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The interview as an interpretative bridge
Das, R., & Hanska-Ahy, M. (2011). The interview as an interpretative bridge . Zagreb conference: "New challenges and methodological innovations in European media audience research". 7-9 April 2011.
Abstract: Amidst recent methodological innovations in audience research as both media (texts and technologies) and people (audiences, publics and users) transform, this paper takes a renewed look at the age-old qualitative interview as a principal tool for answering some of the most persistent questions in this field. As a transforming subject matter elicits innovative and practical solutions like unconventional, non-verbal methods (c.f. Gauntlell and Holzwarth, 2006) that can grasp the interactive nature of new media technologies, and as scepticism about the utility of such methods is also expressed (see Buckingham, 2009 for e.g.), this paper asks how the interview continues to be timelessly significant. We re-position the qualitative interview by tracing the iterative process through which we move from conceptual problems to empirical questions, on to evidence and back again, showing how the interview guide establishes an ‘interpretative bridge’ between our larger questions and our methods of assembling and interpreting evidence. We do so by focusing on the operationalization and interpretive strategies of two projects following two important questions in two different domains – (i) one is norm formation in international mass mediated publics, (ii) and the other interpretative work/literacies of new media users. We show how the interview offers an apt framework for answering important questions about both international publics and new media users, by scrutinizing the rational it offers for inferences made on the basis of transcript data. Thus - bringing publics and users together as audiences, in two differently mediated conditions, this paper argues for the retention, revision and refinement of ‘old’ methods in ‘new’ conditions as we research transforming audiences and transforming societies.
