Seeing, Thinking, Feeling: A Critical Reflection on Interview-based Methods for Studying News Use

ABSTRACT

This article aims to provide a resource for journalism researchers looking to use a qualitative approach to study news use. It seeks to go beyond justifying qualitative methods vis-à-vis quantitative methods and to be more reflective and critical regarding the limitations and possibilities of the qualitative interview. Making the case for taking experience as point of departure for studying news use, the article explicates this notion by drawing from different theoretical conceptions of experience. Based on three recent user studies, the article critically reflects upon three interview-based methods that center around users’ experience of news use—the think-aloud protocol, watching and discussing news, and the two-sided video-ethnography—and discusses their theoretical, methodological and epistemological implications. A common thread emerging from the different user studies is that people require support to be able to access and communicate their experiences of news use. The methods discussed proved successful at doing so, respectively by having informants comment on what they saw right in front of them (see), by giving them the tools and the vocabulary to reflect on a prior experience (think), and by bringing them in touch with their sensations of using news (feel).

KEYWORDS:

• Experience
• think-aloud protocol
• news use
• qualitative interviewing
• ethnography
• journalism
• news consumption
• day-in-the-life interview

Acknowledgments

My gratitude goes out to the two anonymous reviewers: it was truly a joy revising this article thanks to your thoughtful, constructive and elaborate suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID

Tim Groot Kormelink http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5374-7536

Additional information

Funding

This article is part of the research project “The New News Consumer: User-Based Innovation to Meet Paradigmatic Change in News Use and Media Habits,” supported by The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) [314-99-103] and ten Dutch journalism organizations (see http://www.news-use.com); Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek.