Page 159 - Communication Cultural and Media Studies The Key Concepts

METHODOLOGY

Visual metaphors abound in cinema and TV, especially in the way
that concrete visualisations stand for abstract ideas: there are both novel
and cliche ´d ways to convey ‘normality’, ‘threat’, ‘the city’, ‘prostitu-
tion’, ‘bad guy’, etc. In television, visual metaphors are used to cue
viewers as to the social standing of sitcom or soap opera characters or
families – the style and decoration of fridges on the set, for instance.
There was a vogue for spice racks, a visual metaphor that for a while was
an almost infallible marker of the ‘middle-class family’ on British TV
sitcoms.

METHODOLOGY

The study of, or explicit concern with, methods of investigation in
research of any kind, or the body of methods used in any one branch.
The methodological tool cupboard of communication, and cultural
and media studies is capacious, because these are interdisciplinary
fields. They have borrowed methods from sociology, anthropology and
other social sciences with a history of serious concern for
methodology, as well as from literary and textual analysis, in which
formal method training has traditionally played a less prominent role.
Methods are usually rule-bound modes of investigation, taking care to
outline function and field of inquiry. Before a method is chosen it is
important to establish what knowledge we are attempting to access and
for what purpose. This is where methodology as the ‘science’ of
method is useful, hovering behind such choices as a check not only on
how well what is proposed fits in with established rules and procedures,
but also on whether the right method for the job has been chosen.
Methods fall broadly into two categories – empirical and
theoretical. Theoretical methodologies within communication and
cultural studies include Marxism, psychoanalysis, semiotics, textual
analysis, feminist and queer theory, as well as theoretical work done in
contributory or neighbouring disciplines, from science to sociology.
These types of methodologies are less interested in providing an
individual method than they are concerned with the possibilities of
understanding howwe make sense of the world.
Empirical methods are concerned with studying actually existing
recoverable artefacts. These may include quantitative data – the
numbers and statistics that may result from content analysis, censuses
and surveys. Or the data may be qualitative, e.g. that collected via
participant observation or ethnographic methods. Both quantitative
and qualitative data may be suitable for generalisation. But equally,

144