publichealth model applied to thepress and the 69 public interest. Economic interpretations ofthe media are legion, with critical essays from journalistslike Les Brown's "TV:The Business

Behind the Box", to scholarlyby Max McCombs' "Mass Mediain the Market- Place". Similar rangesare found for understanding media in critical .1 'II 20

political perspectives: RobertCirno's Don't Blame thePeople and Herbet Schiller's Mass Communications and AmericanEmpire toward the

Left; and from the Right,Benjamin Stein's ViewFrom Sunset Boulevard and Joseph Keeley's TheLeft-Leaning Antenna.

Media Observation and Participationas Research Methods

Journalistslas well as scholars,can and have used both observa- tion and participation to gather informationas well as to reveal the nature of media in society. It is not unusual for mediato report their techniques as news--from routine denials of pressaccess to closed re- cords and meetings or successful court suits by publishersopening them to reporters. Media 70' may reveal how a TV show is producedand sold, 71 how reporters report reporters, or how a Pulitzer Prize storywas 72 written.

Reporters have not only been involvedin first person feature stories, but have have used undercover infiltration toinvestigate mental hospitals, public schools, welfare agencies andnuclear plants. While Herbert Gans lived among Boston's West End slum dwellersto write his Urban Villagers, journalist Edgar Snow livedfor 50 years

among the Chinese to write with understandingof them in Life and The Saturday Evening Post. Participation helped gatherinformation.

In some cases, such informationreveals the communicationspro- cess. Journalist George Plimpton has,foryears taken part in sports

events in order to write about them.Gay Talese told of The Kingdom

and The Power of the New York Timesafter 10 years working there,and a reporter for The Rolling Stone, TimothyCrouse told of "herd journalism"

among The Boys on The Bus traveling withthe 1972 presidential campaign.

When CBS executive Fred Friendlylost his job, he wrote of internal

television network operations in his "occupational memoir"called Due 21

To Circumstances Beyond Our Control. Washington Postreporter Sally Quinn detailed her television failure in We're GoingTo Make You a Star. Ron Nessen observed media as both a journalist and presidentialpress secretary and found It Sure Looks Different Prom The"Inside. Such media obsemlations involving participation are oftenconsidered un-sophistica- ted, un-scholarly and merely descriptive.However the account of how Woodward and Bernstein uncovered the Watergate scandalhas been callea a method of social science for 73 the followingreasons:

. . in investigative reporting,as in science, the more powerful control is notthe research design, butthe social control inherent in independent review, criticism andattem- pts at replication of the reported observations...... investigative reporting doeshave a discipline to it in that its resultsare gounded in evidence whose ty is probed in reliabili- a number of ways. The inferenceprocess is also limited by social controls. The method requirestheory to guide investigation, and itcan result in concepts or models that have significancebeyond the unique events for which they were developed."

Other varieties of journalisticmethods that might beanalyzed could include: interpretative, critical, technical, behavioral,advocacy, precision, alternative, anticipatory, participatory,existential, multi- perspectival, treni, herd, pack, metal pare:, checkbook,crescendo, am- bush, jugular,race horse, stenographic,gonzo, reform, adversary, market, consumer, humanistic, developmental, preventive,positive,yellow, consumer, minority, saturation, in-depth,therapeutic, survival, and public affairs. The nature of the media also mightbe revealed inex- amination of types of journalism based on expertise (e.g.science, sports, business); geography (urban, suburban, national);audiences (Black, aged, gays); time (daily, weekly, hourly); andby media forms (newspaper, magazine, TV etc.).

The operation of media technologymay also comprise a method. The camera and photograph can be a researchtool for ethnography, history 22

and social science. The tape recorder has become a valuable tool for 74 oral history. Audio-visual recording devices have been adapted for

studying behavior and social patterns. The nature of media has also

been revealed by Hollywood films such as Front Page, Citizen Kane and

Absence of Malice. These have been used to teach journalism students 75 about media. Television shows like Mary Tyler Moore and Lou Grant

are media revealing media methods, and novels like The Great God

Success and The Scandal Monger portray journalism, although "nowhere

can one find the all-pervasive examination, the deliberate and capa-

ble reflection, and the careful analysis which other major institutions 76 within our society have received."

