Qualitative methodology for mass communication research

How to understand social reality: it can be understood by semiotics, social interactionism, linguistics,
literary theory and etcetera.

The qualitative approach is enrich by humanities and social sciences.

Culture and communication is about meaning and information.

Object of analisis; analytical apparatus or methods; methodology and theoretical framework the
qualitative-quantitative distinction will be taken here to apply to methodologies—the structured sets of
procedures and instruments by which empirical phenomena of mass communication are registered,
documented, and interpreted .

A methodological contribution of the humanities tradition comes from its development of systematic
approaches to the study of language and discourse.

Language is a means of meaningful action, as suggested by speechact theory (Chapter 1), as well as a
mediator of various types of interaction from daily conversation to political and cultural activity.

Communication as the social production of meaning.

Perhaps the key contribution of the humanities to qualitative research is an emphatic commitment to
studying the language of particular texts and genres in their historical setting.

From a humanistic perspective, the contents (communication message) must be conceptualized as the
expression of a particular subjectivity and aesthetics (the communicator), and as the representation of a
particular context (the social structure embedding).

Discourse refers to any use of language, or other semiotic systems, in social context.

The subjective, the position. Mass communication can be said to give voice to some discursive positions
while silencing others.

Structuralism served to accelerate the shifting of emphases in the humanities from the metaphysical
Word to the structured Text.

semiology is engaged more specifically in the analysis of signs and their functions, thus influencing both
the humanities and the social sciences.

Charles Sander Pierce sign as action.

Practices as meaningful social activities.