Qualitative Research in communication

The commitment of communication scholarship: to study human symbolic action in the various contexts
of its performance.

The qualitative: Study the performances and practices of human communication.

Performances: are creative, local, and collaborative interactions of events, e.g., jokes.

Practices: form a coherent action that is indexed by the material of a particular performance, and they
are attributed by social actors as a presumptions of others-motives.

I will argue that qualitative research has the potential to change our attitude of domination because it is
sensitive to human forms of life in a way that traditional research cannot be.

Qualitative research has succeeded in adopting a different attitude, one that Habermas calls (rather
misleadingly) a “practical” interest: an interest in understanding other people