Perhaps significant media research methods and the nature of

media may be found in the non-fiction novels and other. "new journalism"

in which the involved participation of the observer with the observed

is blending fact and fiction and revealing a truth about and beyond

objective journalism. This fusion of novelistic technique and factual

reporting has been called significant for threereasons: it reflects changes in style and form for traditional journalism; it demonstrates

changes in the relationship between writer and art inmass society; and it shows writers' choices for documentary forms rather than imag- 77 ination.

To study this aspect of media, one must "rely upcn insights

drawn from social history and the history of American journalism"

rather than just employ a literary study. "The risks of adopting the

speculations of social scientists, of historians, and of students of

journalism for literary study is a necessary complexity, buta fruit- 78 ful one. " Some journalists see the new journalism methods of writers like Mailer, Capote and Wolfe as a threat to objective his- 23

79 tory and knowable reality through verifiedfact. Others see the blend

of fact and fictionas a new means to reveal new truths aboutboth society and media.

Criticism and Critical Analysisas Research Methods

If scientific survey research is impersonal,objective, non-

participative and untouched by humaninvolvement, then participant-

observer research is the most distinctlypersonalized, idiosyncratic

and subjective approach. An extensionof the continuum for methodolo-

gical involvement might make criticisma tool of involved concern.

The media critic preaches in effect that the mediapractice

what the'media preach. The stated ideals of technicaland social re-

sponsibility are measured against media performanceand thereby re-

Nidal the nature of the media. The ideal criticis a "critic-historian,

who is grounded in the modern theories and inresearch methodology",

adcording to an observer. Sucha critic can be scholarly and use ex-

plicit standards as those from the Hutchins Commissionto evaluate 81 press coverage of unrest, foreign affairs and the environment;or he

can be a popular journalist critical of The Powers ThatBe in David

Halberstam's best-seller on "the rise of modernmedia and their effect on the way we perceive events."

Critical analysis of the press has been practicedmany years by

journalists like Upton Sinclair, George Seldes,A.J. Liebling and I.F.

Stone. The need and feasibility of such researchhas been urged for 82 years, but journalism and communication researchers have beenslow to 83 respond in academi setting:: perhaps beholden to supporting the media market rather than criticizing it.One critical look at critical analy- sis notes that "Outside some developments insampling and measurement techniques, it is hard to fiad anything tmmmercialresearch has con- 24

tributed to the fragments of 84 communication theory or researchmethods."

Journalists are not trained to becritics of their own methodsor even

to report about the press id society.The pattern of criticism in print

media is toward competitivearts or entertc.inment: bookse television,

sports, etc.; or toward competitiveinstitutions like politics and government.

A common criticism of criticismof the media is that criticsare

unqualified, do not make theiryardsticks expliCit,or deal in absolute

standards about which there isdisagreement. The criticism ofresearch on media is similar. "We can recognizethat data without adequate theory is intellectually sterile, but we also must acknowledge thattheory 85 without data is merely polemic." And as with participant-observation,

scholars argue tliat it tendsto be personal and subjective,novelistic, loose-ended, highly connotative and hard to compare, although(like first-hand, eye-witness accounts) ittends to be readable, relevant, rich in detail, original andoften otherwise unobtainable.

Criticism has historically beendirected toward exaggerationand sensationalism in the media,inaccuracy, omission of informationand news, media conflicts of self interest,failure to recognize minority interests or opinions, imbalancedpresentations, poor taste, political bias, preservation of outdated socialand scientific theories, and failure to anticipate possible effect of the news upon theaudience. In making such assessments, researchersand journalists have disagreed on notions of the public interest by whichperformance is measured; and also appropriate researchmethods to measure it.

Media criticismappears to thrive when society is in fermentand when social change is possible,as in the 1960s when therewere press councils, journalism reviews,moves for more power by reporters in the

27 25

newsrooms, and the beginning of ombudsmen, op-ed pages andmore letters to editors. The feedback and back-talk from frequentlyignored minori- ties in society provided a kind of media criticism fromthe lay public. Events such as pickets and demonstrations and techniquesranging from use of bull-horns and posters to pamphlets and graffiti allcreated communication about issues which got on the public agenda, andat the same time offered an indirect criticism of media for omittingthem. Journalists and scholars frequentlyresponded to such frustrations,

as did governmental commissionson riots, assassinations and other violence, and the net effect was a type of collective mediacriticism which cut acrossmany disciplines and methods.

