Vijay Ratna Kumar Blog

Much of early print media research was qualitative. The first volume of Journalism Quarterly, founded in 1928, contained articles on press law, history, international comparisons, and ethics. However, quantitative research soon began to make its appearance in this academic journal. An article published in March 1930 surveyed the research interests of those currently working in the newspaper and magazine fields and found the most prevalent type of study to be the survey of reader interest in newspaper content. The June 1930 issue contained an article by Ralph Nafziger, “A Reader Interest Survey of Madison, Wisconsin,” which served as the prototype for hundreds of future research studies. The 1930s also saw the publication of many studies designed to assess the results of print media advertising.

This led to studies in applied research, and several publications began to sponsor their own readership surveys. Mostly, however, the results of these studies were considered proprietary.

As the techniques of quantitative research became more widely known and adopted, newspaper and magazine research became more empirical. Wilbur Schramm (1957) first recognized this trend in an article in Public Opinion Quarterly that reviewed 20 years of research as reported in Journalism Quarterly. Schramm found that only 10% of the 101 articles published between 1937 and 1941 concerned quantitative analyses; by 1952–1956, nearly half of the 143 articles published were quantitative, a fivefold increase in only 15 years.

The reasons for this trend, according to Schramm, were the growing availability of basic data, the development of more sophisticated research tools, and the increase in institutional support for research. By 1960, newspapers and magazines were competing with television and radio for audience attention and advertiser investment.

This situation greatly spurred the growth of private-sector research. The Bureau of Advertising of the American Newspaper Publishers Association (subsequently called the Newspaper Advertising Bureau) began conducting studies on all aspects of the press and its audience. In the 1970s, it founded the News Research Center, which reports the results of research to editors.

The Magazine Publishers Association also began to sponsor survey research at this time. The continuing interest of academics in print media research led to the creation of the Newspaper Research Journal in 1979, a publication devoted entirely to research that has practical implications for newspaper management. In 1976 the Newspaper Readership Project was instituted to study the problems of declining circulation and sagging readership.

As a major part of the six-year, $5-million study, a news research center was set up at Syracuse University to abstract and synthesize the results of more than 300 private and published studies of newspaper reading habits. The Newspaper Advertising Bureau produced dozens of research reports and conducted extensive focus group studies. In addition, regional workshops were held across the country to explain to editors the uses and limitations of research. By the time the Readership Project ended, most editors had accepted research as a necessary tool of the trade. Bogart (1991) presents a thorough history of the Readership Project.

In 1977 the Newspaper Research Council (NRC), a subgroup of the Newspaper Advertising Bureau, was incorporated with 75 members. This group was involved with the American Society of Newspaper Editors in a circulation retention study and with the International Newspaper Marketing Association on how to convert Sunday-only readers to daily readers. In 1992 the Newspaper Advertising Bureau merged with the American Newspaper Publishers Association to create the Newspaper Association of America (NAA). The NAA continued the efforts of the NRC in the research area by sponsoring a number of studies that looked at such topics as attracting younger readers and how to use advertising to encourage newspaper reading. The most recent effort of the NAA, launched in 1999, was a five year readership initiative study that examines the relationship of newspaper content to its readers. The Readership Institute at the Media Management Center at Northwestern University supervised this initiative.

In 2000 the Readership Institute launched the Impact Study, which gathered information from 37,000 readers and 100 newspapers in an attempt to increase readership. Results from this study were reported at the 2004 Newspaper Advertising Association/ American Society of Newspaper Editors convention.

The declining fortunes of the print media have prompted new research efforts as traditional newspapers and magazines try to assess the competition from the Internet, examine how online versions relate to their traditional paper counterparts, and look for new ways to improve their financial situation.

Neuman (1997) and Blaikie (1993) suggest that there are three distinct approaches to social science research: positivism (or objectivism), interpretive, and critical. Each of these represents a model or a paradigm for research—an accepted set of theories, procedures, and assumptions about how researchers look at the world. Paradigms are based on axioms, or statements that are universally accepted as true. Paradigms are important because they are related to the selection of research methodologies.

The positivist paradigm is the oldest and still the most widely used in mass media research. Derived from the writings of philosophers such as Comte and Mill, positivism is the paradigm most used in the natural sciences. When the social sciences developed, researchers modified this technique for their own purposes. The positivist paradigm involves such concepts as quantification, hypotheses, and objective measures.

Interpretive social science traces its roots to Max Weber and Wilhelm Dilthey. The aim of the interpretive paradigm is to understand how people in everyday natural settings create meaning and interpret the events of their world. This paradigm became popular in mass media research during the 1970s and 1980s and gained added visibility in the 1990s and the new century.

The critical paradigm draws on analysis models used in the humanities. Critical researchers are interested in such concepts as the distribution of power in society and political ideology.

The positivist paradigm differs from the interpretive paradigm along three main dimensions. First, the two approaches have a different philosophy of reality. For the positivist researcher, reality is objective; it exists apart from researchers and can be seen by all. In other words, it is out there. For the interpretive researcher, there is no single reality. Each observer creates reality as part of the research process. It is subjective and exists only in reference to the observer.

 Perhaps a classic example will help here. If a tree falls in the forest and there is no one there to hear it, does it make any noise? On the one hand, a positivist would answer yes—reality doesn’t depend on an observer; it exists independently. On the other hand, an interpretive researcher would say no noise was made—reality exists only in the observer. Furthermore, the positivist researcher believes that reality can be divided into component parts, and knowledge of the whole is gained by looking at the parts. In contrast, the interpretive researcher examines the entire process, believing that reality is holistic and cannot be subdivided.

Second, the two approaches have different views of the individual. The positivist researcher believes all human beings are basically similar and looks for general categories to summarize their behaviours or feelings. The interpretive investigator believes that human beings are fundamentally different and cannot be pigeonholed.

Third, positivist researchers aim to generate general laws of behaviour and explain many things across many settings. In contrast, interpretive scholars attempt to produce a unique explanation about a given situation or individual. Whereas positivist researchers strive for breadth, interpretive researchers strive for depth.

The following five major research areas demonstrate significant differences between the positivist and interpretive approaches: