Before Theme 6 Qualitative and Case Study Research

 (N.B. This is the study blog for the course Theory and Method for Media Technology. More detailed information regarding the theme as well as the course is available on the course page [1].)

For the last theme study, we are advised to select two media technology research papers: one fusing qualitative methods, while another using the case study research method; and then answer the questions based on them accordingly. The format will be followed in this blog.

My selection on the first one is the paper namely 'The process of organizational communication: a model and field study' by Te'eni, D. et. al. [2] published in Professional Communication, IEEE Transactions on  (Volume:44 ,  Issue: 1 ). The journal is of high quality, with an “impact factor” of 2.303.

The paper emphasizes three constructs of the communication process: goal-based communication strategies, and message form and medium; seeking to ‘balance cognitive and social communication strategies and to combine new and old measures of the message form (organization, formality and size)’.

Q1. Which qualitative method or methods are used in the paper? Which are the benefits and limitations of using these methods?

For the research method, a field study was conducted in their research, with an open-ended interview followed for investigating the field study findings. The field study deals with a large amount of data with quantitative analysis, while the interview is conducted from qualitative perspective.

The benefits and limitations of using the qualitative method can be discussed similarly as what we did during theme 4 study on quantitative research. Again, the benefits of qualitative method include its deep analysis on the analysis, and its function to clarify findings and reaffirm priori by giving explanations. On the other hand, the method also limits to its unavoidable subjectivity, compared to quantitative methods. Also, I think qualitative method sometimes is hard to conduct without descriptive statistics which commonly results from quantitative analysis.

Q2. What did you learn about qualitative methods from reading the paper?

The combined use of quantitative and qualitative method is the most important thing I learn from reading this paper. Additionally, it is glad to learn that the author performed a field study to ‘ensure a study of a social phenomenon such as communication in its natural setting rather than a controlled laboratory experiment’, as well as engaged in a qualitative study on the preliminary results with an interview on the organization ‘who had sent or received messages’. The two methods support each other logically and efficiently. Thus the study can be seen as a good example of using quantitative and qualitative methods together in one research.

Q3. Which are the main methodological problems of the study? How could the use of the qualitative method or methods have been improved?

Honestly I did not tell any major methodological problems of the study. However, the use of the qualitative method could be improved with supportive evidence from quantitative analysis, just like argued in previous questions. I think the classic qualitative research aims to provide information but numbers, for a further explanation on analysis.

In addition to the two selected papers, another article ‘Building Theories from Case Study Research [3] was also advised to be read. Based on this reading, I chose the second media technology research paper as Cloud Mobile Media: Reflections and Outlook [4] from the same journal Multimedia, IEEE Transactions on. In the selected paper, a concrete case study was used for further substantiating the proposed design principles for cloud-based mobile media.

Q1. Briefly explain to a first year university student what a case study is.

The case study is a research method to focus on a particular subject. The analysis is within single setting, different from theory discussion. The case study aims to deeply examine the studied case or cases with focuses on several aspects.

Q2. Use the "Process of Building Theory from Case Study Research" (Eisenhardt, summarized in Table 1) to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of your selected paper.

I think this question provides us possibilities to further study the process of building theory with an example. It is shown that although the selected paper did not follow the process of building theory step by step, the logic still can be easily found with the help of the process. I believe this table is very useful and helpful for our future research.

Those are all for today’s blog. Thanks for reading. Your valuable comments are welcome. Please let me know if you find anything interesting or want to have a further discussion. I am looking forward to more discussions in seminar with you all.

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Sources:

[1] https://www.kth.se/social/course/DM2572/page/theme-6-qualitative-and-case-study-rese-2/

[2] Te'eni, D., Sagie, A., Schwartz, D. G., Zaidman, N., & Amichai-Hamburger, Y. (2001). The process of organizational communication: a model and field study.Professional Communication, IEEE Transactions on, 44(1), 6-20.

[3] Eisenhardt, K. M. (1989). Building theories from case study research. Academy of management review, 14(4), 532-550

[4] Wen, Y., Zhu, X., Rodrigues, J. J., & Chen, C. W. (2014). Cloud mobile media: reflections and outlook. Multimedia, IEEE Transactions on, 16(4), 885-902.