In this atmosphere, journalismand communication researchers took greater note of media and society. Content analystswere reminded that what was not reported might be even more significant.Sociologists came forth to note the inseparable nature of communication andcommun- ity. Political scientists suggested that perhaps editorialshad less influence than the news because of its agenda-settingpower. Descrip- tive and imprecise impressionshad provided amacro and telescopic viewpoint which probably enrichedthe alternatives to traditional social science researchtechniques.

Archeology as an Unorthodox MediaContext

While much debate centerson the present and even its historical meaning, one might look at thedead past to observe decline,disaster, and death of community and mediaas an autopsy context to study the 86 archeology of media and communications. The post-mortem on thehuman body and the autopsy of past communityruins and relicsare possible communications research tools ofmetaphor and analogy. The ultimate 26

unobtrusive method with the least interaction between observerand observed may be buried in past remains, refuse and residueleaving 87 traces beyond traditional historicalrecords.

Since history is frequentlya record of success, survival and

victory, the study of defeat,disaster and failuremay perhaps tell us more about the vital socialorgans from the bottom upward. Life often hides reality,.while truth is revealed in death,and qualitatively speaking, Shakespeare remindedus that evil lives on while goodness

is buried with our bones.Whether media, cultor political figures, the body speaks differently from the biography; and thediary and the memorabilia may vary from officialor media accounts.

Pompeii ashes and theIce Age arrested and embalmedthe total

interaction of the past infrost and fire. Inscriptionson oracle bones are clues to the origin of Chinese civilization.Ghost town Sites leave mainly newspaper clippings as a research toolto study histori- 88 cal experiments that failed to survive. Media detectives, likeSher- lock Holmes, shift the ruins and wreckage for informationas the key to the jig-saw puzzle.

Mice, rather thanmen, die in most experiments. Theautopsy of homicide or hoax, murder or myth, provides a revealing recordafter death, be it the crucifixion of Christ and the Shroud ofTurin; the mysterious deaths of media stars or presidential assassinations:stab wounds, powder burns and ballistics paths, voice, foot and fingerprints, blood stains, blood in alcohol anddental records.

Such physiological metaphorof life and death is usedto explain 89 the life cycles of magazines, the rise and fall of periodicalsand TV sit-coms, the anatomy of the press, the death of afternoon dailies,and even the end of communication 90 and the death of community.The birth 27

91 and growth of new media has been recordedas pediatric history. The

overload of excessive communications hasbeen linked to stress, death

and violence. Media have been seenas a narcotic, as a "plug-in drug",

as addiction and intoxication for media "junkies",and television "with-

drawal" experiments are being usedto discover psychological effects and needs.

The impact of alcohol and drugson journalistic performance and

perception might be a research context.Journalists Franklin and Bacon.

had excessive uric acid (gout) and socio-biologistsare encouraged by

Hitler's microfilmed medical records showingdrugs for diseases that

might be related to his behavior. Opthamologistsare now convinced

through photographs of poet Emily Dickinsonthat she was a recluse be-

cause light hurt her exotropic eyes, althoughsome had deduced from her poems that she was mentally ill.

Photography appears to be a prime toolfor media archeology. Olc.

photographs show architectural monuments,streets and other transport

routes, social and demographic patterns ofinterest to historians, real

estate firms, anthropologists, and studentsof family history. They re-

veal landscape, folklore, human relations,interior design, recreation

and entertainment, land use, the pre-urbannatural environment, and in- formation fairs and expositions. Theycan be used to reconstruct his-

toric sites destroyed by fire, flood and urbanrenewal, and in ghost

,01 town studies, they help detect non-verbal communicationand subtle hints of community decline.

Photo-historians documented the demise of 19thcentury French towns with "architectural photography"as "fourth-dimensional art" with 92 H a more powerful fixative than the architecture itself". The "lost

America" of architecture, government and politicshas been traced via 28

photos, and more recently urbangraffiti is capturedon film before removal of both the messages and the walls. Even whennews stories or books forget or ignore events, the photo as archeologicaland autopsy tool may be present. The Zapruderfilm of the Kennedy assassination

showed relationships ratherthan one artifact and aidedthe "grassy knoll theory" on the number of gunmen. Cameras inconcentration campus (as well as aerial reconnaissance) have revealed conditions ofJews 93 and Japanese-Americans incarcerated. Uhderwater photos of the imprisoned Titanic and Andrea Doria provide footnotes on alreadywritten history.

