The Three Paradigms of Mass Media Research In Mainstream Communication Journals

Abstract

Scholars who write about the paradigms influencing mass media research differ in their speculations. This study was conducted to provide an empirical analysis by examining six characteristics of mass media research articles published in eight major communication journals. The social science paradigm was found to account for over 60% of the studies, while the interpretive paradigm accounted for about 34% and the critical paradigm less than 6%. It was concluded that the social science paradigm, while being the majority paradigm in the mainstream journals, could not be considered a dominant paradigm in the research field. Also, even though most of the research emulated the social science paradigm in purpose, it failed to meet scientific standards of theoretical orientation leading to quantitative data gathered by probabilistic sampling methods.All fields of scholarship have an underlying set of assumptions and operating principles that researchers in the field follow unquestioningly. Kuhn (1977) refers to this set of foundational beliefs as a paradigm, which is defined as a consensus among scholars or "the entire global set of commitments shared by the members of a particular scientific community" (Kuhn, 1977, p. xix). The scholars in a community use these taken-for-granted assumptions in making various practical decisions about their research. These assumptions govern the way questions are asked, the methods that are used, the criteria for what is accepted as data, and the standards for evaluating the validity of knowledge claims.If we are to understand the nature of our research practices and the limitations of the knowledge those practices produce, we must try to identify what these assumptions are. However , these assumptions are difficult to illuminate, because we cannot observe them directly. Instead we must either speculate about what they might be or infer them from the research records that are produced by scholars. It is the purpose of this article to illuminate the speculations, then to examine some of the published literature to see which of those speculations are supported by empirical data. This purpose statement reveals that this study is based on a social science perspective for research. We use social science not because we believe it is the only type of research capable of producing the "correct" or most "truthful" set of results. Instead we use social science in order to generate a set of results that might contrast with findings already presented in the literature that have relied on different research paradigms. It is hoped that 317

Missing Marx: The Place of Marx in Current Communication Research and the Place of Communication in Marx’s Work

“…60.8% of all studies have study designs with no theoretical reasoning, rationale or discussion at all (table 4). Similarly, Potter, Cooper and Dupagne (1993) found that 91.9% of their analysed articles had no theoretical foundations. A study by Potter and Riddle (2007) found the same result for 57.1%.…”

Mass communication research as a social science discipline Status, problems and opportunities

“…Additionally, research effort at the institute should be built (Potter et al, 1993). The last two are mentioned to broaden the scope of research so as to not only include attention to legal, historical and ideologically inspired policy studies, but also to focus on message encoding and signification through semiological and other 'framing ', 'bracketing', and 'formatting' strategies (McLeod et al, 1994) ?…”

Differences in Univariate Values Versus Multivariate Relationships.

“…As is traditional in some survey research, Potter et al (1993Potter et al ( , 1995 and Abelman (1996) appear to be thinking in terms of univariate population estimates, that is, descriptive (Farber, 1952) or particularistic (Kruglanski, 1975) research. In this scenario, the principle focus is usually an attempt to make estimates of univariate values from a sampled population.…”