The accident can bea research methodology to providefocus for

understanding communications,power and society. Media serveas re- search assistants in a social learning experience in whichthere is a chance to re-evaluate social systems. Such accidentscan occur in a fragile, complex society as unanticipated, sudden, authentic,unplanned breakdown in regular socialor natural order, which bringsto light preconditions, actions andconsequences all at once. Thresholdsare reached, attention held, andpreviously shielded behaviorsand routines 94 are revealed.

At the point of disaster, declineand breakdown, the study of potential demise and failure isa pre-archeological rontextto study 95 communications and information inslow emergent crises,as well as pre- 96 and post-disaster roles formedia. One MIT courseon "Failure of Human

Systems" studies the failure ofnewspapers and magazines with the hope of graduating "modern-day Lincoln Steffenses to take institutionsthat ae obviously not working and reform them."John Gall's Systemantics is a serio-comic book on how systems work and especiallyhow they fail titanically!

Crises are plentiful for both reportingand the study of communi-

31 29

cations. The coming Dark Agesand collapse of mediasystems are fore-

cast, disaster films show ithappening, science fictionpredicts paral-

ysis. There arenewspaper strikes, telephoneoutages and power black- 97 outs for studying communications behavior. Law and 4isorder reveal 98 media performance, failures ofelectricity force use of transistor radios and sex as a substitute for television (accordingto birth re- cords nine months later), and the ham and CB radio is re-discoveredin a truckers strike on theexpressway. Big snowstorms re-establish personal communication in bigcities, and actual (and expected) earthquakes expose and lay barecommunity

inter-dependence, especially communicationsnetworks and behavior. Car-

less days in Frankfurt, Germany duringthe Arab oil embargogave re-

searchers a chance to learn howmuch pollution came fromautos. DWI

and accident reports reveal socialbehavior patterns and at thevery

point of disaster; audio andvideo tapes record the oralhistory of

Watergate, the sounds of death atJonestown, the shots in DealeyPlaza, the voices of crashing pilots and crushing suicides, andafter it's all over, there are video-taped wills andtombstones!

Then comes the research methodologyof genealogy, a creativerep-

lication of fiction and myth andenough social realism topersuade his- torian Jack Kirby to say that Alex Haley in Roots "invent:Afeelings,

thoughts, conversations andincidents which no empiricistcould dis- 99 cover". Such reflections on the deadreveals, race relationsas vividly

as court records on death sentences andabolitioist newspapers.

The past is also recreated,resurrected and re-assembled in the television docu-drama andpsycho-biography, which givecurrent news and history more truth and meaning.Researchers also go back andre- live the past of the StoneAge, Colonial Period, or theGreat Depression

32 30

in order to replicate the interaction Andcommunication context of

the times. Another post-mortem study instrument isthe study commiss-

ion created usually shortly before, duringor after social breakdown

in the wake of frustrations by minoritiesand other "prisoners" whose

feedback and back-talk may be hinderedbefore the arrival of ombudsmen,

press and grievance councils, press and policereviews. Media problems

have been anticipated and assessed in theHutchins, Carnegie and Mac

Bride Commissions. Surgeon General'sCommissions on violence and social

behavior, pornography and smokinghave dealt with media. After the

1919 Chicago race riots, the ChicagoCommission on Race Relations in-

troduced social science research techniquesto study such social problems.

In the 1960s and into 1970, the Warren,Kerner, Walker Commissions

and a study commission on Kent State delved intothe role of communica-

tions media during violence and unrest.Researchers wee reminded by

journalist Tom Wicker in hisKerner Report introduction that "Thereare novels here, hidden in the Commission'sunderstated prose; there are

a thousand doctoral theses germinating in itsstatistics, its interviews,

its anecdotes and profiles." Scholarsalso have suggested the federal 100 commission as a research device.

Since burial follows demise, researchersmight be reminded that

with modern paper shredders, skilled publicrelations, and subpoenaed

reporters' notes, it may benecessary for media content analysts to

bow to "truth in trash" and the "garbology"advocated by anthropologist 101 William Rathje. He has found that the voluminous refuse ina waste-

oriented society provides an archeology ofunobtrusive sampling of

discarded material which can reveal readershipof books, newspapers

and magazines, use of TV-advertised brandname products, and behavior on diets and in the natural environment. Rathje notes that "So much of

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our culture is being demolished so fast thatwe have to start digging

before it's too late." Razed old buildingsand crushed dumps affect

stratification layers so that "Futuregenerations will have no useful 102 ruins to study."

The space and nuclear eras createnew archeological dilemmas.

'Tape erasures and electronic signalsare hard to trace.. The geology

after atomic blastsposes still another problem. The Ephemera Society

is concerned about the loss ofdebris, dross, dregs and ephemeralarch- eology. It has its own journal, andcollects both printed and hand-

written junk: bills, greeting cards,ticket stubs, product labels,re-

ceipts, vouchers, menus, parking tickets,tour guides, posters, certi- 103 ficates, and other graphic art anddesign. Such leavings may balance

the picture of society presented in thepress of the day.

Litter reveals reading, social and travelhabits. Credit cards,

bank checks, and photo-graphic calling cardsregister life styles.

Library cards show reading habitsand preferences. Classified ads,

action line questions andpress corrections provide clues to audience

concerns. Even hoaxes hint at levels of public ignoranceand gullibility.

Oil spill "finger painting" is being usedto locate polluters who may

evade investigative reporters. Minoritiesignored by the press and by

history may find that trunk souvenirs ina Topeka trunk in 1975 gave

new glimpses of women on the frontier in 1854-1885; andtrash in Phila-

delphia in 1978 provided new insighton Black leader Marcus Garvey of

the 1920s. Even pack rat nests in theSouthwestern deserts have told of

the past 30,000 years of biology-a:idmore recent human history.

Such compact containmentsmay seemodd, unusual, trivial and

bizarre things to study, butone strategy to discover new theory is 104 to "study the unstudied". Sophisticated press agentry and calculated 32

public images may obscure the meaning of odds and ends in cornerstone

time capsules and the essential janitorial routines and residues of the

community. Even business history is being written from wastebaskets

including annual reports, ledgers, legal briefs, architectural blueprints, 105 photos, films, slides, tax statements and assorted attic junk. And the

privies of ghost towns are being examinedas sealed archeological time

capsules unmasking food and drink preferences via seeds and bones,and sex and social habits via hygienic and pipe paraphernalia for prostitu-

tion and drugs not always reported in thepress of the day. Other

hidden artifacts like sunken ship treasure unfoldsmessages through

coins, weapons, buckles, pewter and cutlery long before modernmass media recorded its history.

Traditional archeology has emphasized the single artifact to detect the symbolic storage and transmission of information, culture

and ideas. Flinders Petrie, Egyptologist and cyclical historian,

studied sculpture as the most lasting, objective evidence of the birth 106 and death of civilizations. However, the new archeology tends to be

more interdisciplinary, and more than digging up bones and vases for

museums. It joins specialists from geology, engineering, history and

paleontology with statistics, computers and social-psychological theories

to deduce past human behavior. The common denominator from an excava-

tion may be a community and communications component.

In that respect, there are some community studies today which might be termed "archeology above ground". Isolated geographic and social hamlets never exposed to electricity or to televisionare ready-made labs. States like Utah with large Mormon populations have been called the 'sober environment" to study for cancer incidence because of lower less rates of the disease and/consumption of liquor and tobacco. The Amish, 33

Mennonite and Hutterite communities with closefamily ties, family trees and distinctdiet traditions are others. And in England'svillage of Luddenden, the oldpractice of eatingroast beef and Yorkshire pudding was given up for soya bean protein "fora week under the nation- 107 wide scrutiny of TVcameras" in a studyby the goverment. Communications study is probably 6esirable whilea community is still above ground, but one pseudo-scientificmethod being used is the clairvoyance of "psychic archeology" by ghosttown historiansem- ploying psychics to examine, date,,andinterpret archeologicalremains, and to predict their locations, dimensions,and the images of situations in which objects were used. Skeptical scholarswho want toassure future media archeology mightprefer to usepens and pencils and typewriters rather than ephemeral tapes and VDTs, and bury theirmicrofilmed notes rather than burn them. As for the dead talkingback to any Galluppoll- sters, that might be the ultimate in communicationsfeedback.

Science Fiction as a Social Science of theFuture

Another unconventional,odd and unusual context 0 for media research is that of science fiction-a peculiar, unfamiliarand un-nerving idea to pose in a social science framework. It speaks tothe future beyond history and archeology. Reference to itruns a risk of being called pseudo-science in the same category as using catfishand cock roaches to predict earthquakes.

However, it is a media technique.It is created by journalists. It is like history and personal participationextended in a frequently critical manner, and it often deals withcommunications--especially the new communications technology of the emerging.future.It abandons caution and embraces imagination, andmoves beyond both reporting and

3 6 34

the non-fiction novel to the fictionof the future. It is anticipatory

as it attempts to explain change toa general public overloaded with information.

Its closest tie to scholarship isthat of futurists and futurolo- 108 gists, who are also involved inforecasting methodologies. Science 109 fiction has been used to teachsome concepts in astrophysics. It is

also seen as a means to blendperspectives from sociology, philosophy, 110 history and psychology, and science fiction writerIsaac Asimov sees science fiction (SF) asa recruiting ground for scientists and scien- 111 tific concepts. He says "science fiction has becomemore sophisticated 112 because other branches of fiction havewithered and deteriorated."

The method of science fiction,as described by Asimov, involves what he calls "Three Laws of Futurics":(1) What has happened in the past will continue to happen inthe future;(2) Consider the obvious seriously, for few people willsee it; and (3) Show the ridiculous, but logical (and satirical)consequences that could be brought on by 113 continuing present trends.

Relative to previously mentionedmethods, SF has elements of historical research in its tone thatwe do not learn from history, and the more things changelthemore they remain the same. Projection of the communicator into theact of communication is the ultimate in creative participant-observation.Its critical and qualitative evalua- tions deal often with the impactand consequences of media and society.

It deals wholistically with past, presentand future, and it brings media technique and content together.As the other side of the archeo- logy coin, it moves beyond the disasters ofthe past to new dangers: doomsday, World War III, new Ice andHeat Ages, wars among new worlds.

Like some futurologists, many SF writersdeal optimistically with 35

positive impact by the new communications technologyand the post-

industrial information society of the computer,cable and telephone. 114 The new utopia is a form of videology. Technotopia and computopia

ard other scenarios are common projectionsas SF and other futurists

predict tomorrow. Sociologist John McHale incorporatescommunications

into his predictions of The Future of theFuture, and journalist Brenda

Maddox sees new telecommunications as human liberation BeyondBabel.

Media technology becomes a promising methodof social engineering

which will solve old city problems and createnew cities to which one 115 can escape. Science fiction writers looking at urban life through

science fictionproject both a romantic and apocalyptic visionsof

liberation from the obsolete central place of central cities,which 116 "can be replaced by wires and microwave relays". Mathematician Roberto

Vacca sees the breakdown of communicationsas pa.rt of The Coming Dark

Age. An architectural journalist,Martin Pawley,criticizes The Private

Future where the abuse of media technology leads to itreplacing the

community in which citizens escape contact withothers and public respon- sibility declines in the collapse of Western civilization.

Media in many ways are central to science fiction.There are not

only new magazines such as Next, Omni and The Future, butthe media-

centric trend is shown in one SF novel in which AlgisBudrys makes a

heroic television newsman (Michaelmas) and his companioncomputer

Domino rule the world with electronic circuits of thenew communications

technology. The media are the center of much of the writing bypopular

journalist and pop sociologist Alvin Toffler, whoseFuture Shock evalu-

ated the impact of change, communications overload and stress;and

whose Third Wave suggests that communications technology isone of the most significant developments in human history, behind agricultureand industrialization. vl 4.!

36

Toffler's research method is a combination ofmeta-research, standard reporting and futurism. He coined theterm Future Shock in a 1965 Horizon magazine article by suggesting thattoo much change in too short a time will cause human stress and disorientation.He de- 117 scribes his method:

"Fascinated by this concept, I spent the nextfive years visiting scores of universities, researchcenters, labor- atories, and governmentagencies, reading countless les and scientific artic- papers and interviewing literallyhun- dreds of expertson different aspects of change, behavior, and the future. coping Nobel prizewinners, hippies,psy- chiatrists, physicians,businessmen, professional philosophers, and educators futurists, gave voice to theirconcern over change, their anxietiesabout adaptation, their about the future." fears

Toffler's eclectic and interdisciplinary approachwas noted by a reviewer in the Manchester Guardian as "a spetacular outcrop ofa formidable, organized intellectual effort". "Forthe first time in history, scientists are marrying the insights ofartists, poets, drama- tists, and novelists to statistical analysisand operational research. The two cultures have met and are being merged.Alvin Toffler isone 118 of the first exhilirating,libetating results." He is not without his critics. Stephen Rosen,a management con- sultant, examined data on incubation intervals forinnovations (many

in communications) andfound that it takes longerto move from concep- tion to realization today than it did yearsago. "Future shock," he says "is a myth. Future shock is the false journalisticpremise that the pace of change has 119 accelerated, discomfortingeveryone." Toffler says that his work is like that of ancient mapmakers whowere inaccurate but who charted the earth. "Theories", Toffler says,"donot have to be 'right' to be enormously 120 useful. Even error has itsuses." One communications scholar has called the mythos ofthe electronic revolution a kind of magic, secular theology through whichelectrical

39 37

121 energy will return the human communityto naturalistic bliss. Another

criticism is that technologyand science fictionare mystifying non- subjects--an addiction like hypoglycemia--which obfuscates,confuses,

and substitutes for politicalreality. This analogyargues that media heroes in "Star Trek" and "Star Wars",helping earth's alienscaught between past and future, merelycure future shock with more and not 122 less technology. Toffler's presciiption formuch of future shock iscon- sumer use of the new communicationstechnology in The Third Wave.

Defenders of the SF techniquespoint to theirpower to predict better than some social science.They cite the Buck Rogers comics,

magazines which forecast atomicbombs and oil shortages,the prophetic metaphor of George Orwell's 1984 and Aldous Huxley'sBrave New World,

and the prediction ofphotography 80 years in advanceby a French 123 science fiction novel. More recently, they point to thefact that the Three Mile Nuclear crisisoccurred a few days after the premier of the 1979 movie"The China Syndrome", which starred JaneFonda as a newscaster trying to get a story on a possible nuclear accidentin a similar fictional plant in California. 124 The blending of fiction andfact in this instance,was called by one professor of literature an argument that "fiction may be thepre- 125 decessor to fact." Coincidentally (?), in 1978,a Harrisburg, Pa., magazine published a fictionalarticle on a nuclear disasterat nearby Three Mile Island. It describedmass evacuation confusion and public health problems from radiation.The fictional story said radiation problems first occurred at theplant on a March 28. The real c%ccident 126 and first radiation problemsoccurred on March 28, 1979.

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Summary:

1.) The rise in receptivity to qualitative and non-quantitativeresearch methods has taken place in theatmosphere of unresolved, externalpub- lic issues unsolved by traditionalsocial science approaches, andinter- nal academic respectability gainedby re-discovered andnew descriptive research alternatives which havecarved out a new area. 2.) The mood of co-existence indifferent research camps is aidedby the eclectic scope of qualitative studies and renewed interest incom- munication by sociologists whose multiple approaches havecombined the qualitative and quantitativetools, especially participant-observation with survey research. 3.) The older established descriptive research method of historyin journalism and communicationsresearch now has a spirit ofdetente in an era of good feeling and parity withhumanism and mea-research. 4.) Sociologists have penetratedmedia institutions to providea whol- istic view missing from much communications research tiedto objective survey research approaches and a possiblydetached perspective in society. on media 5.) Media sociology has been more critical of media performancethan journalism educators, who havebeen tied to professional mediaas a major client outside the academicworld. 6.) Political scientists and journaliststogether have developed the agenda-setting and actor role of mediaas research frameworks. Other interdisciplinary contexts includethose of philosophy, religion and the law, and economic interpretationslong used to explain mass media. 7.) Participant-observer techniqueshave been used by journaliststo both gather information andto explaYn media functions. The varieties of journalistic practice createdcan be studied as research methods, including investigative reportingas social science. 8.) Media are methods ofresearch, inclading photography,audio-visual tapes, movies, television, and novels,especially non-fiction types. 9.) Criticism and criticalanalysis of media continues, butstill sub- ject to criticism as it seeksto develop a more precise and distinct methodology. 10.) Media archeology offersan unorthodox approach and unobtrusive method to trace the role of media insociety through photography, the metaphor of death and autopsy, accidentresearch, numerous natural and social breakdowns assessed instudy commissions, and through "garbology" and the un-planned historical experimentsof the ghost towns andrem- nants of social containment. 11.) Science fiction is examinedas a journalistic and scholarly tech- nique because of its futuristicblend with projectionson the impact of new communications technologybeyond the present, and becauseof its eclectic combination of severaldisciplines, a high level of involve- ment by its creators, and its criticaland evaluative outlookon media. ti . 39

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